Hey Reader!
Hope you’re enjoying the end of your summer. I noticed myself feeling the sadness of the upcoming transition in season and cadence of life as school starts and fall approaches.
As a parent, the feeling of each passing summer is visceral knowing that we only get a limited number of summers with our kids. Work is one of our most important levers for impact in the world, but nothing supersedes our relationships to our partners and, if we choose / are able to have kids, our relationships to our children.
This week’s letter comes from a classroom teacher who views their work through the lens of inspiring the next generation of leaders and founders. I generalize my response to be applicable to anyone looking to create more engagement within a team or group — at work, at school, in our nonprofit endeavors and beyond.
Let’s get to it.
Letter from a Founder
Hey, B!
I’m NOT the founder of a company. Instead, I am a teacher of the future founders.
Here’s the situation in my classroom: I teach high school math, and I am preparing for the upcoming school year.
I recently returned to teaching after working in the assessment industry for 20 years. I now teach high school students in a small school, and the courses I teach are Algebra, Geometry, Precalculus, Calculus, College Algebra, and Data Science. I also strive to not only teach math, but I am trying to teach these students how to be future leaders.
I’m struggling to make lessons applicable and engaging enough to compete with the outside noise today’s students experience.
My core question is, as a founder, how do you help people engage in their work?
Thanks,
– Teaching Tomorrow’s Founders
Hey, Teaching Tomorrow’s Founders,
What an important job you have. I both admire you and very much do not envy the challenge you face trying to engage high school students in today’s media environment.
What I love about your question is that it’s applicable much more broadly than the classroom. In fact, as a founder, keeping your team engaged is a similar challenge.
Great Leadership Fosters Engaged Teams
In Gallup’s 2024 engagement survey, it showed a 10-year low in employee engagement across the American economy.
“The drop in these employee engagement elements was particularly acute in remote, hybrid and younger workers. By the end of 2023, 33% of U.S. employees overall were highly engaged, meaning they were highly involved and enthusiastic about their work and workplaces.
Unfortunately, the first quarter of 2024 continued this downward trend, with engagement dropping three percentage points to 30% among both full- and part-time employees.”
I can’t imagine how low the equivalent engagement stats would be for teenagers with regard to school.
Lack of Engagement Has Deep Roots
When I think back to my own school experience, by the time I turned 17 I was completely checked out. It was the beginning of a very dark period for me that finally ended in legal trouble that endangered my college career. I’m thankful for that legal trouble because it was the wake-up call I needed to end up on the path that has led me to where I am today (including meeting my wife).
But I also think about how I ended up in that place, which gets to the heart of your question.
- I felt like I had no control over my experience of school and life at that time.
- School was no longer challenging. I felt held back by how slowly most of my classes moved. Combined with my need for high engagement, classes felt like torture by boredom.
- I just didn’t care. Nothing seemed like it mattered. I could show up, do the minimum, and get basically good grades. I knew where I was going to college based on finances and I knew I could get in. Why was I there again?
- I struggled with friendships and didn’t feel like I belonged in any social group. I felt constantly left out, occasionally bullied (which I’m sure I did to others as well), and like I didn’t have many people I could count on.
Four Factors Make People Light Up at Work (or School)
While we’re talking about school here, versions of these experiences happen at work as well. These experiences map onto a framework Dan Pink shared in his excellent book, Drive, plus one that I’ve added because it’s been so important in my experience. Here are the four factors:
- Autonomy – what degree of control does a person have over how they do their work?
- Mastery – to what extent does the person’s work challenge them to learn and grow?
- Purpose – how does this work relate to something bigger in this person’s life? What meaning do they derive from the work they do?
- Belonging – do they feel like they’re part of a group where they’re welcomed, valued, and respected? Do they feel they share a common set of values (in practice, not just intent) with their colleagues?
Your goal as a leader — whether in a classroom or a company — is to deliver on these four aspects of what makes work matter to people. And when the work matters, people tend to be more engaged.
This of course always comes with the caveat that you can’t do the other person’s work for them. They have to want these things. They have to be an active player in the game of life, business, and learning in order for any of this to work.
As a teacher, you have outcomes you have to teach towards. As a boss, you set the goals and targets for the company. But in both cases, there are ways to give your people autonomy, mastery, purpose, and belonging in pursuing those outcomes or goals.
Questions to Help You Fire Up Your Team
So here are some questions to help guide how you help your people get there, even when the goals are already set:
- How can you help this person understand all the aspects of their role they have agency over? What is in their control? How can you give them radical autonomy in those aspects of the role?
- What is this person’s story? How does this current opportunity fit into that story? How can you help them find a reason they want to be there and tell themselves a story about why this work matters to their future? What growth do they need to bring that future to life? What parts of their studies or work are at the edge of their current capabilities and how can you frame that as a good thing?
- Why are they there? What do they care most about in life? How can you relate their work to what matters most to them?
- How can you, as the leader, create a container that allows for community to develop within your team or group? What habits, rituals, and ways of operating will bring your team closer together?
This is the work of leadership. It’s inherently ambiguous. Because of that, it can feel frustrating at times. Your people have to be willing to meet you in this process. They have 50% of the responsibility for engaging in their work in a way that brings these qualities to life. But you can invite them into the process and make that role explicit.
There might not be a more important job than leading the next generation of founders and leaders. Thanks for doing that work. We’ll all benefit.
Much love and respect,
P.S. – Things to do next:
- Hit reply and write me a letter about a leadership challenge you’re facing. I might answer it in an upcoming newsletter.
- Listen to Benji Backer on why we need both major political parties working towards solutions to society’s most important problems.
- Forward this newsletter to a friend who would enjoy it.
- Refer a founder friend to coaching and I’ll pay you $1,000 if we start working together.