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6 Powerful Moments of Employee Engagement

December 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

5. Master Moments – The healthy and productive path to great micromanagement

(Part 6 of a 10 part series on how managers can improve employee engagement)

Making moments.  Engagement resides in the moment. Learn to master moments from high quality connections to powerful touch points. When we balance challenge and skills we enter the flow zone as we dwell and work within the moment. In addition, focusing our work within the moment alleviates work stress.

6 ways to engage the moment:

  1. Access even 1% of the 20,000 opportunities for engagement.
  2. Be a micro-manager, really!
  3. Reach out and TouchPoint somebody.
  4. Transform IQ into HQI to power up the organization.
  5. Dwell in the moment to banish stress.
  6. Intersect challenge and skill to find flow.

Access even 1% of the 20,000 opportunities for engagement. According to Nobel Prize-winning scientist Daniel Kahneman, we experience approximately 20,000 individual moments in a waking day. Each “moment” lasts a few seconds and each offers an opportunity to engage.  Within a moment we can fuse with our task at hand for full engagement or reach out beyond ourselves to appreciate and recognize others. Even at just 1%  fulfillment we would experience 200 powerful and engaged moments everyday.

Be a micro-manager, really! Generally, being a micromanager is not perceived to be an admirable quality in a manager or a helpful connection to the manager or work for the employee. But what if we manage our moments and focus on our moments of interaction. Small things make a big difference.  Engagement, to be effective, must be reduced to the verb of engage and when we fully engage the moment seemingly miraculous things begin to occur. Instead of the energy sapping interaction of micromanagement based on command and control of trivial details become a manager of the micro moments of work by enhancing connection, input,  interaction, authenticity, and co-creation.

Reach out and TouchPoint somebody. This approach to managing engagement is the Campbell Chicken Soup for the Organization as it originates from the former CEO of Campbell soup, Doug Conant. Doug used TouchPoints to transform Gallup’s dismal engagement scores at Campbell Soup  into some of the best scores Gallup has seen. Doug believes the moment of interruption is the real work of management. Each of the many connections you make has the potential to become a high point or a low point in someone’s day. The point of getting in touch is that each touch point has the opportunity to “establish high performance expectation, to infuse the agenda with great clarity and more energy, and to influence the course of events…TouchPoints take place any time two or more people get together to deal with an issue and get something done” (page 2).   Our interruption interactions are not distractions but rather the real work of management. In the moment of engagement action resides in the  interaction.

Transform IQ into HQI to power up the organization. Jane Dutton believes that there is tremendous power in our connections and interactions and we must guard against corrosive connections that  corrode motivation, loyalty, commitment and engagement. Rather, we must enhance high-quality connections or interactions marked by mutual positive regard, trust, and active engagement on both sides. A cornerstone of high quality connections is respectful engagement characterized by being present to others, affirming them, and communicating and listening in a way that manifests regard and an appreciation of the other person’s worth. Even small acts of respectful engagement infuse a relationship with greater energy. An ongoing stream of high quality interaction by people within an organization may be the single most powerful way to renew and contribute to an organization’s energy to achieve results through strong relationships. It takes some energy to initiate a high quality interaction but usually we find a return of energy through the interaction.

Dwell in the moment to banish stress. If you make where you are going more important than where you are there may be no point in going. Stephan Rechtschaffen stated in Time Shifting:  ”there is no stress in the present moment.” Rechtschaffen advocates time awareness — living fully in the moment.  The practice of timeshifting recognizes that every moment has a particular rhythm to it, and that we have the capacity to expand or contract an individual moment. One way to shift what’s going on in our world is not to try to rush to do more, but to allow ourselves to go deeper into that moment. Our ability to shift gears, to shift our rhythm to meet that moment and be present in it. We waste great chunks of time by thinking about what we’ve just done and what we’ve got to do next, instead of what we’re doing now. Much of our stress comes from regret and dread. Rechtschaffen offers a number of practical tips to improve our moments at work:

  1. Get to meetings early so you can compose yourself before the others arrive.
  2. When the phone rings, let it ring one extra time to “get centered.”
  3. Practice “mindfulness” by doing just one thing at a time, giving it your full attention.
  4. Pause after you finish one task before beginning another. If possible, make it last for several minutes.
  5. While waiting for a fax or an elevator, think about the present instead of succumbing to the rush and anxiety of tasks still waiting.

Intersect challenge and skill to find flow. Work in the moment by working on tasks that balance challenge and skills level. Csíkszentmihályi’s book Flow is over 21 years old yet offers timeless perspective and advice on how we approach a state of great time shifting or  über engagement. He has found that we experience more flow in work than our leisure time and suggests we frequently overlook the richness of the experience engagement at work offers us. Many of the current game developers have studied flow very closely to ensure their games are designed to help players experience flow. We need to do the same in our workplaces. Some of the key characteristics that promote flow at work are:

  1. Clear goals - expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one’s skill set and abilities.
  2. Concentration - a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention.
  3. Lack of self-consciousness - the merging of action and awareness.
  4. Timelessness - one’s subjective experience of time is altered.
  5. Powerful feedback  - successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed.
  6. Balance of ability and challenge - the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult.
  7. Sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
  8. Intrinsic rewards, so there is an effortlessness of action.
  9. Full aborption into the activity, narrowing of the focus of awareness down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.

Read these  5 sources to enhance your engagement and put you in the moment:

    • Douglas Conant and Mette Norgaard, TouchPoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments.
    • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
    • Edward  Hallowell: Crazybusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD
    • Tom Rath and Donald Clifton, How Full is Your Bucket?
    • Stephan Rechtschaffen, Time Shifting: A Guide to Creating More Time to Enjoy Your Life.

Next post in this series: Why employee engagement needs to be strong stuff.

View Moments. I strongly encourage you to watch the wonderful 4 minute brilliant video on moments at the end of this article.

David Zinger built the 10 block pyramid of employee engagement to help managers bring the full power of employee engagement to their workplaces. If you would like to arrange to have this course or workshop for your organization or conference contact David today at 204 254 2130 or zingerdj@gmail.com.

Bonus Video: Moments

Filed Under: Employee Engagement, Pyramid of Employee Engagement Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Don’t Blink: How to Foster Recognition for Employee Engagement

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

4. Foster Recognition -  Are you looking, seeing, and saying? 

(Part 5 of a 10 part series on how managers can improve employee engagement)

Expanding recognition. If we split the word recognition it can be viewed as to think again (re-cognition). We need to rethink what recognition means in workplaces beyond long service pins, toasters, donuts on Friday, and minimal encouragers such as, “good job.”

  • Recognition can be strategic to assist in achieving results and advancing the enterprise.
  • Recognition can be personal such as noticing when someone is struggling with a task yet reluctant to ask for help.
  • Recognition can be social and make use of  internal or external social media tools similar to LinkedIN, FaceBook, and Twitter.

Everyday time. Brun and Cooper in Missing Pieces stated: “the leading challenge to modern organizations is to increase the time that managers spend with their employees.” they also go on to state, “people work each day. Therefore, you should as much as possible recognize their achievements on a daily basis.”

The business of recognition. Recent studies by Gallup, the Corporate Leadership Council, Towers Perrin and others illustrate that recognition is highly correlated with improved employee engagement. Recent AON Hewitt research on the status of employee engagement globally tells us: worldwide, employee engagement is at 56%, which indicates a workforce indifferent to organizational success or failure. The largest engagement drop is in how employees perceive performance management. Employee are asking for recognition for their efforts, better communication about company direction, and an improved link to how individual employees can contribute to the organization.

Intent and impact. We must look at both the intent and impact of  recognition. Toasters and gift cards can be okay when the intent is to express caring made tangible, not as an obligatory duty of a manager. We must also look at impact. Is recognition well-received, does it make a difference, or is it seen as some kind of managerial tokenism? Our recognition needs to be fair and it needs to be real. As my friend Roy Saunderson, from the Recognition Management Institute, declares, “we need REAL RECOGNITION.”

Recognize this.  Without recognition our workplaces are void of the human element. Are you fully letting  employees know that you see them, you are thinking about them and you both recognize and appreciate them? Authentic recognition is so much more than an annual gala or occasional gift card for good behavior. Recognition is social, strategic, and powerful. Recognition is the “re-thinking” of engagement in our everyday interactions and recognition for progress creates a strong multiplier for the  motivation and engagement of knowledge workers.  Gary Chapman and Paul White have written extensively about the 5 languages of appreciation at work: words of affirmation, acts of service, tangible gifts, physical touch and quality time.

The invisible employee. I believe employees are over-surveyed and under-engaged.  Added to this is the lack of recognition in surveys due to the extensive use of anonymous surveys. At one level, anonymous surveys are telling employees we don’t want to know who you are. If it is not okay to write your name on a survey given by the people who employ you I believe we have less of an engagement problem and more of a safety and genuine recognition problem.

Recognition makes good sense. The symbol used in the employee engagement pyramid for  recognition resembles the Eye of Horus an Egyptian symbol associated with power, good health, and action. We must engage with recognition while we fully recognize engagement. Recognition can power an organization and contribute to employee well-being. We must fully open our eyes and senses to both recognize and appreciate the people we work with.

Recognition in the core and at the heart of the pyramid of engagement. Recognition is the inside center of the Pyramid of Employee Engagement for Managers. It is central to engagement at work. We must help employees recognize

  • what they need to engage with to achieve key results,
  • their level of  performance from excellence and mastery to deficiency and gaps,
  • the power of progress as a motivator and the importance of minimizing setbacks,
  • that organizations are based on relationships and community,
  • the power of moments at work and the ability to flow into the moment of work,
  • personal and working strengths as elements of engagement and contributors to well being,
  • authentic meaning at work giving  us greater purpose, connection, and engagement,
  • the vital role engagement can play in enhancing well being and how key it is to engage purposefully in well being for ourselves and others,
  • that work both consumes and contributes to mental, physical, emotional, spiritual and organizational energy.

Read these 3 sources to foster greater recogntion at work:

    • Roy Saunderson, Giving the Real Recognition Way.
    • Jean-Pierre Bran and Cary Cooper, Missing Pieces: 7 Ways to Improve Employee Well-Being and organizational Effectiveness.
    • Gary Chapman and Paul White, The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace.

In a moment. The next post in the employee engagement pyramid series will be: Mastering Moments.

Pyramid Power. Contact David Zinger today to put the 10 building blocks of full engagement to work in your organization. Ensure your managers are living the 10 actions they must take to create powerful engagement within the organization. David Zinger at 204 254 2130 or zingerdj@gmail.com.


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Take 30 Minutes to Tackle 21 Myths in Employee Engagement

December 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Don’t myth out on Employee Engagement

30 minutes on employee engagement. When is the last time you spent 30 minutes thinking about employee engagement? What myths surround employee engagement and how do they influence your outlook and actions? David Zinger’s research highlights a series of myths that are associated with employee engagement. These are myths we work by that may not be working for us.

Transforming our myths. Joseph Campbell believed that if myths are to continue to fulfill their vital functions in our modern world, they must continually transform and evolve as older mythologies, untransformed, simply do not address the realities of contemporary life, particularly with regard to the changing cosmological and sociological realities of each new era. The question therefore needs to be asked: Are we operating from an old employee engagement mythology?

21 myths we work with. The 21 myths range from Employee engagement is a noun not a verb to Executive, leaders, and managers are not seen as employees.

Free E-book. This short study guide was written by David Zinger  and produced by Berghind Joseph. It is a practical and cogent employee engagement  resource. To download the PDF E-Book click on the cover above or click on this link: Zinger and Berghind Joseph Myths of Employee Engagement

Contact David Zinger today. Don’t myth out on employee engagement, contact David Zinger to get assistance with your employee engagement endeavors (dzinger@shaw.ca or 204 254-2130).

December Assorted Zingers New E-book Special $3.99.

Click on the image below or click here to learn more and place an order:

Filed Under: Achieve Results, Employee Engagement Tagged With: , , , , ,

4 Ways Managers Can Build Relationship BACKbone into Employee Engagement

December 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

3. Build Relationship –  The Manager’s Employee Engagement Relationship BACKbone: Bids, Authenticity, Caring, and Knowledge 

(Part 4 of a 10 part series on how managers can improve employee engagement)

Foundation of relationships. Obviously relationships and relationship building are a foundation of employee engagement. Linda Hill in a Harvard Business Review article on Building Effective One-on-One Relationships cited research by John Kotter that found “that one of the factors that distinguished  those general managers with consistently outstanding performance records from their counterparts was their ability to develop and maintin a strong network of relationships.” Work is a relationship and engagement experience. One third of Gallup’s quintessential Q12 survey asks directly about relationships to uncover engagement at work while most of the other items are also influenced indirectly by relationship. Four of the twelve statements employees are asked to respond to are:

  1. I have a best friend at work.
  2. In the last seven days I have received recognition.
  3. My supervisor or some one at work cares about me as a person.
  4. There is someone at work who encourages my development. In the last six months someone has talked to me about my progress.

Relationship defined. A relationship is s a connection between two individuals. Interpersonal relationships usually involve some level of interdependence. People in a relationship  influence each other. Because of this interdependence, most things that change or impact one member of the relationship will have some level of impact on the other member. Exercising a strong BACKbone as a manager will have an impact on other employees. This BACKbone is comprised of: bids, authenticity, caring, and knowledge.

People are people, don’t depersonalize with terms such as assets or human capital.  From a distance we can view employees as assets and human capital but engagement and relationship requires closeness. Employees are human and we inadvertently dehumanize employees when we refer to employees as assets or capital. Remember, as a manager you are an employee too. One classic definition of management is getting work done through people but in an engaged workplace work is done with people. We don’t have relationships with assets or capital we have relationships with other humans. An employees locus of engagement is frequently a task while a manager’s locus of engagement is the working relationship with the employee.

Don’t go soft. Too often the human element of engagement is dismissed as a fluffy soft skill afterthought.  Soft skills sound mushy and unimportant while hard skills sound like the foundation of management. I want to add some fortitiude, gumption, and moxie to relationship building in employee engagement by adding BACKbone to a manager’s work. The backbone is our central source of support and stability, it refers to fortitude and determination, and it is part of a network that connects the other networks together.

Dissecting the relationship BACKbone. BACKbone is an acronym for bids, authenticity, caring, and knowledge. John Gottman offered an excellent micro skills focus to building relationships by examining relationships through the lens of bids and the other person turning towards or turning away from that bid for connection. Authenticity is central to trust and true relationships as our brains are social and detect in-authenticity in fractions of seconds. Relationships are built on meaningful and personal connection not manipulation tactics. Caring is a fundamental engagement key and a core to both relationships and management. Knowledge creates our foundation for relationship as we learn more about each other and ensure we acknowledge the people we work with.

B is for Bids. John Gottman in The Relationship Cure outlined a very powerful practice to build better relationships in all elements of our life including work. He examined the smallest of exchanges between people that communicated a request for connection followed by one of three responses. A bid is the fundamental unit of emotional communication. It can be a question, a gesture, a look or any expression that says, “I want to be connected to you.” A bid is followed by a positive or negative response to the other person’s bid or request for emotional connection. The response can be turning towards (a positive response to a bid); turning against (a negative response); and turning away (ignoring another’s bid). In a future post we will examine how working with bids and responses can help us master moments and transform micromanagement from a creepy control mechanism to a fluid and authentic relationship builder that infuses and energizes our work and the work of the people we manage.

A is for Authenticity. Being authentic is key to trust, respect, and genuine relationships. Authentic managers demonstrate integrity, with a profound sense of purpose and willingness to live by their core values.  Bill George, author of True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership believes that authentic managers genuinely desire to serve others through their management.  They are interested in empowering the people they manage to make a difference; more than they are interested in power, money or prestige for themselves.  They are guided equally by the heart and the mind – practicing heart-based guidance grounded in passion and compassion,  as well as thoughtful management.  People follow authentic managers because they are consistent, reliable and strong.  When they are pushed to go beyond their beliefs and values, authentic managers will not compromise.  If we want to foster full engagement we must be real or “get real.”

C is for Caring. Without caring for others and what they are trying to achieve and experience our management and relationship building is shallow and insignificant. Caring is valuing the people who report to you and focusing more on their needs than your own. Caring is not a fluffy emotion but a number of powerful behaviors demonstrated by managers. Caring can include “care-frontation” where we hold others accountable for their performance and don’t shy away from having conversations about bad behavior or variances in performance expectations. An excellent source to read on  how caring is infused in conversation to create safety while building relationships and achieving results is Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler.  Michael Kroth and Carolyn Keeler in a thoughtful article entitled, Caring as a Managerial Strategy in the Human Resource Development Review outlined a number of actions by managers that demonstrate caring:

  • Invites employees
  • Is receptive and fully available to the employee
  • Is emotionally accessible
  • Pays attention
  • Shows interest in the employee
  • Accepts the employee
  • Remains open to ideas, possibilities (is open minded)
  • Empathizes
  • Advances employees
  • Has a desire to help the employee succeed
  • Puts employee plans and goals ahead of his or her own
  • Advocates for the employee
  • Commits to employee success
  • Protects employees
  • Seeks opportunities for advancing employees
  • Builds employees capacities
  • Sees individual potential and helps employees grow and learn
  • Informs employees
  • Facilitates problem solving
  • Gives generative feedback
  • Encourages employees
  • Believes in employees
  • Teaches and mentors employees
  • Connects with employees
  • Shares feelings
  • Develops relationships of mutual trust and obligation

K is for Knowledge. Interpersonal knowledge is a key to relationships. We begin to learn more about other people and can respond in ways that create and invite more engagement based on the other person’s needs, values, beliefs, experiences, culture, personality, etc. It helps to have knowledge of how to build relationships but even more important is the knowledge we gather as we fully connect with each other. It can be very engaging to notice something is amiss for one of our employees without them saying a thing. Strong relationships are based on knowing the other person. Do we take time to “know” and do we retain that knowledge of employees’ interests, motivators, and uniqueness to further develop both the relationship and engagement at work? Interpersonal knowledge is greatly heightened by acknowledgement, as we show or express recognition or appreciation and gratitude. Notice the word now is contained in the larger work knowledge — gather and act on your knowledge now and in the moment of relationship.

Get BACK to work. When we tell people to get back to work we are usually suggesting that they get on task. We need to achieve results and we need to understand that work is also social. You can enhance engagement for your employees and yourself by putting your BACKbone into it. Make bids and respond positively to employees bids. Be fully who you are. Demonstrate the power of caring. Build your knowledge base of employees to acknowledge each employee as the unique person they already are.

Read these  5 sources to strengthen your employee engagement relationship BACKbone:

    • Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter, 12: The Elements of Great Managing
    • John M. Gottman, The Relationship Cure.
    •  Michael Kroth and Carolyn Keeler Caring as a Managerial Strategy in Human Resource Development Review.
    • Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler, Crucial Conversations.
    • Bill George and Peter Sims, True North.

Building the pyramid of employee engagement. Review these 4 previous posts as we build the 10 block pyramid of employee engagement actions for managers:

Next post in this series: Recognition.

David Zinger built the 10 block pyramid of employee engagement to help managers bring the full power of employee engagement to their workplaces. If you would like to arrange to have this course or workshop for your organization or conference contact David today at 204 254 2130 or zingerdj@gmail.com.

December Assorted Zingers E-book Special $3.99.

Click on the image below or click here to learn more and place an order:


Filed Under: Build Relationships, Employee Engagement, Pyramid of Employee Engagement Tagged With: , , , ,

Revisiting 13 Guidelines for Employee Engagement Programs

December 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A very popular post on employee engagement programs

This post on employee engagement program guidelines was published exactly 2 years ago on December 1. It is one of my most popular posts and gets read about 5 to 10 times every day since it was published. One big change at the end is that the Employee Engagement Network has grown in 2 years from 1750 to 4415 members.

Get a good start

Ms Julie Carter, a student at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, TX, asked an excellent question:

One question I have is about how a company would go about implementing an employee engagement program.  Are there any specific guidelines or initiatives?

In a previous post, 11 Pathways to Disengagement, I offered a satirical answer and in this post I will offer a genuine and personal response.

Strong guidelines not rules. Here are some of the things I believe will contribute to a good start to implementing an employee engagement program. I want these to be strong statements that are not rules to be followed but guidelines voiced and offered that encourage you to consider them carefully and either adopt them, modify them, or reject them as you develop your own approach. There is no cookie cutter approach to employee engagement and we certainly can’t leave employee engagement in the hands of others.

13 key considerations in starting an employee engagement program:

Engage employees early and often. Ensure employees have a voice in the program. Ask employees what question could be asked for a survey, have them participate in looking at the results, and give them an opportunity to generate strategies and interventions. We won’t get everyone on the same page unless we give everyone a hand in authoring that page.

Read good research. Read the free and informative research on employee engagement. There is lots of good free material out there. One source I highly recommend everyone read is the MacLeod report from the UK.  Click here to read 21 highlights from this report and you will also find a  link at the end of the article to the full PDF report.

Under-measure and over-deliver. Data can be very helpful to determine success and get baseline engagement but keep it as simple as possible and strive for the fewest questions possible. I recommend more frequent surveys with less questions than lengthy surveys that can be disengaging because they are so long and it takes so long to get feedback to the employees.

Use this as your last question in any survey. Ensure you ask survey recipients what they can do right now to foster their own engagement and enhance the engagement of others. The survey you use should be engaging and ensure that engagement starts right after the survey is completed by asking: What can I do right now to improve engagement for myself or others?

Focus on employee engagement for all. We all must benefit. The employees should benefit from their engagement, the organization should see results, and customers should also experience the benefits of engaged employees. As you plan any program ensure you have declarative clarity on how everyone will benefit.

Say No to something else. Do not make employee engagement another item on an over bulging to do list. What can you say no to so that you ensure you can yes to employee engagement? Employee engagement is not about adding more on  – it is about being more connected to the work, others, and organization you are already a part of. These connections need to contribute to meaningful and significant results for both organizations and individuals.

Eliminate consultants, hire coaches. Don’t leave engagement in the hands of external consultants who will always know less about your organization than you do. We too readily put our important work in the hands of experts who may consume dollars that could be better spend on programs rather than advice. Use external sources as coaches to guide you not to take over what will be done and how it will be done.

Employee engagement is not a soft skill. I hate the term soft skills for people skills. It makes it seem mushy and fluffy rather than vital and pivotal. Soft also sounds easy while hard sounds solid and difficult. Rather than soft skills and hard skills I think we need to refer to these two types of skills as fluid skills and fixed skills. We need fixed skills and we need the fluid skills to ensure the fixed skills don’t seize up because people are not engaged.

Put a name and face to engagement. Minimize the amount of anonymous data you collect. How can we expect people to engage when they are anonymous. Put a face and name to engagement and make it safe to engage in authentic and real dialogue. If you think people won’t give you an honest answer about their level of engagement in your organization if they are identified than you have a much bigger problem than engagement. You have very troublesome trust, honesty, authenticity, and safety issues to address.

Spread engagement around. Make everyone responsible for their own engagement and accountable to everyone else in the organization. We don’t need people checking up on us, we need people checking in with us to talk about our fluctuating levels of engagement. Avoid putting engagement in the hands of just HR or Internal Communications. This is a line issue, this is everyone’s issue. Don’t forget, CEO’s and Presidents are employees too.

Community mobilization. Create a community rather than a simple organization. Community needs co-created conversations. I would like to see HR take on a bigger internal community mobilization role by fostering and convening conversations to create and mobilize the latent community potential embedded in every organization. Start by reading Peter Block’s, Community: The Structure of Belonging, and bring people into dialogue.

A pluralism of voices. Perhaps you have different keys or believe some of the keys were wrong or missed. I  encourage you to voice your perspective in the comments to the post. We need fewer answers and more dialogue.

Get connected. Join the Employee Engagement Network. We have over 1750 members interested in employee engagement. Join us to ask questions, find information, offer support, and stay current on the latest information in employee engagement. The glue of engagement is contribution and we welcome your contribution.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement

7 Significant Steps to Employee Engagement Progress

November 29, 2011 By Leave a Comment

3. Path Progress: Navigate through setbacks, path progress, enable work and achieve small wins. 

(Part 3 of a 10 part series on how managers can improve employee engagement)

Fully engaged. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer published The Progress Principle this year demonstrating the primary role progress and avoidance of setbacks plays in motivation and engagement.  Their research was based on 12,000 daily diaries. Their conclusion:

of all the positive events that influence inner work life, the single most powerful is progress in meaningful work; of all the negative events, the single most powerful is the opposite of progress – setbacks in the work.  We consider this to be a fundamental management principle: facilitating progress is the most effective way for managers to influence inner work life. Even when progress happens in small steps, a person’s sense of steady forward movement toward an important goal can make all the difference betweeen a great day and a terrible one. (p.76&77)

Snakes and ladders. If progress is the ladder on the classic board game of snakes and ladders than setbacks are the snakes. It is very important to realize that the effect of setbaks on emotions is stronger than the effect of progress. Small loses can eliminate small wins and negative managerial behavior trumps positive management. As we climb up the pyramid of engagement we must guard against setbacks perhaps even more than working towards making progress.

The 3-block pyramid of engagement. In my pyramid of engagement Path Progress  is in the second row to indicate how important this building block is for managers to increase employee engagement. It is naturally paired with maximize performance as these concepts are paired together to achieve results.

7 Significant Steps on the Path of Progress. Here are 7 steps to help you fully path progress for robust employee engagement:

Accentuate the positive. Continually work towards small wins and breakthroughs. Ensure employees are working towards meaningful goals paired with sufficient autonomy to achieve success. Managers can ensure resources, time and help are available on the path of progress. Managers can catalyze progress by ensuring proper resources and tools as they also nourish progress by fostering strong interpersonal connections focused on progress.

Eliminate the negative. Negative events have a disproportionate impact on engagement. Because negative events have a stronger impact than positive events it is important to prevent setbacks before they occur or minimize the damage setbacks can cause. As a manager, ask yourself these two questions then construct solid responses to squash setbacks:

What can I do to prevent setbacks before they occur with my work group?

 What can I do to overcome setbacks once they have occurred?

Hack your work and work around. Hacking work and workarounds are two powerful twins to achieve progress and minimize nasty setbacks. Bill Jensen and Josh Klein wrote Hacking Work to outline how we can hack our work to achieve progress.  Hacking work is getting what you need to do your best job by exploiting loopholes and using workarounds to make it easier to do great work. I encourage you to read a previous post I wrote as a review on  hacking work.  Another book that just came out based on the same idea is Russell Bishop’s Workaround that Work. It is not always up to the manager to ensure progress, employees can seize control of how they do work and create powerful benevolent hacks or workarounds to get the job done and heighten their own engagement.

Ready, willing and able. We must ensure that not only are employees ready and willing to be engaged they must also be able. Engagement without enabling is a fast track to frustration. Up to 20% of your engaged workforce  may be frustrated because they are unable to fully act on their engagement. Mark Royal and Tom Agnew wrote The Enemy of Engagement offering a framework to end workplace frustration. They found that about 30% of employees don’t get clear goals and feel they lack authority to do their jobs. About half of all employees are concerned with adequate staffing, don’t feel they have time  for training, that other teams in the company do not offer high-quality support, and that their organization is not effectively structured. They offer numerous suggestion to lessen frustration by enabling employees with such methods as: making training a priority, share people as well as resources, and beware of the “trap” of routines.

Be game. Study the principles and practices of games to transfer gaming principles to work. One of the reasons games are so engaging is that they are often designed so that we both achieve and see our  progress.Virtual games are programmed to ensure new player begin to experience progress almost immediately. How long does it take to have your newly hired employees experience progress? Are employees getting lots of feedback on their progress? Are setbacks framed as challenges that compel your employee to try again? If you want to instill significant progress at work you must “get into the game.”

Little feats. Many of us are overwhelmed by the copious volume of work and shy away from new tasks because we have little or no capacity or we fear falling further behind on the tasks already on our plate. In today’s workplace, small is the new significant. As one manager said to me in Tucson last month, “we have gone from doing more with less to doing everything with nothing.”  Determine small and significant actions that move towards achieving results. Ensure those small actions are significant tasks…they should be important not just urgent. If you doubt the power of the small think about this statement from Betty Reese, an American pilot, “if you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.”

Celebrate progress. Don’t forget to celebrate progress. You should have celebration markers along the way. The celebration can be a quiet yet mindful internal sense of satisfaction to a high five or more formal recognition. My model for this is Usain Bolt who slowed down in the last 20% of his 100 meter race at the Beijing Olymicps and still achieved an Olympic record time of 9.69. Physicists calculated that Bolt could have finished in 9.55±0.04 seconds had he not slowed to celebrate before crossing  the finishing line. Progress is not always about ultimate record breaking achievement — we have much to gain by celebrating achievement even if it costs us a tenth of a second!

Read these  5 books to build your awareness, knowledge, and skills on the path of  progress:

    • Bill Jensen and Josh Klein, Hacking Work: Breaking Stupid Rules for Smart Results
    • Russell Bishop, Workarounds that Work: How to conquer Anything That Stands in Your Way at Work
    • Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge From Small Discoveries
    • Mark Royal and Tom Agnew, The Enemy of Engagement: Put an End to Workplace Frustration and Get the Most from Your Employees.
    • Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignie Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work

Building the pyramid of employee engagement. Review these 3 previous posts as we build the 10 block pyramid of employee engagement actions for managers:

Next post in this series: Build Relationships: We get our work done with others not through others.

David Zinger built the 10 block pyramid of employee engagement to help managers bring the full power of employee engagement to their workplaces. If you would like to arrange to have this course or workshop for your organization or conference contact David today at 204 254 2130 or zingerdj@gmail.com.

Bonus: I encourage you to view the slides and listen to this informative 40 minute interview/webinar with Teresa Amabile on The Progress Principle.

The Progress Principle and Employee Engagement from David Zinger on Vimeo.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement, Pyramid of Employee Engagement Tagged With:

6 Ways Managers Can Maximize Performance through Employee Engagement

November 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

2. Maximize Performance (Part 2 of a 10 part series on how managers can improve employee engagement)

According to Aon Hewitt’s most recent report Trends in Global Employee Engagement, the largest drop in engagement this year is employees’ perception of how companies manage performance. Workers worldwide believe their employers have not provided the appropriate focus or level of management that would lead to increased productivity, nor have they connected individual performance to organizational goals.

Jamie Gruman and Alan Saks wrote an insightfull article on performance management and employee engagement in the Human Resource Management Review. They stated that less than a third of employees believe that their company’s performance management process assists them in improving performance.

Barbara Bowes, an excellent writer in Winnipeg on HR issues, stated in a Winnipeg Free Press column on Job performance appraisal system needs overhaul:

The result is that in many cases executives do not support performance appraisals and so the practice falls by the wayside. Human resource managers are dissatisfied because the performance systems are typically time consuming, bureaucratic, paper driven, top down and often have little reference to organizational goals. Not only that, operational managers are often chronically late in completing their appraisals. All in all, the performance management system is frequently the most poorly implemented of all human resource management systems.

What, then, should an effective performance management system look like? First of all, no matter the technical details of your performance system, the organizational philosophy must recognize that “on task behaviour” is not the only thing that should be counted. Organizations need to recognize that work has changed. It is more flexible, more dynamic, interchangeable, less precise, team oriented, more ambiguous, more complex and more stressful. These elements have been found to be just as important and need to be given consideration in a performance evaluation.

Changing landscape and mobility of work. Engaged performance management must recognize and respond to the flexible, dynamic, ambiguous, complex and stressful elements of performance. Add to the challenge is the increasing level of mobile workers, reaching over 1 billion this year. We want to maximize employees performance and not tick them off with the use of structured inauthentic performance appraisals that sucks the energy out of both employees and their managers.

Here are 6 practices to create engaged performance:

Make work worthy of attention. One sports psychologist defined performance as anything worthy of your attention. Hopefully all work is worthy of a worker’s attention. We need to step back from the jobs, roles, and tasks and ensure that work is worthy of the attention it deserves. Here are a few questions to consider:

    • Have I done my best to make work worthy of every employee’s attention?
    • Does each employee know the value and meaning of their work?
    • Does the employee have some freedom in their attention and work that capitalizes on intrinsic interest and motivation?

Job craft with employees. Help employees job craft by fusing the needs of the organization with the strengths of the individual so that performance is beneficial to both. Knowledge workers need to have input into what their work is and how that work is achieved and job crafting can be an excellent step in that direction.  I encourage you to read a short review of job crafting by CV Harquail, How Job Crafting Can Get You Closer to Authentic Work. Here is a short section from her post:

Job crafting is the practice of (re-)shaping the job that you are expected to do so that you can enlarge the parts that are important to you.Through job crafting, an employee can take on new activities, new responsibilities, and new relationships, making the job so bigger (or smaller), more interesting, more useful, and overall more closely linked to their strengths and interests.

Fuse performance appraisal and engagement appraisal. Jamie Gruman and Alan Saks, in a rigorous academic piece on engagement and performance, advocate that we move from management of performance to facilitation of performance. They recommend that we fuse performance management and employee engagement into a new approach that weaves the two more closely together to respond to the way work is done in 2011.

Engage with mastery versus competency. It is astounding to see the lists of competencies required by many jobs and the lengthy guidebooks that outline those competencies. How can employees act on all those competencies or even remember the lists? We engage strongly with a sense of mastery versus competency and we need to parse long lists of competencies in favor of strong mastery on a  vital few performances that achieves results while fully engaging the employee.

Personal performance focus. Are you maximizing your own performance? Mike King on his Learn This website wrote an excellent blog post on 10 ways to be performance oriented. In the post he includes such ways as:

    • study the results of everything you do
    • reflect on your talents and how to use them
    • kill distractions and find solitude
    • change what doesn’t work quickly

Step up to variances with conversation. Step up to variance with safety and conversation. Learn to address variances in performance as soon as possible through conversations that demonstrate caring. I think both Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations offers a good foundation to build the conversation skills to achieve results, address gaps, and build realtionships.

Previous posts in the series:

Next post in this series: Navigate through setbacks, path progress, and enable work.

David Zinger built the 10 block pyramid of employee engagement to help managers bring the full power of employee engagement to their workplaces. If you would like to arrange to have this course or workshop for your organization or conference contact David today at 204 254 2130 or zingerdj@gmail.com.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement Tagged With:

A Visual Guide to the Manager’s Pyramid of Employee Engagement

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Mangers. Get the employee engagement picture.

 

The Manager's Pyramid of Employee Engagement
View more presentations from David Zinger

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Employee Engagement: See Your Results

November 16, 2011 By 1 Comment

The Employee Engagement Pyramid: Achieve Results

Fly into engagement. My last post was on  achieve results and the employee engagement pyramid. It is important for employees to fully understand and engage with results. It is also key for employees to see their results. I  just received and watched this short  video from Diana Dozier 15 minutes ago. It is a great demonstration of employees seeing results.

Are you showing your employees their results?

The video reminded me of the old slogan: GE brings good things to life.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement

12 Keys to Achieve Results with Employee Engagement

November 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

1. Achieve Results (Part 1 of a 10 part series on the Employee Engagement Pyramid for Managers)

Top of the pyramid. Based on extensive work in employee engagement, I constructed a pyramid of employee engagement actions for managers. There are 10 building blocks to full engagement and at the top of the pyramid on the 10 things managers must do to increase employee engagement is Achieve Results. The symbol used for achieving results is a target to ensure we know where we are aiming our engagement efforts.

Strategic engagement. Achieving results is important for the organization, team, manager, and employee. Engagement must be directed towards a specific end or it will lack focus and  sustainability. It will also quickly be perceived as a fluffy extra lacking in contribution to strategic objectives and wither because of a lack of impact or energy. Achieve Results is tightly aligned with the first principle in my 10 Principles of Engagement:

Employee engagement is specific. We cannot sustain engagement all the time and everywhere. When we talk about engagement we need to ask: Who is engaged, with what,  for how long, and for what purpose?

12 key concepts. The 10 block pyramid of engagement is the structure for a course for managers to improve and increase engagement. Here are 12 key points from the course that connect achieving results with employee engagement.

Results defined. The definition of a result is a  consequence, effect, or outcome of something. The something we are looking for here is engagement. In addition in this integrated view of engagement into work, employees will also contribute to the development of targets and results for the organization.

Expansive view.   Lisa Haneberg in writing about a results orientation at work stated,  “many organizations use “results orientation” as a core competency. Let’s start describing it fully – not just focusing on accountability and measurements, but also how culture, passion, and challenge impact results. If you use this competency to train and evaluate leaders, take another look at how you have described what results orientation looks like in action.”

Clearly stated and clearly communicated. Are your results clearly stated? To ensure the organizational results are clear to employees ask a number of employees on the spot to state the results the organization is working to achieve. Can they state them without hesitation or ignorance? If not, make sure what is clearly stated is also fully communicated.

Drucker’s drive for results. Peter Drucker focused extensively on results, including writing the book, Managing for Results. He stated that results come from leveraging opportunities rather than focusing on problems. Resources must go to opportunities and to achieve economic results we must concentrate. As a manager ensure the resource of engagement is directed towards results not aimless activities. If achieving results is a weak spot on your pyramid of engagement I encourage you to read Drucker’s classic book on managing for results.

Results in reverse. When we know specifically what we are working to achieve we can reverse engineer from the results to the specific actions we need to fully engage with to achieve those results.

Create white space so that employees can input into the crafting of results. Did employees have an opportunity to influence results. In full engagement, we have moved from results being given to employees to also being created by employees. Remember the following two keys lines as you develop the results that you are working to achieve. If you want everyone on the same page give them an opportunity to write on the page. Never do anything about employees without employees, including determining results.

What you really want. Ensure that the results you are focusing on are what you and your reports really want. I encourage you to contemplate the “spice girl question.” This is part of the lyrics from one of their ear-worm like classics: I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want, So tell me what you want, what you really really want, I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want, So tell me what you want, what you really really want.

Pull results rather than push results.  Do you and other employees feel excitement and interest in the results the organization is trying to achieve. Do the results have meaning? When we find results engaging we are powerfully pulled into engagement rather than feeling pushed to engage.

TEAM up for engaging results. Apply the TEAM acronym as a quick guide to your results statement: Are your results:  Timed - Engaging –  Achievable - Meaningful? In regards to timed and specific, Don Berwick, the health care leader who was responsible for the 100,000 lives campaign was always reminding us:  Some is not a number and soon is not a time. Based on achieving high levels of engagement and successful results the campaign is now the Protecting 5 Million Lives From Harm campaign.

10 measures. Skip Reardon offered 10 insightful reasons to measure results ranging from clarifying expectations and directing behavior to promoting understanding and improving execution. I encourage you to read his post to learn more about the four mentioned here and the additional six outlined in his post, The Top 10 Reasons to Measure Results.

Locus of engagement. Employee engagement has shifted away from a general pervasive measure of connection to being localized to different areas or results. For example your report’s locus of engagement may be on a task while your locus of engagement is the people achieving those tasks. Our results could be financial, environmental, or wellbeing. A strong connection between engagement and specific results ensures that engagement is integrated into work and management rather than an additional demand and helps give a rifle-like powerful specificity to engagement rather than a shotgun feel good satisfaction about work.

Target-Engagement fusion. At the highest level of engagement, we engage so fully with the target, that the target and our engagement become one. This was eloquently described in Eugen Herrigel’s book  The Zen of the Art Archery. This would be the ideal state of engagement and demonstrates a model of what is possible when we engage fully with results that are meaningful, focused, and enriching.

Next up, maximize performance. In the Employee Engagement Pyramid, the 10 blocks are very connected. We cannot reach the heights of achieving elevated results without the other 9 blocks that support this. Check into this site next week for the second post on  Maximize Performance in this 10 part series building the Pyramid of Engagement for Managers.

David Zinger created The Pyramid of Employee Engagement as a powerful tool to help managers understand the 10 key actions they can take to build full employee engagement. Contact David Zinger at zingerdj@gmail.com or phone David Zinger at 204 254 2130 to learn more or request the course for your company, organization, or conference.

Bonus resource for results. JD Meier has written an excellent guide to agility and results. I encourage you to take a look at his extensive and helpful book: Getting Results the Agile Way. The link in the previous sentence to Meier’s book will take you to free online wiki version of the book full of excellent tools, checklists, and methods.

 

Filed Under: Achieve Results, David Zinger, Employee Engagement, Pyramid of Employee Engagement Tagged With: , ,

The Employee Engagement Pyramid

November 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Workshop/Presentation/Course

If you would like to arrange for a keynote or a workshop for your company, conference or organization on The Employee Engagement Pyramid and The 10 Things Managers Must Do to Increase Employee Engagement contact David Zinger at zingerdj@gmail.com or phone 204 254 2130.

Here are the 10 things managers must do if they want to  increase employee engagement.

Achieve Results

Results. Engagement is more than a feeling, survey number, or a YouTube happy dance. We engage in actions directed towards results. The first key to consider when acting to increase employee  engagement is what results are you working to achieve and how can you involve all employees in formulating those results or achieving those results? Powerful results matter to managers, organizations, employees, and customers.

 

Path Progress

Progress.  The most overlooked source of engagement and motivation is to experience progress. Recent research by Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer has demonstrated that progress is the single biggest key to motivation and engagement for knowledge workers.  Learn how to structure work for progress and especially to guard against the demoralizing and disengaging experience of setbacks.

 

Maximize Performance

Performance. Performance is anything worthy of your attention. How do you make key performances worthy of employee’s attention and how do you offer feedback that is actually heard and acted upon by employees? We are witnessing the early stages of a significant fusion of performance management and employee engagement that may address some of the gaps we have experienced in attempting to have performance management do a better job of improving performance.

 

Foster Recognition

Recognition. Without recognition our workplaces are void of the human element. Are you fully letting  employees know that you see them, you are thinking of them and you both recognize and appreciate them. Authentic recognition is so much more than an annual gala or occasional gift card for good behavior. Recognition is social, strategic, and powerful. Recognition is the “re-thinking” of engagement in our everyday interactions and recognition for progress creates a strong multiplier for motivation and engagement.

 

Build Relationships

Relationships. We need to focus on the two “R’s” of engagement, results and relationships. How do our efforts achieve results while also building relationships?. Our brains are wired for the social element of work and in some ways all managers are becoming new versions of “social workers.” While our staff may have a locus of engagement on tasks we need to ensure that we have a strong locus of engagement on people.

 

Enliven Energy

Energy. The raw material of engagement is energy. It takes energy to engage and authentic engagement contributes to our energy. Energy comes in a variety of forms: mental, emotional, physical, organizational, and spiritual. Spiritual energy is the energy invested in something greater than ourselves and when you look closely at work and managing people it is always something greater than ourself or there would be no need for managers. We must strive towards mastery of physical, mental, and emotional energy.

 

Leverage Strengths

Strengths. Engagement is strong stuff. When you know your strengths, live your strengths, and leverage your strengths in the service of others you will have an increase in  engagement. To bring out the strengths of others we must be aware of our own strengths. Powerful managers “spot” employees’ strengths and make strength training a daily endeavor.

 

Make Meaning

Meaning. For work to sustain and enrich people it must be meaningful. Those who have a why to work can bear almost any how and a sense of meaningful work instills a strong and rich intrinsic motivation. Progress, when it is meaningful, can be one of the best events of our day.

 

Master Moments

Moments. Engagement resides in the moment. Learn to master moments; from high quality interactions and 45-second engaging conversations to the power to transform interruptions into touch points. When we balance challenge and skills we enter the flow zone as we dwell and work within the moment. Working in the moment also reduces stress. As Stephen Rechtschaffen stated: “there is no stress in the present moment.”

 

Enhance Well-being

Well-being. We need to find wellbeing inside of work. There are things we can do outside of work but how we promote and enhance well-being within work is becoming increasingly important as mobile devices makes work portable and 24/7. We must eliminate toxic workplace poisoned with a lack of respect or mutuality. We must create a profound wellbeing where people leave work enlivened and enriched rather than depleted and deadened.

If you would like to arrange for a keynote or a workshop for your company, conference or organization contact David Zinger at zingerdj@gmail.com or phone 204 254 2130.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement

A Manager’s Guide to Employee Engagement and the Virtual Team

November 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Employee engagement guidance for managers of virtual teams

Informative Webinar with Yael Zofi Monday November 14

   

The managers guide. I completed reading Yael Zofi’s wonderful book, A Manager’s Guide to Virtual Teams. Yael has created a powerful and practical guide for managers of virtual teams.  You will learn how to create trust and accountability, navigate through communication challenges, resolve conflicts, and ensure deliverable get out the door.

A virtual team – whether across the street or across the world – is a team whose members simultaneously work together to a common purpose, while physically apart.

Virtual challenges. Engaging virtual teams is all about connection and finding powerful and connected approaches to handle some of the numerous challenges:

  • Relationships
  • Performance
  • Communication
  • Delegation
  • Team Building
  • E-Mail
  • Conflict
  • Promotion
  • Teleconferencing
  • Walking the Talk
  • Travel
  • Etc.
Accountability and Trust. Here is just one of the gems from her work:
It is impossible to overstate the importance of trust and accountability in business (as with all human) relationships. Accountability and trust are spoken of in the same breath because they are interrelated. Accountability  provides  the energy for the virtual team’s day-to-day activities, but trust is the larger concept and at the very core of human interactions. And trust develops over time. (p. 98).  

Zofi goes on to map out and help us navigate the road to realizing and achieving accountability and trust with our virtual team.

Webinar.  Join Yael Zofi for a free webinar conversation on How to Manage and Engage Virtual Teams on Monday November 14 from 11:00 AM to 11:40 am EST. If you cannot attend the webinar will be recorded and put up in the video section of the Employee Engagement Network later that day.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement
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