People quest for ‘the good life or well-being¹.’ The previous blog² suggested signposts to realizing living the good life, i.e., living a meaningful life, allowing them to flourish and, thus, experience well-being. These signposts are: (a) Be conscious of one’s talents or endowed competence, (b) the individual is the only person with the authority to autonomously develop and apply his/her competence (i.e., agency), (c) consequently, one has the responsibility to devote time and effort to fulfill and apply one’s endowed competence potential, and (d) in doing so respect the autonomy of others, which nurtures belongingness and fostering getting along. These signposts embrace the satisfaction of the inborn motivational needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness. These needs are the core concepts of Self-Determination Theory (SDT)³ and are compatible with human nature²¹.

Arriving at the end destination – living the good life – by following these signposts depends on the choices one makes along the way⁴. These choices involve what is good, useful, meaningful, and worthwhile for the individual and others (i.e., moral)⁵. Thus, these choices require wisdom⁴. Wisdom means to act in line with one’s abilities to realize one’s full potential or endowed competence to advance in life. Thus, wisdom allows one to choose to do what one does well without violating the liberty of others.

Hence, these choices come with many personal and moral consequences⁴. Thus, the journey to experiencing well-being may be arduous. To stay on course requires energy that sustains mental, physical, and emotional effort. Energy is relevant to engagement^6,7. Particularly work engagement’s dimensions of vigor and dedication^7,8,9. In this sense, energy is compatible with Kahn’s (1990)⁶ conception of engagement as well as with Self-Determination Theory (SDT)³. The purpose of this blog is to connect work engagement and living the good life. This is my view which may only resonate with some. The next section briefly illuminates engagement. The blog closes with parting thoughts.

Engagement

This section elaborates on engagement as originally conceptualized by Kahn (1990)⁶ and the operationalization of Schaufeli and colleagues (2002)⁷. The links with engagement, Self-Determination Theory, and flourishing are illuminated.

Kahn’s Engagement Conceptualization⁶

Kahn’s (1990) conception of engagement interlocks with many prevailing conceptual frameworks that express intricate influences on people’s engagement and disengagement in particular moments of role performances. Kahn (1990) maintains that people occupy a role encompassed in job design in a workplace context. An interplay between the work role and the individual occupying the role shapes each other. He argues that people who are psychologically present during role performance bring their authentic selves to the role enabling excellent performance, and contentedness.  

Psychological presence allows people to adjust their selves in-roles by bringing more or less of themselves to role performances. This self-regulation promotes engagement or disengagement, protecting a person from engulfment or isolation during role performance. Kahn (1990:700) explains that personal engagement is the concurrent employment and expression of a person’s preferred self (i.e., authentic self in terms of identity, thoughts, and feelings) in task behaviors that advance connections to work and to others, personal presence (physical involved, cognitive vigilant, and emotional connections to others), and active, full role performances. Kahn further states that his premise is that people have dimensions of themselves that, given suitable conditions, they favor to use and express during work role performances. And to employ such dimensions is to drive personal energies into physical, cognitive, and emotional labors.

The Three Psychological Conditions of Presence

Kahn (1990:703) states that three psychological conditions shape how people occupy their work roles. These conditions are meaningfulness, safety, and availability.

Psychological Meaningfulness. According to Kahn (1990), psychological meaningfulness refers to a person’s significance in bringing his/her authentic self to role performance. Meaningfulness stems from a rewarding feeling of investing one’s physical, cognitive, and emotional energy in role performance. Experiences of work elements create incentives and disincentives to invest oneself in work performances.

People experience meaningfulness when they feel worthwhile, useful, valuable, and making a difference by giving and receiving in performing (i.e., relatedness, competence^21,23). The lack of such experience means not much is asked of a person and there is little room for them to give and receive.

Three factors influence meaningfulness:

(a) Task characteristics: challenging, clearly delineated, varied, using creativity, that can be performed relatively autonomously, indicating ownership that allows people to use their current competence and provide opportunities to learn and grow to improve their performance (i.e., competence^21,23).

(b) Role characteristics: Suggest an identity that conveys status and influence, is founded on power, and is associated with value, being valued, valuable, and needed (i.e., competence^21,23). The closer the fit of the role identity with the incumbent’s view of him-/herself and how the person wants to be seen in this role, creates the experience of meaningfulness.

(c) Rewarding work interactions: Involve both professional and personal elements which promote dignity, self-appreciation, and a sense of worthwhileness, which allow people to feel valuable and valued, and include mutual appreciation, respect, and positive feedback (i.e., relatedness^21,23).

Psychological Safety. Psychological safety refers to how safe it is for a person to bring his/her authentic self to work performance. People feel safe when they experience elements of social systems as nonthreatening, clear, predictable, and consistent and can thus be trusted (i.e., autonomy^21,23). Consequently, they engage because they are enabled to show and employ themselves without fear of negative consequences to their self-image, status, or career. In these situations, people can understand the boundaries between what behavior is permissible and unacceptable and the potential consequences for their behaviors.

Four factors impact psychological safety:

(a)  Supporting and trusting interpersonal relationships, including flexibility to allow people to try or innovate without fear of consequences, especially in case of failing (i.e., relatedness, competence^21,23).

(b)  Group and intergroup dynamics: Group dynamics involve the systems imposed unacknowledged characters or unconscious roles people assume that impact their conscious working via the scope people have to safely employ themselves into work role performances (i.e., relatedness^21,23). Suppressing people’s voice reflects the distribution of authority and power among groups in organizations, which may threaten psychological safety.  

(c)  Management styles and processes: A supportive, resilient, and clarifying style amplifies psychological safety (i.e., relatedness^21,23). Leaders translate the system’s demands, impacting members’ behaviors and creating varying degrees of supportiveness and openness, fostering or impeding innovation. People feel safer when they have control over their work and fear arises from controlling and unpredictable leader behavior (i.e., autonomy^21,23).

(d)  Organizational norms: Refers to shared expectations about system’s members behavior. Psychological safety intensifies when role performances are within the confines of organizational norms.

Psychological Availability. Psychological availability refers to how available a person is to bring him-/herself to work performance based on their sense of having the physical, emotional, and psychological resources to engage at a particular moment. How people cope depends on how they deal with individual distractions and demands, whether work or nonwork-related. Situations that preoccupy people leave them with commensurate resources to engage. People are more engaged in cases where they are available and less engaged in situations where they are unavailable.

Distractions or demands impacting psychological availability include:

(a) Depletion of physical energy results from long working hours, heavy workloads, and demanding work conditions wearing people out (i.e., competence^21,23).

(b) Depletion of emotional energy because expressing oneself in role performance requires emotional labor (i.e., competence, relatedness^21,23). For example, frustration can drain a person emotionally and leads to withdrawal.

(c) Individual insecurity about their work and status: Insecurity generates anxiety that burns energy. A lack of self-confidence and self-consciousness about how others perceive and judge one results in insecurity (i.e., competence, relatedness^21,23). Doubts about one’s fit with the organization lead to impression management and inner debates, which leave a person with a lesser aptitude or willingness to engage.

(d) Events in people’s nonwork lives can either debilitate or boost their energies to invest in their work role performance.

Although Kahn provides a comprehensive theoretical model, he did not operationalize the construct¹⁰. Nevertheless, the psychological conditions of presence, i.e., meaningfulness, safety, and availability, coincide with the concepts of Self-Determination Theory (SDT), viz. competence, autonomy, and relatedness, as indicated. In addition, Kahn’s (1990) concept of engagement involves energy driving physical, cognitive, and emotional labors. The concept of energy is compatible with work engagement, specifically the dimensions of vigor and dedication^{7,9, 11}.

Work Engagement

Engagement is a contentious concept^10,12. Many different definitions and measures exist¹⁰. Some authors use engagement inconsistently, exacerbating controversy. Even so, research has shown that the most often used definition and valid measure of engagement, at the individual level, is work engagement¹⁰ operationalized in UWES⁷.

Work engagement is an indicator of personal well-being benefitting individuals, teams, and organizations¹⁰ rather than a measure of well-being itself. Engagement is relatively stable over time⁸ provided all other factors remain constant¹⁰.

Schaufeli et al. (2002:74-5) define work engagement as a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption. Vigor is characterized by high levels of energy and mental resilience while working, the willingness to invest effort in one’s work, and persistence even in the face of difficulties (i.e., competence, autonomy^21,23). Dedication is characterized by a sense of significance, enthusiasm, inspiration, pride, and challenge (i.e., relatedness, competence^21,23). Absorption is characterized by being fully concentrated and deeply engrossed in one’s work, whereby time passes quickly, and one has difficulties detaching oneself from work. This definition implies that engagement occurs in a work context which impacts employees’ functioning. Leaders are responsible for a work environment conducive to human functioning^11,13,14,15.

Scholars expanded on the idea of context impacting engagement in subsequent studies^13,22. Schaufeli and Bakker (2004) show that job resources link via engagement with organizational outcomes. Job resources are the physical, psychological, social, and organizational aspects of a job that (a) either reduce job demands and their associated psychological cost, or (b) are functional in achieving work goals, and (c) stimulate personal growth, learning, and development¹⁶. On the other hand, job demands are the physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of a job that require sustained physical and/or psychological effort associated with physiological and/or psychological costs¹⁶.  Schaufeli and Bakker (2004) indicate that job resources can satisfy basic human needs, i.e., competence¹⁷, autonomy¹⁸, and relatedness¹⁹. They⁸ concur with scholars that work contexts that support the satisfaction of basic human needs enhance well-being or vitality^3,11, positively relate to vigor⁹, and increase levels of engagement¹¹.

Very few workers across the globe are engaged²⁰. As mentioned, context impacts engagement. Thus, low levels of engagement are by no means the fault of employees^{11,13,14,15,21}. The low levels of employee engagement merely indicate that employees are not functioning optimally or flourishing due to contextual factors.

Measures such as UWES do not explain low levels of engagement or flourishing. Nevertheless, such measures are useful as employees can relate to work engagement because it is more proximal than distal factors such as organizational performance¹⁵. Therefore, additional measurement is required to illuminate the causes of low engagement levels to be addressed via appropriate interventions. Consequently, leaders can attend to and eliminate contextual factors hampering work engagement. In doing so, leaders create an environment conducive to optimal human functioning or flourishing.

Human flourishing is fundamental in establishing a competitive advantage, the cornerstone of a sound strategy. Strategy is central in securing organizational performance expressed as long-term survival and growth^2,22 benefiting societies at large²⁴.

Parting Thoughts

This blog briefly overviews how engagement leads to experiencing well-being by following the signposts to the good life. Experiencing well-being means satisfying the needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness, the core of Self-Determination Theory. These needs can be satisfied through psychological presence or work engagement. Nevertheless, experiencing well-being requires energy to sustain mental, physical, and emotional effort. As alluded to in this blog, there are many roads to well-being. Some of these roads are more useful than others. However, the choice of the road to follow to the good life is a personal one. Embark on the journey today.

References

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