Here is an excerpt from a highly unorthodox, certainly thought-provoking article written by Mike Prokopeak for Talent Management magazine. To check out all the resources and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and/or Chief Learning Officermagazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.

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Encourage leaders to think more about themselves — it may be the most selfless thing they can do.

If you were to list talent management priorities today, employee engagement and workforce collaboration would likely top many organizations’ lists.

Faced with increased competition, volatile business conditions and an extended period of tightened budgets, organizations are examining how best to boost productivity and make the most of their internal talent. An engaged workforce able to work together effectively is a clear answer.

How to create that engagement and promote collaboration is not so clear. As it turns out, an element of selfishness may be what’s needed.

Employee engagement is complicated. While many companies focus on the physical and intellectual aspects of engagement, it is workers’ emotional commitment to their work that is most important. And leaders play a critical role in driving that engagement — but not necessarily in the way many think.

Leadership is a purpose, not a practice, Stan Slap told an audience of HR practitioners in July at the Human Capital Institute’s Employee Engagement Conference in Chicago. That means leaders need to move from managing results to creating meaning and living their own deepest values.

“As a manager your most important responsibility is to the company. In leadership it’s responsibility to yourself,” said Slap, author of Bury My Heart at Conference Room B. “You will never really work for your company until your company works for you.”

Leadership at its heart is a selfish activity even though leaders often appear to do selfless things, Slap said. Leaders want to work where their values can be fully realized, and are most effective when they turn those values into a cause that engages and motivates others to follow them. Leadership skills are far less important than the emotional commitment that comes from following an inspired leader.

Failure to encourage leaders to follow their values compromises their integrity and decreases their own emotional commitment as well as that of their people. The result is decreased shareholder value.

“To not live your deepest personal values is a crime. What’s worse, it’s an unnecessary crime,” Slap said.

Encouraging leaders to be selfish can deliver engagement dividends. If managed right, it can also boost collaboration. Many corporate collaboration initiatives focus on the tools and technology to help people work together. When they do talk about techniques, they often leave out a key element in the rush to get people working together: individual motivation.

Rather than focusing on trying to be unselfish, encourage others to focus on their own goals and priorities and then find the partners to carry them out.

“We begin any partnership, all of us no matter how saintly or unselfish we are, with the idea that I can better accomplish what I’m trying to do working with this person than working alone,” said Rodd Wagner, a principal at Gallup and author of Power of 2: How to Make the Most of Your Partnerships at Work and in Life.

“Along the way as you get to know this individual, you start to let go of that selfishness a little. Of course, you still want to accomplish your own personal goal, but … you start to care about them being successful [and] realize the two of you share a common goal and they bring things into the mix that you don’t have and vice versa.”

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Mike Prokopeak is editorial director for Talent Management magazine.