Interview: Caring Leadership and Performance

“Employees must be treated with fairness and kindness”

Raphaël H Cohen

author of the book Les leviers de l’engagement (Eyrolles) Director of the Entrepreneurial Leadership specialisation of the EMBA at the University of Geneva, Raphaël H Cohen explains how a fair and kind approach boosts engagement.

Why focus on engagement?

Several studies have established a link between high levels of engagement and increases in productivity and profits of up to 35%. According to Professor Issac Gertz, only 23% of people in Switzerland come to work every morning with the intention of contributing to their employer’s success, compared with 10% in France and 13% in Germany. That is to say, companies have considerable room for improvement.

To increase the level of engagement, employees must be treated with fairness and kindness.

You were the first to combine fairness and kindness. Why?

This management style fits well with the Swiss mindset, in which kindness is a fundamental value in the relationship to work. There are no strikes, no great hierarchical distance. It is an outlook already found in apprenticeship based on mentoring: an experienced person teaches another the tricks of the trade in a caring master-pupil relationship.

But can a manager really have that same kind of relationship on a daily basis with a whole team?

Yes, because what is a manager’s role in a company? Senior management expects three things from them: performance, compliance with the company’s fundamental principles, and engaged teams. None of this is achieved through management that abuses its power. Practising fair and kind leadership is within everyone’s reach.

Why insist on fairness?

What upsets employees is broken promises, abuses of power, favouritism... Several studies have shown that around half of employees aspire only to change employer or manager. For example, 26% of Canadians would even prefer their manager to be a piece of software rather than a human being. Because software is far fairer than a human: it does not abuse its power; it does not play favourites; it is predictable and it does things without mood swings. Fairness is essential if you want engaged employees.

And Switzerland?

Nothing to boast about, since the average score employees give their manager is only 6.2 out of 10.

Are companies aware that they would benefit from changing their management style?

They are beginning to be, for various reasons, one of them being the need to attract talent. Yet that talent often comes from Generations Y and Z. For them, simply holding a managerial position is not enough to embody authority. They want exemplary line managers and work that has meaning. These young people say they are ready to resign if they do not find that within the company employing them. Current management is a poor adaptation of obsolete military models. But while it may enable people to live together badly, it is not effective for all that. Today, employees want to be treated fairly and to work in a kind environment.

Moreover, companies are also aware that they need management that is more responsive and less centralised. Employees therefore need to be given a certain degree of latitude, which rests on a relationship of mutual trust. But trust cannot simply be decreed. It has to be earned.

How can a manager go about it?

By giving everyone the desire to give their best. My book presents a map of the levers that foster trust and engagement. As there is no single recipe, each manager can therefore choose those that suit them.

How can a manager know the real level of engagement of their employees? Especially since a manager’s idea of it is rarely in line with the employee’s. One gets the impression of a huge misunderstanding.

That is true because, until now, engagement has often been measured through satisfaction surveys, which are a poor way of measuring the engagement generated by a manager. The result of this kind of survey is more useful for assessing how managers treat their employees and deducing from that whether those employees are engaged.

To measure the level of engagement achieved, rather than the way of achieving it, we developed free software - available on EazyMirror.com - based on fairly simple questions, for example, from 1 to 5, would you recommend your manager to a friend considering joining your team?

The four questions in the form can be modified and make it easy to measure the level of engagement the manager has succeeded in obtaining from their team.

The questionnaire guarantees anonymity. Only the manager concerned receives their score, and it is up to them to take the appropriate steps to improve it, for example by undertaking training.

But nothing obliges them to do so?

That is true, but in time and as with TripAdvisor, the best employees could legitimately ask recruiters for the engagement score of their future manager. That score will tell them whether they are likely to be treated well. If the result does not suit them, or if the company does not make it available transparently, talent will go elsewhere.

Interview by Odile Habel