Employeeship – the missing link between leadership and good results

Over time thousands of books has been written about leadership and management but very little about employeeship and how to act as a good and successful employee. Leadership is how to get people in an organization to do what they should do to reach goals in a highly motivated and committed way. But leadership has hard to work if there doesn’t exist a relevant employeeship in the organization. Lack of good employeeship can make leadership hard or even impossible. A common and well-defined employeeship is an important
quarnerstone for a good culture in the organization among the good leadership.
Most quality management and business excellence models address employee commitment, participation and competence heavily, but very little in this area are part of the quality methodology and toolbox. The understanding of the importance of building a quality culture is good but very little is written about how to do this and how to build a good employeeship. The key to success is creation of a strong and well-defined employeeship in the organization based on clear values, awareness and competence. There is also a need for tools related to
development of people and their behaviors.
Employeeship is in many ways a reflection of leadership. Employees are in a way responsible for leading themselves, their relations and their own work. The foundation for good employeeship is responsibility for the own work and the result of this. Work should be done in a professional way with strong commitment. Loyalty and trust to the organization are another vital part of employeeship. Creative and curious questioning without  judgement, rethinking and focus on improvements are central. Successful employeeship is based on a holistic view with strong focus on understanding of both customers and business processes. Co-operation within their own organization and cross-functional is natural. Respect is shown for other employees and their competence. Responsibility is taken for personal skills, learning, development and health.
This paper will discuss the need and meaning of good employeeship. Different important dimensions of employeeship will be introduced, a model developed by the authors for employeeship will be described and success factors for building good employeeship in an organization will be presented. The paper is based on many
years of experiences working with leadership and employeeship from the authors, specific experiences from
Scania, SKF, Volvo and the Swedish Armed Forces and results from focus groups interviews with Swedish quality managers.

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Employeeship; Leadership