When engagement becomes a target, leadership gets tested

Engagement has moved from the margins to the boardroom. In many organisations, it now features on executive scorecards and bonus plans. On the surface, this feels like progress. It signals that people, culture and experience matter, and that leadership behaviour counts.

But as a recent article from Ghassan Karian explores, it also exposes a risk.

When engagement becomes a number to hit, rather than a signal to listen to, behaviour can warp.

Surveys turn into theatre. Attention shifts to optics, not causes. And the very data designed to help leaders understand the system starts telling them what they want to hear.

This is where alignment really matters.

Engagement is not an outcome in isolation. It is an indicator of how well strategy, culture, leadership behaviour and operating reality are aligned. When those elements pull in different directions, no incentive plan will fix it. At best, you get surface-level improvements. At worst, you create fear, silence and gaming.

The leaders who navigate this well tend to do something subtly different.

They do not ask, “How do we get the score up?”They ask, “What in our system is making it hard for people to do their best work?”

That shift in thinking is not cosmetic. It is the difference between managing a metric and leading an organisation. These leaders are comfortable being accountable for the system, not just the result.

From an HR perspective, this reframes the question.

The issue is not whether engagement should influence reward. It is whether senior leaders have the maturity, mindset and capability to respond to that signal without distorting it.

If engagement only becomes important when money is attached, that tells you something exceptionally valuable about your leaders’ mindset.

So the real question for CEOs, CPOs, and HRDs may be this:

Are your leaders genuinely Exec Ready to hold enterprise-level accountability for both strategy and culture, or are they still managing indicators in functional silos?

If this resonates, it may be a valuable conversation to have with your Executive team.

And if you would like to explore what Exec Ready leadership looks like in practice, I would be very happy to talk.

Feel free to share this with your Exec colleagues.