Principle-First Leadership Emerges as a Scalable Model for Employee Engagement
Key Points
Employee engagement breaks down when organizations rely on programs and perks while overlooking the daily decisions made by direct managers, where employee experience is actually formed.
Robert Buckley, Chief People Officer at Enveda Biosciences, explains a principle-first leadership model that prioritizes manager judgment over rigid policy.
Engagement improves when companies train managers to make decisions guided by clear principles, supported through ongoing coaching and frequent leadership development.
The best thing you can do is have people leaders who are principle based, not policy based. You give them the principles, and then you trust them to make the decision.
Robert Buckley
Chief People Officer
Enveda Biosciences
Employee engagement is often discussed in broad terms, but it’s felt in very specific moments. The day-to-day experience of work is shaped less by formal structures and more by a far more immediate force: the quality of an employee’s direct manager. Engagement at scale comes from improving everyday decisions, because employees experience their companies through their leaders.
Robert Buckley, the Chief People Officer at Enveda Biosciences, puts this premise into practice every day. With a resume that includes leadership roles at giants like General Electric, eBay, and the unicorn startup Thumbtack, Buckley operates as an “HR architect,” helping organizations scale by focusing on people. Buckley’s philosophy is built on what he calls his “epistemological construct,” a model that begins with the core belief that people create all value. “The best thing you can do is have people leaders who are principle-based, not policy-based. You give them the principles, and then you trust them to make the decision,” he says.
Powered by people: Even with growing AI buy-in, Buckley maintains that people remain the ultimate source of innovation, and the work environment should be designed accordingly. “You need a work environment where people can create value,” Buckley says, “and by far the number one thing that determines that is the quality of your people leader.” From there, he believes everything else falls into place. “If you love your people leader, life’s going to be good,” he says. “At least 70 percent of how somebody sees the company is how they see their manager.”
Perks vs. leadership: Buckley’s focus on leadership highlights the limitations of trying to fix engagement with superficial perks. Companies add them with the hopes of improving morale, but they’re often a band-aid solution for deeper issues. “If you’re trying to improve employee engagement by having the best espresso in the valley, it’s probably not going to work,” he says. “I may love the espresso, but if my boss is a nightmare, it’s not going to make a difference.”
Buckley’s model is designed to help leaders handle sensitive, unexpected situations with confidence. When a manager recently encountered an urgent situation not covered by policy, Buckley used it as a coaching opportunity. He describes the practice as acting as an “interlocutor,” guided by his simple rule: “I never answer questions. Ever.”
Ask, don’t answer: Instead of answering, Buckley prompts the leader to find their own solution, a practice that helps foster autonomy and judgment. “I turn the question back to my manager: ‘What do you think we ought to do? Let’s be generous.’ I gave them a principle to work with, not an answer,” he says. “The best thing I can do is not answer their question, because then they’re always dependent on me. And what I want to train in them is that I believe in them and then they solve their own problems.”
To put his philosophy into practice, Buckley advises organizations to build a system founded on a clear distinction between values and principles. His approach helps measure and improve employee satisfaction by shifting focus away from high-level metrics and toward the quality of leadership itself. “Values are how we behave towards one another,” he says. “Our leadership principles are how we make decisions. There’s real clarity in knowing that values are for behavior and principles are for decisions.”
Train or transfer: Buckley’s architecture is instilled through a “microlearning” program of short, frequent, and interactive training sessions designed to instill the right habits. “If you don’t have one hour every other week to get better at the most critical thing you can do, you should probably be in a different job,” Buckley says. “The reason many leaders don’t like the role is because humans are messy. If you don’t like that, it’s okay. We have a great job for you, but we need to put people in these leadership jobs who love it and want to get better at it.”
Buckley has a long waiting list of leaders eager to join his training cohorts. By focusing on the human element, his approach proves a simple point that is gaining traction: a better workplace, in line with future employee experience trends, is built one great manager at a time. “If I can develop people leaders based on principle based decision making, they’re going to make great decisions,” he concludes.
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TL;DR
Employee engagement breaks down when organizations rely on programs and perks while overlooking the daily decisions made by direct managers, where employee experience is actually formed.
Robert Buckley, Chief People Officer at Enveda Biosciences, explains a principle-first leadership model that prioritizes manager judgment over rigid policy.
Engagement improves when companies train managers to make decisions guided by clear principles, supported through ongoing coaching and frequent leadership development.
Robert Buckley
Enveda Biosciences
Chief People Officer
Chief People Officer
Employee engagement is often discussed in broad terms, but it’s felt in very specific moments. The day-to-day experience of work is shaped less by formal structures and more by a far more immediate force: the quality of an employee’s direct manager. Engagement at scale comes from improving everyday decisions, because employees experience their companies through their leaders.
Robert Buckley, the Chief People Officer at Enveda Biosciences, puts this premise into practice every day. With a resume that includes leadership roles at giants like General Electric, eBay, and the unicorn startup Thumbtack, Buckley operates as an “HR architect,” helping organizations scale by focusing on people. Buckley’s philosophy is built on what he calls his “epistemological construct,” a model that begins with the core belief that people create all value. “The best thing you can do is have people leaders who are principle-based, not policy-based. You give them the principles, and then you trust them to make the decision,” he says.
Powered by people: Even with growing AI buy-in, Buckley maintains that people remain the ultimate source of innovation, and the work environment should be designed accordingly. “You need a work environment where people can create value,” Buckley says, “and by far the number one thing that determines that is the quality of your people leader.” From there, he believes everything else falls into place. “If you love your people leader, life’s going to be good,” he says. “At least 70 percent of how somebody sees the company is how they see their manager.”
Perks vs. leadership: Buckley’s focus on leadership highlights the limitations of trying to fix engagement with superficial perks. Companies add them with the hopes of improving morale, but they’re often a band-aid solution for deeper issues. “If you’re trying to improve employee engagement by having the best espresso in the valley, it’s probably not going to work,” he says. “I may love the espresso, but if my boss is a nightmare, it’s not going to make a difference.”
Buckley’s model is designed to help leaders handle sensitive, unexpected situations with confidence. When a manager recently encountered an urgent situation not covered by policy, Buckley used it as a coaching opportunity. He describes the practice as acting as an “interlocutor,” guided by his simple rule: “I never answer questions. Ever.”
Ask, don’t answer: Instead of answering, Buckley prompts the leader to find their own solution, a practice that helps foster autonomy and judgment. “I turn the question back to my manager: ‘What do you think we ought to do? Let’s be generous.’ I gave them a principle to work with, not an answer,” he says. “The best thing I can do is not answer their question, because then they’re always dependent on me. And what I want to train in them is that I believe in them and then they solve their own problems.”
To put his philosophy into practice, Buckley advises organizations to build a system founded on a clear distinction between values and principles. His approach helps measure and improve employee satisfaction by shifting focus away from high-level metrics and toward the quality of leadership itself. “Values are how we behave towards one another,” he says. “Our leadership principles are how we make decisions. There’s real clarity in knowing that values are for behavior and principles are for decisions.”
Train or transfer: Buckley’s architecture is instilled through a “microlearning” program of short, frequent, and interactive training sessions designed to instill the right habits. “If you don’t have one hour every other week to get better at the most critical thing you can do, you should probably be in a different job,” Buckley says. “The reason many leaders don’t like the role is because humans are messy. If you don’t like that, it’s okay. We have a great job for you, but we need to put people in these leadership jobs who love it and want to get better at it.”
Buckley has a long waiting list of leaders eager to join his training cohorts. By focusing on the human element, his approach proves a simple point that is gaining traction: a better workplace, in line with future employee experience trends, is built one great manager at a time. “If I can develop people leaders based on principle based decision making, they’re going to make great decisions,” he concludes.