David Zinger - Employee Engagement Speaker

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Help Yourself to The 10 Best Free and Fantastic Employee Engagement Resources

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Fantastic Free Employee Engagement Resources (plus a bonus resource).

I am celebrating my 61st birthday today. At my age, I don’t need any presents but I’d like to give some, so here are 11 employee engagement presents for you.

  1. The Power of Employee Engagement: Booklet on the Pyramid of Employee Engagement.
  2. Engage for Success: Enhancing Performance Through Employee Engagement.
  3. The Top Tens of Employee Engagement.
  4. Zengage: How to Get More Into Your Work to Get More Out of Your Work.
  5. Waggle: 39 Ways to Improve Human Organizations, Work and Engagement
  6. Employee Engagement: 72 Small Actions for Big Results
  7. Assorted Zingers: Poems and Cartoon to Take a Bite Out of Work.
  8. Engaging Questions: The Question is the Answer
  9. Primers for Engaging Conversations
  10. 22 Tools to Overcome Grumpiness: How Not to be Grumpy at Work (or in the rest of your life)
  11. Bonus: 15 Cartoons for 2015

Here is a bonus bonus resource for anyone interested in using gamification for managers: Game On

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David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert.

Employee Engagement: 10 Ways You Can Flourish with Nourishing Work

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Work can make you well – Really!

10 Ways to Flourish with Nourishing Work

(The reading time for this post is 5 minutes and 30 seconds)

Here are 3 reasons why you should read this post :

  1. You will build your wellbeing toolkit by developing familiarity with 10 ways to flourish at work.
  2. You will be given helpful links and resources to go further into learning about wellbeing.
  3. You are one of the first people to gain access to the free illustrated e-book on 22 Tools to Overcome Grumpiness.

Introduction. Here are 10 ways you can flourish by creating nourishing work. Embrace these ways as invitations to flourish. They are not rules or tips you must follow. You are the expert on your own wellbeing. I trust these ways will give you a nudge in the right direction. The 10 ways offer a pathway to wellbeing through well-doing because specific actions are strong triggers to install and sustain wellbeing at work. This post was created in conjunction with a one hour session I facilitated for Nurses Week at Winnipeg’s Heath Sciences Centre on May 11th.

Start your day off right. Establish a solid morning routine that gets you out of bed on the right foot. Perhaps you go for a jog first thing in the morning. Or you sit by the fireplace and hug a cup of coffee. Maybe you write for 20 minutes. Or you help your children pack their lunches for school. The specifics of your routine matter less than having a routine that effectively and efficiently triggers engaged wellbeing for you. I encourage you to read a post on my morning routine and follow this up by reading a new morning routine from someone each week at My Morning Routine.  Other people’s routines give clues and cues on how to construct a morning routine that works for us.

Begin each day at work with the double endings in mind. Stephen Covey said, “begin with the end in mind” while William Bridges said that all transitions begin with an end. Know the results you want from your work and also determine what must end for those results to be achieved. Take one or two minutes every day to determine the results you are working towards that week while also attending to what must end for wellbeing at work to begin. Perhaps you want to finish a project this week and you must stop focusing on a nonproductive task. Perhaps you want to improve patient safety and what must end is a strained relationship with your manager. Know your end (result) and your endings (what must stop).

Install PERMAnent wellbeing. I don’t care for the term positive psychology, it sounds too much like saccharine and pop psychology. I know that is not the case but I know many people are dismissive of positive psychology because of this. I appreciate the research behind this discipline, especially the work of Martin Seligman. Work offers opportunities for both happiness and wellbeing right inside the very work itself. Focus your work on building and sustaining PERMAnent flourishng with:  Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment.

Create meaning and purpose for your work. Know why you work. Perhaps you work because you love your hospital. Perhaps you work because you care about patients. Perhaps you work to give your family the best life possible. Perhaps you work because work enriches you with relationships and achievement. We do not necessarily share the same why of working. I encourage you to determine your meaning. Here is my response to the meaning of life and here is the response of so many others. Use these sources to create a strong scaffold of meaning to support you and your work. As the Dalai Lama declared, “The question is not to know what is the meaning of life, but what meaning I can give to my life.”

Don’t forget to wear your SCARF at work. David Rock knows about your brain at work. When we align our work with SCARF (Status, Consistency, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness) our work – works better. Here is a brief article outlining the SCARF model at work. Rock’s book on Your Brain at Work is an insightful book on how to improve your day with your brain in mind by following one couple as they proceed through their day and how they could improve their day if they made better use of their brains.

Pair Mindfulness-East with Mindfulness-West. Mindfulness has been sweeping through workplaces around the globe. Did you know there are two types of mindfulness? Mindfulness-East is the perspective of being aware in each moment of what you are doing without judgement. Mindfulness-West, developed by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer teaches how to engage by actively noticing novelty and distinctions. Noticing novelty and distinction engages you and brings new life to your day.

Eliminate the negative. Baumeister and others have shown that bad is stronger than good. Before you get busy trying to add additional things in your day as the pathway to wellbeing ensure you address your challenges and bad events. Some researchers suggest that bad is 2 or 3 times stronger than good. When something bad happens do not be surprised at how it can knock you off kilter and how it begins to feel so permanent, pervasive, and personal. Remember to eliminate the negative before accentuating the positive.

Take the 90 second pause. Jill Bolte Taylor a neuroscience researcher, who also suffered a stroke, suggested that the shelf life of an emotion is 90-seconds. This would mean that upset or negative emotions last only about 90 seconds, yet for many of us they seem to last a lifetime. Give yourself 90 seconds from the moment you feel a negative emotion before you act on that emotion. Also know that you must feed negative emotions every 90 seconds to keep them alive. We feed it with fragments of tragic stories, feelings of being wronged, and a multitude of tiny, almost unconscious mechanisms, to keep being upset. If you remain upset ninety seconds after the initial emotion it is essential to ask yourself: “How am I feeding my upset to keep it alive?”

Sharpen progress while making setbacks dull. Most of us fail to maximize the benefits of progress and minimize the impact of setbacks. Progress and setbacks are so pervasive at work and daily life that we often fail to fully notice their impact. End each day by taking a minute to notice what stood out for you that day. When progress stands out ensure you let it soak in, celebrate it, and determine ways to extend it. When setbacks stand out ensure you determine what you can do next, how you might learn from it, or what you can do to let it go. Know that work and life often resemble a real-life game of snakes and ladders and our job is to climb ladders and squish snakes.

Use 22 tools to exit from grumpiness. Does work make you grumpy or do you find yourself surrounded by grumpy people?. I just completed an e-book, illustrated by John Junson, on 22 Tools to Overcome Grumpiness. Click on the cover below to enjoy this short, yet engaging, book.

22 Tools to Overcome Grumpiness Cover

A Short Reading List. Here are 9 books that can improve your motivation and skills to flourish with nourishing work:

  • Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, The Progress Principle.
  • Ellen Langer, Mindfulness.
  • David Rock, Your Brain at Work.
  • Steven Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
  • Tom Rath, Are You Fully Charged?
  • William Bridges, Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes.
  • Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
  • Martin Seligman, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being
  • Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation is Everyday Life.

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David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada who works around the globe helping organizations and individuals improve work engagement and engaged wellbeing.

Employee Engagement Speaker - David Zinger

12 Lessons From A Personal Journey Through Burnout and Engagement

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From confession to commitment – engagement to burnout and back again.

Engagement is the diamond in the heart of work and wellbeing.

This post is personal. Work is personal. This is not a vague theoretical outline of disengagement. It is also not a quick fix. This post outlines a challenging journey from disengagement to re-engagement. Although it is personal, I believe embedded in the experience are insights and approaches that have universal application.

Overall, my work had been steadily progressing in employee engagement for over a decade but on November 3rd of 2016 I hit a work-related speed bump. It threw the meaning of my work up in the air, jolted me emotionally, and almost brought me to a complete stop.

On November 3rd I was teaching my employee engagement course in Dubai when between 10AM and 3PM, three of the fully engaged participants suffered major economic and career setbacks that were out of their control. Engagement is no guarantee against the consequences of major economic upheaval. That same evening my wife phoned to let me know that she had been let go from the leadership position she loved.  Susan had the highest level of work engagement I know but this was no guarantee of work, organizational appreciation, or career security. These two events on opposite sides of the globe hit me much harder than I first realized. I don’t believe burnout occurs in one day but November 3rd crystallized many other experiences, perceptions, and emotions over the previous year or two into my personal D-Day or Disengagement-Day.

Since that time I have been showing classic signs of burnout: exhaustion, cynicism, and the belief that my work was not making a difference. I felt that my work on engagement was equivalent to putting lipstick on camels. It isn’t very pretty and the camel is still a camel!

For the past decade, I had focused all my work on employee engagement from founding and hosting the 7400 member Employee Engagement Network to education and speeches around the world, and writing four books on work. Imagine my befuddlement as I found myself disengaged from my own work. I felt even worse because I had comprehensive knowledge and methods to engage yet I was stuck. I believe work can make us well but I was not well at this time. In addition, I have a 30-year background as an employee assistance counselor and university counselor educator. I was naively arrogant believing this knowledge and expertise would make me immune from disengagement.

My sense of being engaged in meaningful work was blurred and my vigor, dedication, and absorption to both initiate and complete tasks were depleted.  I did most of my work but not at the level I expected of myself, and a number of tasks languished on the proverbial back burner.

At 62, I contemplated retiring from work yet I know in my heart that there was much I still feel called to do and I am stubborn enough not to give up.

A month ago, I encountered and fully resonated with a new word: “inanition.” Inanition means being empty, lacking in enthusiasm, vitality, and vigor. It is a spiritual emptiness, loss of purpose, and exhaustion caused by a lack of nourishment. My work failed to nourish me — my energy was dwindling, and I was a living example of inanition.

My experience is personal but it also seems to have a sense of universality to it. Your causes of disengagement, burnout or inanition may be quite different than mine, ranging from job loss and unfair practices at work to a lack of psychological safety or major career setback, but the pathway out of inanition to full engagement may have commonalities.

Here are 12 points of navigational guidance if you should encounter burnout or inanition during your career journey:

  1. Know that your career is a hero’s journey. In every hero’s journey there will be dragons (challenges and setbacks) and that’s what makes the journey so engaging, challenging, and rewarding. Of course you might also get scorched.
  2. Be patient, kind and accepting. The road back to engagement may be longer than you think. It may ask you not to be so tough on yourself. It may demand acceptance without giving up or sinking into despondent acquiescence or depression.
  3. Being resilient doesn’t mean you are a rubber ball that can instantly bounce back after being thrown to the ground. Infuse gentle tenacity and personal stubbornness based on your career purpose or calling into your human and fallible resilience. Embrace human resilience and authentic unfolding during your career quest.
  4. Acknowledge that setbacks are inevitable and they do not signal the end of the journey.
  5. When you are on fire because of burnout it is time to stop, drop, and roll. Determine what you may need to stop doing and what you may need to drop from your work and expectations. Once you have determined what you need to stop don’t freeze — determine how you will roll into re-engagement and healthy wellbeing.
  6. Take personal responsibility for your own engagement without sinking into self-blame or guilt when things are not moving as fast as you hope or think they should.
  7. Embrace impermanence. Nothing lasts. Know that change can, and will, occur. As one Zen statement declares: spring comes and the grass grows by itself. Authentic optimists know that setbacks are seldom permanent, pervasive, and personal.
  8. Let others know what you are going through and ask for help. Depending upon the severity, duration and intensity of the experience consult with a career coach or employee assistance counselor. Every hero needs a mentor or Yoda.
  9. Know that meaning at work and in life is not something we find, it is something we create and at times need to re-create. I will no longer put lipstick on camels but I can offer many contributions to make work better for individuals and organizations.
  10. Overall in overcoming inanition, look more for trending than transformation. I wanted to wake up the next morning and have it all be gone and for me to be my old self but I now focus more on positive trending in a more engaged direction than magic cures or effortless engagement elixirs.
  11. There are always lessons embedded in every experience. Inanition may not be the most welcome of work teachers but the lessons learned may be invaluable for the rest of your career. I am still very much in the process of determining what I have learned and how that learning will shape the remainder of my career.
  12. Embrace life and work. Work is not a problem to be solved; it is an experience to be lived. Don’t miss it because you imagine or believe it should be something other than it is in the present moment.

Pregnancy and Rebirth. I trace back my challenges with burnout and engagement to November 3, 2016. Today is August 3, 2017. If November 3rd was D-Day than I consider August 3rd E-Day, the day of full re-engagement. This time frame of nine months seems very symbolic to me. I have gone through a very challenging pregnant pause in my work on engagement but it has given birth to a rebirth in engagement and burnout made stronger by the challenges and setbacks. I would be delighted to work with you and your organization to help you give rebirth to engagement while also preventing or alleviating burnout by focusing on everyday employee engagement.

I often offer a line in the conclusion of my writing and after writing this post, I know that this is as much a message to myself as to my readers: Engage along with me, the best is yet to be.

David Zinger is a human and fallible expert on employee engagement and believes that work can make us well, even if sometimes it doesn’t. He designed and delivers a powerful daily behavioural approach to preventing and overcoming burnout and installing authentic and powerful engagement. This education is offered in keynotes, workshops, courses, and masterclasses. David believes in the power of everyday employee engagement to make work better and to make us better.

Tomorrow is My Personal E-Day

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After 9 months of wandering in the disengagement wilderness, tomorrow will mark a rebirth in my work on engagement. It was a very unsatisfying and challenging “pregnant pause.”

Yet, it is encouraging and energizing to feel that I moved through this thick and gooey wilderness and at T.S. Eliot would declare, “arrive where I started and know the place as if for the first time.

I strongly encourage you to read tomorrow post on 12 Lessons from a Personal Journey Through Burnout.

David Zinger – Canadian Employee Engagement Speaker

David Zinger is a Canadian employee engagement speaker and expert who works around the world helping individuals and organizations engage in good work done well with others every day.

Everyday Employee Engagement: The Big Ask

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Employee and work engagement ask that we become fully absorbed in our work.

How willing are you to become fully absorbed? Do you recognize what that requires?

 

David Zinger is a Canadian employee engagement speaker and expert focused on the power of everyday employee engagement.

The Employee Engagement Network Site – Over 7400 Members!

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What started as a small labor of love for work and engagement has now exceeded over 7400 members.

The Employee Engagement Network is a boutique media network focused on all things related to employee engagement. We have a fresh cartoon each week. A selection of work and engagement videos. New blog posts daily. And a host of other resources.

I encourage you to visit once a week for 5 minutes to see what’s up in employee engagement. Visit now.

David Zinger is the founder and host of the employee engagement network.