Blog — David Zinger - Employee Engagement Speaker

Learn 12 Secrets to Becoming a Thought Leader

Posted on November 19, 2013 // 13 Comments

Cogito ergo sum – I think therefore I am.

(Reading Time: 5 Minutes)

Learn how to be a thought leader from David Zinger’s employee engagement thought leadership. Do you want to be a thought leader? This post outlines a quirky 12 step process to thought leadership.

What’s in a name? I have been referred to as a thought leader in employee engagement and was conferred engagement Guru status by the UK’s Engage for Success movement. I never knew that a business and workplace movement in the UK could confer guru status. I believe that if you think you are a thought leader or a guru in all likelihood you are neither of these things. I don’t think I am a thought leader, just a fifty-nine year old guy living on the Canadian prairies in Winnipeg who developed an abiding passion for the various permutations and combinations of engagement in leadership, management, work, and living.

Here are 12 idiosyncratic steps if you are interested in being thought of as a though leader:

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. - Walt Whitman

Develop a mild to medium obsession with a topic. I admit that I am obsessed with engagement and what it means. I can’t resist reading a book or blog about engagement. I check tweets on engagement about five times a day. I think about engagement all the time. Psychologists suggest we have about two thousand 14-second daydreams each day. A fair number of my daydreams involve engagement.

Be willing to go anywhere to learn about your specialty. I have gone from military bases in Winnipeg to distilleries in Manitoba to learn about engagement. I have walked the tunnels of uranium mines in Northern Saskatchewan and spent time scurrying though a platinum smelter in South Africa in search of engagement. I got a real buzz of engagement by using computers over three summers to interact with honeybees in their hives to learn about social engagement. If you want to buzz off for a few moments click on the title of my free eBook: Waggle: 39 Ways to Improve Human Organizations, Work, and Engagement. Thought leaders need to go anywhere to learn from anyone (even another species) about engagement.

Your best thoughts always begin with ignorance. Everything I have learned about engagement has come from my ignorance. To me, ignorance simply means not knowing. Stupidity is thinking you know when you don’t. It is okay to be ignorant just don’t be stupid about it. Just because we start with ignorance doesn’t mean that we stay there.

You are only half right but don’t let your brains fall out. I believe that half of what I say is right on, evidence-based, and state of the art while half of what I say is wrong. The conundrum is that I don’t know the difference. Concepts, ideas, and practices need to be played out and what works for one person, team, or organization may not work for another. Jacob Needleman, the philosopher offered the following advice, “it’s good to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.”

It is more important to write than be right. E. M. Forester once wrote, “how do I know what I think until I see what I write.” Writing has proven to be a good way to think. I have written over 2500 blog posts, 3 books, and 10000 tweets. I read to learn but I also write to learn. A thought leader can seldom go wrong by writing.

You can think on our own but you are never alone. Thought leadership does not exist in isolation or a vacuum. I founded and host a 6100 member community on employee engagement. I have devoted countless hours over the past 6 years to this community and it has been worth every second. We are now firmly embedded in the era of social thinking supplanting solo thinking.

You can never know enough, or retain enough, to stop being a student. I am enthralled by learning and learn from everyone I encounter. I default on being a student. I study rather than read. Currently, I am studying, Employee Engagement in Theory and Practice. I can’t help myself as I make notes and draw little diagrams in the margin, I argue with certain statements and put giant check marks beside other statement, and the white pages of the book are streaked with contrails of yellow highlighter.

Build a pyramid so that your thoughts will outlast you. I never intended to build a pyramid but I ended up building a 10 block pyramid of engagement. I am a visual thinker and created images for the key elements of engagement. Before I knew it the blocks took the shape of a pyramid. Partially as a tribute to the great UCLA’s basketball coach John Wooden’s pyramid of success and partially because the pyramid structure created a strong, almost intuitive, visual representation of the tactical and practical requirements of full engagement. It may be premature to declare this but I believe the pyramid of engagement may be my magnum opus, or it could be the manifestation of regression to when I was three years old and totally engaged in playing with wooden alphabet blocks.

Embrace contradictions and change your mind. My mind has been changed often in engagement. I have more questions than answers. My thoughts lead me more than I lead my thoughts. I have always loved the line by Walt Whitman at the start of these 12 steps: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”

To find enlightenment be a lamp. A much wiser one than I, the Buddha, said “be a lamp unto yourself.” We must shine a light on own thinking and approaches. We can go around the globe in search of engagement and fail to realize that it resides in our own hands, head, and heart.

Waggle while you work. My honeybees taught me to waggle. Waggles are their dance-like movements to communicate with their community about sources of pollen and even the location of a new home. I trust my thoughts will help others find and nourish their own engagement work. I place countless links in my tweets and updates on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter feeds.

Think, pray, laugh. I have kept everything in perspective by following the Chinese beatitude: Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, they shall never cease to be entertained. I also maintain my serenity with the modified serenity prayer I learned about 30 years ago: God grant me the laughter to see the past with perspective, face the future with hope, and celebrate today without taking myself too seriously. Thought leaders who laugh, last. Enjoy Assorted Zingers: Poems and Cartoons to Take a Bite Out of Work.

Alfred Adler was a thought leader for psychological thinking. He didn’t follow Sigmund Freud’s path or someone else’s path, he created his own. Supposedly after presenting his latest theories and thinking on psychology in front of very large audiences he would conclude his presentation with this statement of heartfelt uncertainty, “things could also be quite otherwise.” As we journey forward in engagement towards 2020, let’s never forget that, things could also be quite otherwise.

The map is not the territory. ~ Alfred Korzybski

David Zinger has been led around by his thoughts on employee engagement for the past 7 years. He is an employee engagement speaker from the Canadian prairies who believes we must be on the same level with everyone else and that pyramids are for blocks not for people.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: #employeeengagement, 12 steps, B2013, David Zinger Employee Engagement Speaker, Employee Engagement, Pyramid of Employee Engagement, Rosetta Stone, thought leader, thought leadership

Enhancing Employee Engagement Recognition – People Artistry: The Ennoblement Imperative

Posted on March 4, 2014 // Leave a Comment

People Artistry at Work: The Ennoblement Imperative will be released on March 11th.

I am excited by next week’s release of People Artistry at Work: The Ennoblement Imperative. Peter Hart from Rideau in Montreal and I wrote this book and Peter’s art contributes to this being a beautiful little book. This is my third book and I know this small little gem will enhance your ability to draw the best out from others at work.

We offer you 10 practices and 8 tools and if you order the book from myself or bulk order the book from Rideau it will arrive in a beautiful custom envelope. We have had some early readers of the book and were amazed that almost every one of them upon reading decided to buy a copy for all the leaders and managers where they work.

They loved the size and the price of just $9.95! They also told us the book was more than a book, it was a gift. Watch for the formal launch on March 11th.

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and employee engagement expert dedicated to improving engagement for all.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: book launch, Canadian Engagement and Recognition Speaker, David Zinger, employee engagement speaker, new employee engagement book, People Artistry at Work: The Ennoblement Imperative

Employee Engagement: How to use gamification to climb Mount Everest (almost).

Posted on February 27, 2014 // Leave a Comment

Being game for work and wellbeing

(Reading time 4 minutes and 30 seconds)

I have themed 2014 as a year of points. I am further extending my work on using the principles and practices of gamification for work and wellbeing. In a future post, I will provide an update of the daily game board I use to plan and track my time and performance to enhance work and wellbeing.

For this post I want to outline a three week gamification of fitness. The Winnipeg Winter Club where I workout has a mean looking machine called Jacob’s Ladder. It is like a 40 degree angled treadmill with the tread being replaced by ladder rungs. It is exhausting and you feel a bit like Sisyphus as you climb a ladder and get nowhere, but it is a great workout. The first time I tried the ladder back in January I could only do a couple of minutes before being fatigued.

For the month of February my fitness club challenged members to climb 29, 029 feet, or the equivalent of the elevation of Mount Everest on Jacob’s Ladder. I decided this was a game, even at fifty-nine years of age, I wanted to play. I knew to be successful I needed to gamify the process and was ultimately successful in taking just twenty days from the time I started to making it to the summit.

Here was how I approached the task based on gamification ideas and practices:

Compelling narrative. I was not climbing a ladder I was participating in an adventure to get to the top of Everest. A strong compelling narrative often keeps people glued to a movie or a game. In this case, I kept imaging I was getting to the top of Everest. I wasn’t delusional but it made climbing the steps more fun.

Being social. I didn’t climb with someone else but my daughter, Katharine, was my fitness buddy in another challenge at the club. Her support and knowing I was scoring points for us as a team was very helpful. I used almost daily updates on social media to report on my progress to make myself accountable to people who follow me and to gather energy and encouragement from their support. And of course, I kept broadcasting my success to my wife and sons.

Making progress. Progress is engaging while setback are disengaging. I did not wait until I arrived at the “summit” to celebrate. I printed out a Wikipedia list of all the mountain peaks around the world so I had the progress of reaching the elevation of over 1000 peaks along the way. Also I scored 10 points for a bigger fitness competition each day I completed ten or more minutes on the ladder.

Meaningful. This game was meaningful to me. For gamification to work and be sustainable the game must be meaningful to the player. Virtually climbing Mount Everest would not be either compelling or meaningful to many people but as someone who lived their whole life on the prairies it had always been a whimsical desire to climb the world’s tallest peak. Given everything else in my life this was about as close as I was going to get to achieving that desire.

Novelty. From one perspective I was just climbing a ladder to nowhere and that can be very fatiguing and boring. I enhanced novelty in the game by working at different paces and with different lengths of climbing. One day I climbed for 28 minutes and covered 1816 feet — this climb was the equivalent of climbing the CN Tower in Toronto (it must have been a foggy day as the view on Jacob’s Ladder never seemed to actually change).

Keeping track. I used a notebook to keep track of time, steps, and speed. Monitoring the climb with the different numbers derived was motivating while keeping me on track and preventing a fitness goal derailment.

Celebrate. I did celebrate success of the goal achieved by opening a small bottle of bubbly champagne and toasting the feat with Jeff, the fitness director, in a couple of small paper cone cups. We should always make time to celebrate progress as this helps to mentally install all the benefits of our accomplishments.

Benefits beyond the game. I like games that are immersions rather than diversions. By this I mean the game has real world benefits and is not merely a distraction from work and life. This game increased my fitness, helped me shed about 10 pounds, and feel more energized each day.

The game as a booster rather than an end in itself. Sometimes the trouble with gamification is that it begins to lose its impact over time. Now that I was successful will this mean I stop using the ladder and let my fitness entropy to previous levels. To overcome this I am now planning to climb the equivalent of the 7 summits of the world over the next year. It won’t be as intensive as the last month but it will make the progress and fitness sustainable over a long period of time. As we begin to approach the end of a helpful and positive gamification of work or wellbeing it is quite helpful to ask ourselves: what come’s next? Just because the game ended doesn’t mean the practice and benefits should also end.

Are you game? How can you integrate the practices outline above into your own work and wellbeing to foster greater engagement in achieving a result that matters to you or your work group?

Many small steps are one giant step. In summary it was 29,029 small steps for David and one giant step for the application of gamification to better work and wellbeing.

David Zinger is a Canadian employee engagement speaker and expert who believes in the benefits of gamification as a powerful tool for greater engagement.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: David Zinger Employee Engagement Speaker, Employee Engagement, fun, gamification, Jacob's Ladder, Mount Everest, play, Winnipeg Winter Club, work

Employee Engagement Resides in the White Space of Work

Posted on February 11, 2014 // 1 Comment

Engage employees by encouraging them to enter the white space of work

(Reading time = 1 minute, 15 seconds)

The white space on a page is the part of the page without print or images. The white space in an organization is the part without specifically designed tasks, performance, and work.

There is tremendous potential, value, and innovation that resides in the white space of work. Learn to engage employees with the white space, edges, and margins of work by asking rather than telling. Believe in your employee’s motivation and ability to determine what needs to be done and how they can go about doing it. Promote autonomy aligned with your strategic imperative.

Invite employees to voice and contribute and to frame and solve organizational challenges. For example, if you have a challenge with poor quality service ask each employee to use 5 minutes this week to assess the poor quality service and to quickly move from rumination about it to taking one small action to improve quality. Encourage employees to share what worked and examine how their actions in the white space of work can be scaled for greater use by all within the organization.

The blank white space in organizations invites voice, participation, innovation, and engagement. Shift your perspective at work and attune to the white space that resides in all tasks and organizations.

David Zinger, from Canada, is an employee engagement speaker and expert.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: Canada employee engagement speaker, David Zinger, Employee Engagement, white space

Download a List of Over 500 Employee Engagement Videos

Posted on February 6, 2014 // 2 Comments

Over the past 6 years we have been posting videos that relate to employee engagement on the Employee Engagement Network.

We now have over 500 curated videos. There are so many ways you can use these videos, including:

Kickoff an engagement effort
Build your team
Stimulate new ideas or practices for engagement
Inspire you to create an engaging video
Start you day with an engaging video clip
As part of a training or education day
Circulate to coworkers
Recover from a setback at work
Education your teenager about work
Engage yourself more fully

Click on the cover above or on this line to download a clickable free list of all these great videos.

David Zinger is a Canadian employee engagement educator and speaker.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: David Zinger Canadian Employee Engagement Speaker, EEN, Employee Engagement, employee engagement videos

Are You Preventing the Mismeasure of Employee Engagement?

Posted on January 28, 2014 // 5 Comments

We can manage engagement without measuring it

(Reading Time = 1 minute and 30 seconds)

There is an old hackneyed expression that you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Baloney. We can manage what we don’t measure. For instance. I can manage my weight and health without measuring it. I don’t have to keep stepping on a weight scale and doing a bunch of well-being assessment questionnaires to determine my weight and health. In fact, I can step on a weight scale every day and keep gaining weight. Before you think that I am drifting off into some intuitive wonderland where we just know because, well, we know, I am not opposed to measurement. I am opposed to an over reliance and preponderance of measurement in engagement.

If we limit our questions to between five and twelve and have employees complete a survey then maximize our intervention and then measure again to see if there was a change this may be all the measurement we need. We might also prevent the annual engagement survey becoming such a disengaging exercise for many employees. An old principle of evaluation is that you should choose evaluation based on the purposes to be served — don’t let your evaluation start to serve its own self-generating purposes.

Many organizations are fixated on the biannual employee survey fused with external bench marking. At worst, they spend more of their dollars and time allocated for engagement on the numbers and measures than the very people they want to be more engaged.

How much of your employee engagement budget is devoted to a survey and analysis. If I had $100 for each employee to improve employee engagement I would want to spend no more than 3% and hopefully just 1% on measurement and the rest would be spent on things that actually improve engagement such as training, education, career development, working conditions and tools, and fully engaging management and leadership in making things better for all.

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and educator. Contact and contract with David Zinger to improve engagement where you work.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: David Zinger Employee Engagement Speaker, Employee Engagement, employee engagement intervention, measurement, survey

Eugenie Bouchard: What a 19 Year Old Rising Tennis Star Can Teach Us About Employee Engagement

Posted on January 22, 2014 // Leave a Comment

7 Lessons on Employee Engagement from a Teenage Tennis Player

(Reading time 1 minute 20 seconds)

Eugenie Bouchard (source Wikipedia – Edwin Martinez

As a Canadian in Winnipeg with the temperature at 42 below, I have caught tennis fever and have enjoyed watching 19 year old Canadian, Eugenie Bouchard, compete in the Australian Open. Her engaged and engaging play, landing her a spot in the semifinals, offers us lessons in engagement.

Here are the 7 engagement lessons I have derived by watching Eugenie play on the other side of the world:

It is always good wherever you work to have a coach. Eugenie has been fortunate to have her coach make the trip with her. Never be afraid of getting lots of coaching to be the best you can be.
Don’t give up, you can infuse inner mental toughness with outer physical composure as you just keep playing your game.
Keep improving performance by making progress while also shaking off setbacks in seconds.
Enjoy your work and embrace your opportunity to be on the center stage.
Know that it takes years of work to become an overnight sensation and when the foundation is laid, expect your success and don’t be surprised by it.
It is always nice to have the support of others (Genie’s army and the country of Canada) behind you, and enjoy and appreciate the love made tangible by the gift of Aussie plush animals they bestow upon you.
At 19, it is okay to say you want to date Justin Bieber. Be poised and assured while never selling out on your youthful moments.

David Zinger is a Canadian employee engagement expert. He is enjoying the Australian open and honored that his pyramid of engagement has been used by the WTA (Woman’s Tennis Association) in their leadership work.

Filed Under: Achieve Results, Employee Engagement // Tagged: Australian Open, Canadian, David Zinger Employee Engagement Speaker, Eugenie Bouchard, Pyramid of Employee Engagement, tennis, WTA

A Thought Leadership Manifesto

Posted on January 21, 2014 // Leave a Comment

12 Ways to Get Cracking as a Though Leader

This slide deck is based on an article I wrote on thought leadership in November 2013. It has been updated and infused with images.

12 Ways to Get Cracking as a Thought Leader from David Zinger

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and thought leader.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: David Zinger Employee Engagement Speaker, Employee Engagement, slide presentation, thought leadership, thought leadership manifesto

12 Title Tidbits from Scaling Up Excellence by Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao

Posted on January 14, 2014 // 1 Comment

Is your organization scaling up or just about to lose its grip?

(Reading time: Under 2 Minutes)

Two days after Ground Hog day, Febraury 4th, 2014, we will all have the opportunity to come out of our cubicles and offices and either get blinded by looking up at the sun or get enlightened about scaling up excellence by reading Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao’s, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less. I believe Bob would tell us to get our head out of whatever and learn to scale excellence. I encourage readers of this blog to determine how they would apply the ideas to scaling up engagement at work.

There are few business authors that I would say that I love their work. Henry Mintzberg, Peter Block, Margaret Wheatley come to mind and I would add Bob Sutton. He had me at asshole with his terrific book, The No Asshole Rule.

I was reading Bob’s blog post on the writing life just before writing this review. He advised writers:

Ask for approval of any title of anything you write. A lot of publications won’t like that either – but it has your name on it.

The title and subtitles of this book jumped off of the page and into my mind so rather than a review I want to give you 12 titles or subtitles and encourage you to use those to springboard into the book yourself and improve your ability to scale up to excellence:

Getting to more without settling for less
Spread a mindset, not just a footprint
Fear the clusterfug
Do you suffer from delusions of uniqueness?
Going slower to scale faster (and better) later
Will bolstering Buddhism generate crucial understanding, commitment, and innovation?
Hot causes, cool solutions: stoking the scaling engine
Lean on people who can’t leave well enough alone
Bad is stronger than good: Clearing the way for excellence
Did this, not that: Imaging you’ve already succeeded (or failed)
Teach us more, learn less
The seven year conversation

As Robert and Huggy stated in the preface,

uncover pockets of exemplary performance, spread those splendid deeds, and as an organization grows bigger and older – rather than slipping toward mediocrity or worse – recharge it with better ways of doing the work at hand.

Take the 12 title tidbits and scale up excellence by reading the content of these chapters and sections. To learn more about the book and authors, check out the book’s website.

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and consultant who refuses to be blinded by looking at the sun and put his head into this book with thoughts for scaling up excellence in employee engagement thanks to Bob and Huggy.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: book review, clusterfug, David Zinger, Employee Engagement, Huggy Rao, Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence

Who said employee engagement and recognition are garbage?

Posted on January 9, 2014 // Leave a Comment

Employee Engagement and Recognition as Trash Talk

A Year of Recognition. I am engaged in a project called a year of recognition to recognize and appreciate others for who they are or what they do. The normal automated garbage pick up in Winnipeg is being done manually right now. The workers are dumping the heavy bins in an old fashioned garbage truck on a day of -33 Celsius. I was going out to thank them when my son Luke said I should give them something. He raced up to his room and got a large Reese’s bar that I took out to them. I hope they were warmed ever so slightly by the thank you and the chocolate bar.

Addendum to this post, here is a message my son sent out after he left the house to go to work, nice to see a young man recognize the importance of recognition. He also snapped a picture as I was out thanking these gentleman for their fine work. Here is the picture and his note:

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and co-author of People Artistry at Work: The Ennoblement Imperative.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: David Zinger Employee Engagement Speaker, Employee Engagement, employee recogntion, garbage, Reese's Pieces

Employee Engagement on the Back of Your Business Card

Posted on January 7, 2014 // Leave a Comment

What is your little for 2014?

(Reading Time: Under 1 Minute)

The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little. - Jon Kabat-Zinn

What is one little thing you can do in 2014 to improve employee engagement for yourself, your organization, or one other person you work with? To ensure that little make a difference attach your small behavior or action to something significant for yourself or the organization. Little does not mean trite or unimportant. Little is a pathway to increasing engagement when we lack extra time, effort, or capacity. To ensure your idea is little make sure you can write it on the back of a business card.

Grab one of your business cards and write your little action for engagement. Keep your card in your wallet or on your desk and let it remind you of your “little for 2014.”

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert who founded the 6000 member Employee Engagement Network. David believes that small is the new significant in employee engagement.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: business card, David Zinger Employee Engagement Speaker, employee engagement 2014, little action, small goal

The Push and Pull of Employee Engagement

Posted on December 30, 2013 // 5 Comments

Employee engagement involves both push and pull. The push part of engagement is our effort, focus, concentration, and contribution to a specific element or block of engagement. The pull part of engagement is how an element or block engages us or pulls us towards it.

For example, I take 10 minutes to recognize a few people I work with. I am engaging or pushing towards the recognition block of the pyramid of engagement. The results of this may pull me towards future recognition because of the interactions or comments from the people I recognized.

I am pulled into engagement by a meaningful result I want to create. This draws me towards engagement. For engagement to be powerful we must experience both the push and pull of engagement with results, performance, progress, relationships, recognition, moments, strengths, meaning, well-being, and energy.

See the diagram below for a visual image of this dynamic.

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert who is both pushed and pulled by all 10 blocks of the pyramid of engagement. If you want to experience more powerful engagement where you work contact David Zinger today.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: David Zinger Employee Engagement Speaker, engagement pull, engagement push, pyramid of employee engagement model

The Employee Engagement Awards for 2013

Posted on December 19, 2013 // 1 Comment

First Annual Employee Engagement Awards

The 7 Awards Winners – 2013

From the 6200 Member Employee Engagement Network

Here are the 7 award winners in employee engagement for 2013 as chosen by the Employee Engagement Network. Each winner will receive a certificate, a 2013 Canadian coin prize, and a copy of People Artistry at Work: The Ennoblement Imperative by Peter W. Hart and David Zinger.

Best Engagement Organization 2013: Engage for Success, UK

This employee engagement movement has spread across the UK to put employee engagement firmly into consciousness and action for a broad spectrum of companies and organizations across the UK. They have created a wonderful site full of resources, research, and current information. David MacLeod and Nita Clarke who lead the charge on engagement received the OBE in late 2013.

Visit: http://www.engageforsuccess.org/

Best Engagement Book 2013: Catherine Truss, Rick Delbridge, Kerstin Alfes, Amanda Shantz, and Emma Soane (editors) Employee Engagement in Theory and Practice. Publisher – Routledge.

This engagement textbook should be required reading not just for HR students but for all practitioners and people involved in engagement. The editors have compiled an eclectic and informative mix of articles on engagement. The strong academic underpinnings of the book offer the reader research based conclusions and many important questions to consider.

Visit: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415657426/

Best Classic Engagement Book: Richard Axelrod, Terms of Engagement, Publisher – Berrett-Koehler.

Richard Axelrod offers connected ways of leading and changing organizations based on really engaging employees in the process of change through collective dialogue and interaction. This second edition of the book is rich with an engaging approach and fused with practical steps to create change through engaged connections.

Visit: http://www.bkconnection.com/ProdDetails.asp?ID=1576752399

Best Engagement Blog Post 2013: Doug Shaw, We are better together

Doug Shaw writes with passion, art, and presence. He offers a personal and unique voice on engagement and has been spreading his message from the UK and Europe into North America. Doug’s post, We are Better Together, was written in September of 2013. It was an informative and engaging post on connection and creativity supported with additional resources.

Visit: http://bit.ly/1eiHWv3

Best Engagement Video 2013: Leavesmarter, Marshall Goldsmith, Two minutes on the missing element of engagement.

This video is only two minutes in length yet offers a fine perspective from Marshall Goldsmith on the employee role in engagement. Marshall Goldsmith has mojo and offers true gold for our workplace. He approaches his work with authenticity and humility fused with very practical suggestions and approaches.

Visit: http://employeeengagement.ning.com/video/employee-engagement-the-missing-50

Exceptional Engagement Network Contributor 2013: Robert Morris

Robert has been indefatigable in contributing great information on management, leadership, and the workplace. Robert offers the engagement network multiple new posts every week with the most current knowledge from books, blogs, and other management and leadership resources.

Visit: http://employeeengagement.ning.com/profile/RobertMorris.

Special Engagement Recognition Award 2013 – Juice Inc.

Juice made an outstanding contribution to initiating and fostering knowledge partnership for employee engagement. They are the premiere knowledge partner of the employee engagement network and support the ongoing development and growth of the network. Their contributions have ranged from recruiting new members, posting insightful blog posts, offering lightning lessons and creating one a new 50-work engagement case study. Because of Juice’s support the network will be moving forward into being a top education and recognition site for engagement in 2014.

Visit: http://www.juiceinc.com/

About the Employee Engagement Network

The Employee Engagement Network started 6 years ago in Winnipeg, Canada and has grown to over 6200 members around the globe. Resources on the network included a dozen free eBooks on engagement, five case studies, 580 videos, 4000 blog posts, 600 forums, and a brand new cartoon on work each week. To engage means to keep moving. The network will be shifting in 2014 to a stronger education and recognition resource for all things involving employee and work engagement.

Visit: http://employeeengagement.ning.com/

David Zinger is a Canadian employee engagement speaker and expert. He founded and hosts the 6200 member Employee Engagement Network. In 2014, the plan is to move the network to a strong source of recognition for engagement and contribution at work as well as a socio-educational resource for everyone interested in engagement.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: awards, best book in employee engagement, best organization in employee engagement, David Zinger, employee engagement awards 2013, employee engagement speaker

Do You Agree That Authentic Employee Engagement Requires That Leaders Level?

Posted on December 17, 2013 // 2 Comments

Replace a pyramid of people with a pyramid of behaviors and actions

Most of us would agree that it is important for leadership and executives to be engaged at work and that executives can set a tone throughout the organization. Unfortunately our way of thinking about roles at work and the way some of us lead thwart engagement. Here are 3 phrases from a recent post on executive engagement by a well known engagement consultancy:

In any company, engagement comes from the top.

This is the only way to drive and sustain engagement throughout the organization because engagement at the top cascades down the line.

Everything executives do has an effect on the people beside them and below them.

Yikes. When we think of people being on top of others or that other employees are below executives I believe this very conception thwarts much engagement. We must begin to see ourselves on the same level as everyone we work with. Our ancient pyramid conception of employee roles is antiquated and counterproductive to engagement. Remember, pyramids were built to house dead people.

No top, no bottom, no above, no below. Yes, employees have different roles and functions but lets all get on the same level and engage for the benefit of all.

Do you believe leaders must level?

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert who resides on the Canadian prairies. Being a flat lander he believe we must level with everyone we work with. He has created a pyramid of engagement based on functions and behaviors not people and roles.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: David Zinger Employee Engagement Speaker, Employee Engagement, executive engagement, pyramid

9 Lessons From Employee Engagement in Theory and Practice

Posted on December 10, 2013 // 1 Comment

39 Lessons from Employee Engagement in Theory and Practice: The Psychology of Engagement

Lessons 4 to 11: (Reading time: 5 minutes)

Routledge publishing released a new employee engagement textbook, Employee Engagement in Theory and Practice edited by Catherine Truss, Rick Delbridge, Kerstin Alfes, Amanda Shantz and Emma Soane. This post will outline 9 lessons from the four chapters in part 1 of the textbook: The psychology of engagement. My lessons are illustrative and idiosyncratic rather then comprehensive and general. They are also a little quirky and may imply more than the authors intended.

The lessons:

4. We can not afford to be psyched out at work. Because of changes in work over the previous few decades the workplace requires psychological skills and abilities from the workforce. For example, organizational change requires adaptation while job crafting requires personal initiative. Employees need to bring their entire person to work and their psychological abilities and skills will influence levels of engagement. While there has been extensive focus on the social media elements of work, this section of the book brings the psychological elements of work into sharper focus.

5. DAVE makes a difference at work. Wilmar Schaufeli and others believe that work engagement is composed of vigor, dedication, and absorption. With the addition of energy I created the acronym DAVE: Dedication, Absorption, Vigor, and Energy. Ultimately we want the vigor of high levels of energy, resilience and persistence; the dedication of pride, involvement, and significance; and the absorption of concentration and flow within work. Use DAVE to assess your own level of engagement and the level of engagement of those you work with.

6. Get the picture on work engagement with the JD-R model. The jobs demands-resources model has been used as a frequent framework for engagement. As you read this book play close attention of the components and interactions of this model. We need both job and personal resources for work. These interact with job demands. In work we can move towards work engagement or burnout and this pathway will influence work outcomes. This model offers some useful perspective on engagement but as with any model we are best to remember Korzybski’s line: “the map is not the territory.”

7. At work, it can be a positive thing to be a deviant and we need to appreciate inquiry. Positive deviancy and appreciative inquiry are two positive-oriented models that can be used to examine or foster engagement. We can benefit from a study of our most engaged employees, especially in situations where the mass of our employees are disengaged. What do they do differently that we can learn to teach others to be more engaged? I adore the line from positive deviancy, “never do anything about me without me.” When this line is lived employee engagement becomes a collaborative effort. Appreciative inquiry also contributes to building engagement through the use of fuller organizational involvement and great questions to promote deeper understanding and change.

8. PsyCap is the new superHERO for employee engagement. PsyCap refers to an individual’s positive psychological state or psychological capital. PsyCap becomes a HERO as we broaden and build an employee’s Hope, Efficacy, Resilience, and Optimism. I think we would be served well to focus more on efficacy (the sense one can produce an outcome) than self-esteem at work. I also think that building resilience, and understanding the framework of learned optimism, would help many employees manage the negative effect that setbacks have on engagement. The textbook offers a brilliant array of important psychological concepts and constructs that can move the dial on engagement.

9. We tend to undervalue the importance and contribution of relationships in engagement. Relationships are the building blocks of organizations and they affect how work gets done. Engagement wilts or thrives often based on relationship. We must bring relationships to the foreground of engagement rather than sitting in the background. Maybe Gallup’s Q12 question about having a best friend at work isn’t as creepy as many people think.

10. To weather yourself through stormy seas at work, tie yourself to the MAST. Kahn, has been instrumental in the development of personal engagement and the overall study of engagement. He focuses a lot on meaningfulness, availability, and safety. If you add trust to meaning, availability, and safety you can construct the acronym MAST. To help employees stand tall and upright at work and to have them sail into their work build a strong workplace MAST: meaningfulness, availability, safety, and trust.

11. Safety at work is more than wearing a hard hat. In my own work, I would argue that more organizations have a bigger safety problem than an engagement problem. For example, the heavy reliance on anonymous surveys indicate that it is not safe to disclose your level of engagement or disengagement at work and that disengagement may be treated as a personal punishable offence. To rephrase Kahn’s definition into a question: Am I able to show and employ myself without fear of negative consequences to self-image, status or career?

12. Engagement grows as employee voice is amplified and acted upon. One of the four enablers of engagement according to the growing UK’s Engage for Success movement is employee voice. There are so many tools to create safety and communication of employee voice. Are employees ready, willing and able to voice concerns, speak up about conflict, voice difficult experiences, engage in challenging conversations, and voice their experiences at work. I believe that engagement is more of an experience to be lived than a problem to be solved. Engaged employees have safe ways to express their experience. If you are a leader your mantra for 2014 should be: listen up!

Previous Posts: Click on the titles below to read the previous posts on this textbook:

Deciphering 39 Powerful Lessons from an Employee Engagement Textbook

Next post in the series: 9 lessons from the HRM implications of employee engagement.

David Zinger is a Canadian employee engagement speaker and expert currently working on a 12 module course on employee engagement based on the pyramid of engagement.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: David Zinger, Employee Engagement, Employee Engagement in Theory and Practice, JDR model of engagement, personal engagement, PsyCAP and engagement, Safety, William A. Kahn, Wilmar B. Schaufeli, work engagement

Employee Engagement: This is Good Work

Posted on December 9, 2013 // 2 Comments

Tom Peter’s recently wrote about good work.

I appreciated Tom Peter’s points:

Good work: Help others grow. Infectious enthusiasm. Always approachable. A ready smile. Keeping promises. Learning. Learning. Learning.

Good work: Most of our conscious life will be at work. Like it or not. Waste your work life and you have wasted your life.

Good work: The quality of the experience of producing the product is as important as the product itself.

I love good work and think we need to rethink all this blathering hype about doing great work. Good is good enough.

As Garrison Keillor states, “Be well. Do good work. Keep in touch.”

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert who celebrates good work.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: David Zinger Employee Engagement Speaker, Employee Engagement, good work, great work

Employee Engagement Made Simple

Posted on December 3, 2013 // 3 Comments

Employee Engagement One Day at a Time

(Reading time: 1 minute)

Engage each day. Accept the invitation to engage at work every day. Engage daily with specific results that matter to you and the organization. Engage with the key performances that will achieve your results. Engage fully each day with progress while minimizing and managing setbacks. Engage fully with relationships and connections at work because engagement is never a solo endeavor. Engage each day in recognizing others, both for who they are and what they do. Engage the moment as multiple moments make up each day. Engage your strengths daily and ensure you leverage your strengths in the service of others. Engage with a compelling why for work. Engage so fully with work that work makes you well. Engage your energy at work so that work is an energy gain versus an energy drain. Repeat daily.

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert who helps organizations and individuals create better engagement at work.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: daily employee engagement, David Zinger Employee Engagement Speaker, personal engagement, the pyramid of employee engagement, work engagement

Deciphering 39 Powerful Lessons from an Employee Engagement Textbook

Posted on November 28, 2013 // 2 Comments

39 Lessons from Employee Engagement in Theory and Practice (Part 1 of 5)

Reading time: 4 minutes

Routledge publishing released a new employee engagement textbook, Employee Engagement in Theory and Practice edited by Catherine Truss, Rick Delbridge, Kerstin Alfes, Amanda Shantz and Emma Soane. The range of contributors include Wilmar B. Schaufeli, Arnold B. Bakker, and William A. Kahn, the founding father of the concept of engagement. These are just 3 of the many authors on engagement that I admire who wrote contributions for the book. I think this is a very good resource book for employee engagement and an excellent textbook for a course on employee engagement.

The book is divided into four parts:

The psychology of engagement
Employee engagement: the HRM implication
Employee engagement: critical perspectives
Employee engagement in practice

I taught Educational Psychology and Counselling Psychology at the University of Manitoba for 20 years and this predisposed me to see this book as a course, the contents as lessons, and to study rather than merely read the book. I also very much appreciate the caution exercised by academic writers and the continual referencing to other researchers and writers. I have not taught at university for over 7 years and if I was to return I would teach a course on employee engagement and this would be my choice of textbook.

Here is a statement I made about my experience studying the book in 12 secrets of being a thought leader on employee engagement:

You can never know enough, or retain enough, to stop being a student. I am enthralled by learning and learn from everyone I encounter. I default on being a student. I study rather than read. Currently, I am studying, Employee Engagement in Theory and Practice. I can’t help myself as I make notes and draw little diagrams in the margin, I argue with certain statements and put giant check marks beside other statement, and the white pages of the book are streaked with contrails of yellow highlighter.

I will be writing a five part series on the book stretching into the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014. Although I am the founder and host of the 6100 member Employee Engagement Network I decided to use the book to journey again through the fundamentals of engagement and distill relevant and vital lessons. To this end, each of my posts will focus on one of the four parts of the book and will be structured around 9 lessons from each part with an additional 3 lessons to begin for the total of 39 lessons.

This specific post touches upon the introduction to the book and offers 3 lessons. Each lesson will be composed of one sentence and a brief elaboration and questions following the lesson. The lessons are more illustrative than comprehensive and more idiosyncratic than exhaustive. I will focus on what stood our for me in each section. I assume that you would have a mix of similar and different lessons from your own reading of the textbook based on your background and current involvement in engagement. I encourage you to buy the book, study along with me, and let me know the lessons that stand out for you.

The first 3 lessons:

1. Question the promise of engagement. On page one of the introduction the editors state: perhaps the reason that engagement has garnered so much attention lies in its dual promise of enhancing both individual well-being and organizational performance. I like the idea of engagement as a promise but it also leads to a number of questions we can use to reflect upon our approach to engagement. Do you see engagement as a promise? Are you keeping your promise? In what ways has the promise been broken? Do you share an equivalent focus on individual well-being and organizational performance? How do we use employee engagement to move effectively into the trade-offs and tensions between employers and employees? I trust as we move rapidly towards 2020 that both individuals and organizations will see engagement as a promise worth keeping. The tag line of the Employee Engagement Network is “employee engagement for all.” If employee engagement is truly to be for all the promises must be kept and lived for the benefit of the individual and the organization.

2. Be thoughtful and deliberate in the words you choose to describe engagement. What is the phrase or phrases you are using for employee engagement? We need to pay special attention to the words or phrases we use around engagement. The introduction mentions ‘work engagement, ‘personal engagement’, ‘job engagement’, ‘staff engagement’, employee engagement’ and ‘engagement’. I prefer the word engagement and the phrase work engagement but tend to use employee engagement because of its wide usage and acceptance. As I move fully into 2014 I will be using the word engagement and the phrase work engagement more frequently than employee engagement. I would love to see a much wider acceptance and usage of the phrase work engagement in place of employee engagement.

3. We must develop a better and more complete understanding of engagement because it is a significant and growing factor in work and the management of people. The breadth and depth of this book attest of the third lesson. This lesson sets the stage for the next 36 lessons on engagement psychology, practice, criticism, and ties to human resource management (HRM). In the words of the editors this book raises “awareness of the rich potential of the engagement subject area for practitioners and academics alike.”

Next post in this series: The psychology of engagement

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert currently working on a 12 module course on employee engagement based on his 10 block pyramid of engagement.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: Amanda Shantz, Catherine Truss, David Zinger Employee Engagement Speaker, Emma Soane, Employee Engagement in Theory and Practice, employee engagement lessons, Kerstin Alfes, Rick Delbridge

10 Building Blocks: What is Your Deeper Why of Employee Engagement?

Posted on November 26, 2013 // Leave a Comment

The why of working.

Here are four stories that influenced my movement into employee engagement:

My father, a railway executive, became cynical and frustrated with his work. It literally drove him to drink and as a child I would listen to his workplace stories of being thwarted and stymied. I was pleased that later in his life he found his way out of this work-related Dante’s Inferno.

Burt, a production technician I worked with hated his job, management, the company and his co-workers. He lived to retire. Nine months after retiring he hated retirement.

Marla the administrative support person in my department felt misery at work that manifested itself as sourness and belligerence. She sucked the energy out of the department and I usually took the back stairs so I would not have to pass by her desk.

The railway gang I worked with did as as little work as possible. The organization and management was perceived as the enemy and most of this gang lived lives of quiet desperation. Our gang was called the perishable gang because we looked after perishable commodities shipped by rail. I believe had I stayed on this gang that I might have been the one to perish from work.

These are four small glimpses at work. It requires no creativity to go beyond these personal stories to identify the negative impact on results, organizations, customers, and families. There is a better way of work and this means engaging fully with our work.

The Why of Engagement: Work is an invitation, accept it. When you get more into your work you will get more out of your work. Good work is a pathway to achieve results, make contributions, build relationships, strengthen organizations, and help others. Good work will make you well.

The How of Engagement: Increasing and enhancing engagement asks us to use small, simple, strong, significant, strategic, and sustainable tools, actions, and practices. We don’t need to do great work or reach for the moon. Rather if we stay grounded in the work in front of us, the injection of a few small steps done daily will be giant steps for our organizations and the people we serve.

The What of Engagement: The Zinger Pyramid of Engagement is a practical and tactical 10-block evidenced based model designed to improve: results, performance, progress, relationships, recognition, moments, strengths, meaning, wellbeing, and energy. I offer keynotes, speeches, classes, workshops, courses, books, writing, consulting, and coaching to help others discover and act upon the 10 building blocks of engagement and good work. Ultimately good work and full engagement involves just a few steps and it is never more than 10 blocks away.

What is your deeper why, how, and what of working and engagement?

David Zinger is global employee engagement speaker from Canada working at getting work working for all of us. If you are ready to work with the building blocks of engagement, to ensure that work is for the benefit of all, contact him today to get things started.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: #employeeengagement, David Zinger Employee Engagement Speaker, how, Pyramid of Employee Engagement, Simon Sinek, small is the new significant, what, why

Do you believe forced performance rankings are detrimental to employee engagement?

Posted on November 15, 2013 // Leave a Comment

Would you rather work for Yahoo or Microsoft?

Two articles written on the same day examine the road to forced rankings (Yahoo) and away from forced ranking (Microsoft).

At Yahoo:

Several months after the great work-at-home kerfuffle of 2013, Yahoo employees were up in arms about a new policy that forces managers to rank employees on a bell curve, then fire those at the low end. According to AllThingsD, Marissa Mayer reportedly told Yahoo workers that the rankings weren’t mandatory, but many people disagree. (Business Week November 12)

At Microsoft - Microsoft’s HR chief Lisa Brummel wrote a letter about the end of both ranking and ratings:

No more curve. We will continue to invest in a generous rewards budget, but there will no longer be a pre-determined targeted distribution. Managers and leaders will have flexibility to allocate rewards in the manner that best reflects the performance of their teams and individuals, as long as they stay within their compensation budget. (The Verge November 12)

These are uncertain times for performance and engagement. It is interesting to see us go in both directions at once. Where do you stand on the role of ratings and rankings for performance management and what do you believe would be best for employee engagement? Would you rather work for Yahoo or Microsoft?

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert who does not like to be forced to do anything but always tries to perform at his best!

Filed Under: Employee Engagement // Tagged: #employeeengagement, David Zinger, employee engagement speaker, forced rankings, Microsoft, performance management, Yahoo