Is Employee Engagement a Competitive Advantage?
By Michael Lee Stallard
Check out a wonderful column in today’s The New York Times written by one of my favorite journalists, Joe Nocera. The column is entitled, “The Sinatra of Southwest Feels the Love.” In it Nocera contrasts the sober atmosphere at American …

Sharing Vulnerabilities Builds Trust
By Mike King
I recently shared a brief life biography at my workplace as part of a team building and employee engagement emphasis at our monthly staff meeting. I was a bit apprehensive at the idea at first but once I prepared for it and wrapped my …

Click here if you want to keep track of the most recent blog posts relating to employee engagement. This is a special Netvibes page I set up to display lists of recent posts from Employee Engagement Network members.

Authors who are listed include: Terrence Seamon, Derek Irvine, Tim Wright, Steve Roesler, Michelle Malay Carter, Theresa Welbourne, Michael Lee Stallard, Rosa Say, Andrew Rondeau, Michael Kanazawa, Scott McArthur, Judy McLeish, Karl Edwards, Rocky Noe, Ajit Chouhan, Phil Gerbyshak, Anna Farmery, Deri Latimer, Ian Mckenzie, Scot Herrick, Kevin Eikenberry, Stephanie Oden, Keith Bossey, Michael Specht, Kris Robinson, Cindy Ventrice, and Barbara Truminski-Roberts.

Here are suggestions on how you can apply the concepts from the book:

• Scan the authors to find ideas.

• Read the book as a primer to create your own alphabet.

• Modify it to launch a team or project group exercise on engagement.

• Choose a letter each day and focus on that letter to enhance your own engagement or the engagement of others.

• Share the alphabets with others at work.

• Offer the book as a free resource during employee engagement workshops.

• Develop your own applications based on your interest and focus on employee engagement.

Here is a brief sample letter/concept from each author:

David Zinger,

Results and Relationships. Employee engagement works best when results are woven with relationships.

Tim Wright,  

Tempt. Can you make a chance to engage seem like a sandbox your people can play in? Tempt them: not necessarily with a get-this-done-and-you-get-a-reward message. Make the engagement temptation meaningful and valuable of its own sake. 

Terrence Seamon,  

Unleash - Take the leash off of employees. Trust. Turn them loose! 

Steve Roesler,   

Isolate: Only problems, not people. 

Lisa Forsyth, 

Failure. An engaged employee is more likely to fail, because we are more likely to fail when we stretch ourselves. Yet we often try to soften failure by calling it an oversight, a mistake, or an unfortunate result. This disavowal of failure reinforces fear of failure, so take back ownership of the word failure for the sake of engagement. Encourage self-reliant problem solving, engage employees in the redefinition of failure, and celebrate failing forward. 

Raven Young,  

Communication: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” ~ George Bernard Shaw  

Robert Morris,  

Authenticity. Natives of Maine are renowned for their colorful sayings, such as “Won’t say he’s dishonest but if he wants to get his cows to come home, he’s gotta get someone else to call ‘em.” If trust is the “glue” of sustained relationships, it is the result of being authentic. 

Ken Milloy,

Deliver: Too often you make promises or indicate you will get back to us on something - please remember that by delivering on those promises you build credibility and trust  - and if we can rely on you, rest assured you can rely on us.

Stephen McPherson,  

Character – your character is the framework of engagement 

George Reavis,

Gratitude.  Another of the five principle ingredients of engagement.  Without gratitude one cannot stay engaged for the long-term.  Fostered by the activity of thanking others which in turn provides recognition and appreciation. 

Ian Buckingham,  

Z – Zoo! Whatever formal engagement strategies there may be it’s always going to be a fantastic, colourful jungle out there with grapevines aplenty so open those cages and connect with the people. 

Angela Maiers, 

Kaizen: Kaizen is the Japanese term for “continuous improvement”, a concept we should take to heart if we want students to achieve their personal and professional best. Small changes, if done every day, can make a big impact over time. By creating an environment of Kaizen, reflection becomes part of the daily work and conversations. Continuous improvement an only be achieved, with continuous reflection.  And with continuous reflection, students will become more and more engaged in their growth and learning.

Click here to download a free PDF copy of the book.

Have you taken a strength inventory? Quick, what were your strengths?

Chances are you have not even taken this baby step in workplace strength development. And if you did, chances are that you got a list that is sitting in some binder or book rather than being integrated into what you do everyday at work.

Is your work strength based? I am not talking about lifting weights and bulging muscles. Rather, do you know what you are best at and do you bring your best to work everyday in a variety of ways?

Do you work at ensuring that all employees are using their strengths? How do you determine strengths? How do you go beyond listing strengths to living strengths and using them in the service of results, others and the organization?

Strength based leadership is a core foundation of this website. As we move into spring 2008, I will rekindle the strengths approach to encourage you to refresh your strengths development. When leadership is strength based and employees are operating from their strengths you will experience high levels of engagement and results.

I want to re-introduce the strength-based focus to work by offering some nuggets from earlier posts. I will do this over the next few weeks and then bring a fresh focus to strength based work. If you are intrigued by the nugget, I encourage you to click on the title as this will take you to the original article.

On Peter Drucker (November 11, 2005)

This was the very first post on strength based work, written on the day Peter Drucker died. Peter Drucker, one of the foremost management experts and writers, wrote a very important article on Managing Oneself. in the Harvard Business Review March-April. 1999: 65-70. The essence of managing oneself was to know our strengths and to fully develop a strength-based leadership approach. Here is a short strength burst from the article.

Drucker challenged each of us to ask ourselves: What are my strengths? How do I perform? What are my values? Where do I belong? What should my contribution be?

Don’t try to change yourself, Drucker cautioned. Instead, concentrate on improving the skills you have and accepting assignments that are tailored to your individual way of working. If you do that, you can transform yourself from an ordinary worker into an outstanding performer.

Chess not Checkers (December 2005)

Marcus Buckingham said the right move for leaders is to see their talent management as chess not checkers. Don’t treat everyone the same and limit their work and career moves. Recognize the differences and strengths of each individual and maximize the contribution of each person’s strengths to the purposes of the organization.

Here is a quote from the Wharton business article about Buckingham: How to tell a good manager from a bad manager? According to Buckingham, it’s simple: Bad managers play checkers. Good managers play chess. The good manager knows that not all employees work the same way. They know if they are to achieve success, they must put their employees in a position where they will be able to use their strengths.

The Free & Powerful VIA Signature Strenght Inventory (March 2006)

The foundation of Strength Based Leadership is the identification and application of strengths. There are numerous pathways to strength identification but one of my favorite tools is the VIA Signature Strength Inventory at http://www.authentichappiness.org/. There is no charge to complete the inventory and receive your results. I appreciate the solid psychological research behind the inventory and the sharp focus on your top 5 signature strengths out of a possible 24 strengths.

Here are a few statements about signature strengths from Martin Seligman’s classic book, Authentic Happiness.

Our life task is to deploy our signature strengths and virtues in the major realms of living: work, love, parenting, and finding purpose. Personal meaning is the attachment of your signature strengths to something larger than yourself.

At work, Seligman believed that re-crafting your job to deploy your strengths every day can change your career into a calling. Your work can be more satisfying than it is now by using your signature strengths at work more often.

Watch for future posts on achieving strength based approaches in the workplace.

Photo credit: 2005 Mar-Austin Type Tour-032 - Hyde Park Gym Muscle by http://flickr.com/photos/mrflip/8916916/

by David Zinger

They are my favorite articles out of a possible 84 articles I wrote since July. I chose them based on how helpful they can be to the reader and how they also express my specific perspectives on employee engagement.

As an extra, I included a bonus article on engagement and retirement.

9. The Employee Engagement Six Pack. This article uses the six pack of aircraft instruments to look at six ways to assess employee engagement.

10.  Zengagement. This was a series of over 35 very short posts/articles with an image and a quotation to foster your thinking or inspiration on employee engagement.

***

Bonus Article: Blogging break…Retire Now. This article examines retirement less of a state and more as a way of approaching our work and our lives.

Photo Credit: Number 10 by http://flickr.com/photos/spilt-milk/164145237/

David Zinger is devoted to working with employee engagement

to foster results that matter for all.

Crucial Conversations can improve employee engagement. When employees feel safe because of mutual respect and mutual purpose they are more likely to engage in work.

I have been fortunate over the past year to teach numerous Crucial Conversations courses.

Crucial Conversations is a great approach to getting results and building relationships when the stakes are high, there are differing opinions, and there are strong emotions.

The method is not designed specifically for employee engagement but I have seen what a strong tool it can be to reach out to disengaged workers and to work with conflicts that may begin to sow the seeds of disengagement if they are not dealt with candidly and respectfully.

There are many tools to work with employee engagement and I believe Crucial Conversations is an exquisite tool in the tool-belt of managers and leaders who foster high levels of employee engagement while getting results and building relationships.

Here are 4 actions you can take right now to improve your results and relationships:

1. Read the book: Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes Are High.
2. Visit the Vitalsmarts website to learn more about Crucial Conversations and the newest book, The Influencer.
3. Subscribe to the Crucial Skills newsletter. This is one of my top 5 newsletters - I always look forward to it appearing in my inbox.
4. Enroll in a Crucial Conversations workshop to really develop your skills.

Photo Credit: Lattice by http://flickr.com/photos/oddwick/1039909856/

* * * * *

Contact David Zinger to learn about how you can leverage employee engagement to produce results that matter for everyone in your workplace.

Email: dzinger@shaw.ca ~ Phone 204 254 2103 ~ Website: www.davidzinger.com.

Click here if the video does not load on the page you are viewing. 

The Engaging Points of the video are:

• Loving the term employee engagement
• Employee engagement is not just a new word for motivation.
• When we engage fully at work we may also fully engage at home.
• Employee engagement is not sucking more discretionary effort out of people.
• Employee engagement must be for the benefit of all.
• To be successful employee engagement will need to transform into workplace engagement.

* * * * *

David Zinger is commited to helping employees, leaders, and organizations ensure that employee engagement is for the benefit of all. For more information contact David dzinger@shaw.ca or (204) 254-2130.

Get The Point:

• Trust is a must or employee engagement is a bust.
• Find the people who make a difference and integrate their story into your engagement culture.
• When it comes to employee engagement know your score.
• An employee engagement gulf.

The Canadian Managment Centre focused on Human Resources Management Tip - A Trusting Relationship Retains Key Employees. The article looks at the importance of trust in keeping employees. The article includes a top 10 list of how managers can build trust including: (1) Spot an employee’s unique talent or skill and coach him/her to get the very best out of that. (2) Do not micro-manage; give employees space to find their own solutions. (3) Provide important information rather than holding on to it for political reasons.

Michael McKinney wrote about turning the difference makers into cultural stories based on Quint Studer’s book on Results that Last: make a conscious effort to look for and collect the stories of those people that go above and beyond and know when to break the rules in order to make a difference. Then retell them over and over to make them a part of the organization’s culture. The stories should have a behavior-oriented point and help people to connect their situation to that of the heroes in the story. “Finding your heroes and recognizing their behavior is key because recognized and rewarded behavior is repeated.”

Scorecard Metrics for HR focused on Some Useful HR Metrics for Large Organizations. Here is a snippet on employee engagement: Another important aspect of HR to measure is what is known as employee engagement. This refers to the relationship between employees and the management. High employee engagement would mean that employees tend to value their employment, and hence stay with the company as productive members. The metrics in this category take the form of employee survey results that can gauge employee satisfaction. For instance, the percentage of employees who look forward to coming to work is a useful metric, as is the percentage that feels comfortable with current management practices.

Gulf companies fail to engage employees for the long-term. Here are a couple of statistics from a November 2007 study in the Gulf: Fewer than half of Gulf employees think their organisation manages to attract the best talent or engage them to perform once they are inside the corporation. Even fewer (just over one third of employees) think their companies are good at holding on to the best talent.

John Maeda. a professor in MIT’s Meida Lab, is the master of simplicity. He wrote a compelling book, The Laws of Simplicity.

In this article I apply Maeda’s 10 laws and 3 keys of simplicity to employee engagement.

TEN LAWS

1. REDUCE. The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction. What can you reduce from work and the organization that can enhance employee engagement. Perhaps you can remove constricting policies or physical barriers between people.

2. ORGANIZE. Organization makes a system of many appear fewer. There are many variable influencing employee engagement. Strive to organize them into effective categories. For example I like to organize employee engagement interventions into 3 dimensions: organizational, leadership, and employee.

3. TIME. Savings in time feels like simplicity. Where can time be saved to make work simpler and yet more productive and powerful?

4. LEARN. Learn all you can about employee engagement. Learn what engages you. Learn what experts offer. Mostly in a leadership position, learn from the people closest to engagement - yourself and the employees!

5. DIFFERENCES. Simplicity and complexity need each other. Engagement must be interspersed with periods of disengagement.

6. CONTEXT. What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral. If you want to enhance engagement look to change the context of work or the working environment and watch behavior change because of this “peripheral” change.

7. EMOTION. More emotions are better than less. Emotion is the motion of engagement. Create emotions of caring and satisfaction and belonging. Let employees know they matter.

8. TRUST. In simplicity we trust. Employee engagement must be based on trust and belief. Effective employee engagement is based of mutual purpose and benefit for all.

9. FAILURE. Some things can never be made simple. As you strive to simplify employee engagement keep your eyes open for failure and what can be learned from this.

10. THE ONE. Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful. What obvious drudgery can be removed from work so that the most meaningful of efforts can be added to the employee’s effort and experience.

THREE KEYS

1. AWAY. More appears like less by simply moving it far, far away. Can you keep the less urgent and unimportant disengaging work far away?

2. OPEN. Openness simplifies complexity. Make your organization open to employees. Open book management has been a powerful way to gain engagement from many employees as they become a real business partner in an organization. Can you use the tools of Web 2.0 to create an open environment — open to communication from all levels and equally open to change because of this communication?

3. POWER. Use less, gain more. Empowerment can be a pathway to engagement and reduction of hierarchical power can create more power within employees to power up their own engagement.

I encourage you to read Maeda’s book and focus on how you can design simple employee engagement at your work.

Photo Credit: Simplicity by http://flickr.com/photos/justintosh/576342875/

David Zinger, M.Ed

dzinger@shaw.ca

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. the sun shines not on us, but in us; the rivers flow not past, but through us. ~ John Muir

Employee engagement is:

Connection to our authentic self.

Connection to our work.

Connection to others.

Connection to family.

Connection to play.

Connection to leaders.

Connection to customers.

Connection to the organization.

Connection to peers.

Connection to meaning.

Connection to emotion.

Connection to thoughts.

Connection to energy.

Connection to now.

Connection to living.

Connection to love.

To disengage is to disconnect.

My hope for you is that employee engagement is a powerful way for you to be fully connected!

Photo Credit: handshake II by http://flickr.com/photos/ooohoooh/1350774047/

David Zinger, M.Ed.

Mike Morrison, the Dean of Toyota University, wrote a wonderful book: The Other Side of the Card: Where Your Authentic Leadership Story Begins. Click here to read a previous article on this book.

I also receive Mike’s newsletter and appreciate the leadership “wake up” calls he sends out.  I loved a recent newsletter about “all in.” Mike used the poker strategy of “all in” to look at when do we go “all in” at work.

Here is a section from that newsletter:

Very few of our activities ever reach this level of commitment - especially in our organizational lives where the game is much more about positioning, politics, and being opportunistic. …I am curious to know the things in your work life where you personally are “all in.”  By “all in” . . . I mean fully committed to a high-level action.  Not just, “I support the initiative but I’m still waiting to see if it gains more momentum across the organization.”  Or, worse yet, “I’m waiting for my boss to weigh in first.” When we are “all in” - we gain the special powers that come from making a commitment.  We are released from the anxiety of waiting and making small incremental gestures - and rewarded with a feeling of confidence for stepping forward.  We also gain access to the additional resources that come our way as others will always gravitate to action, meaning, and leadership. 

Where are you “all in”?  It’s a great question.  Ask your colleagues and team members.  It will give you a sense of what matters most.  It will also give you great insight into the culture - cautious or courageous?  As leaders, we live on the “other side of the card” - willing to take the kinds of risk that create meaningful change!

You can learn more about Mike Morrison and get additional resources at: www.theothersideofthecard.com

When you think about employee engagement, are you all in?

Photo Credit: all in … by http://flickr.com/photos/rezavaziri/778539866/

This very moment.

Right now, right here is a great opportunity. That is the moment you are you, as you really are, prior to the germination of thinking. For this you must be in time; you must be at the moment where you cannot think about a previous moment or a following moment. ~ Dainin Katagiri, Each Moment Is the Universe.

Photo Credit: Yellow rose of friendship http://flickr.com/photos/spiralz/12284170/

How do you create a breakthrough to achieve fuller employee engagement for yourself and the people you work with? Often we feel stuck or disengaged. We want a breakthrough. But we are not sure how to proceed or even get started.

Lisa Haneberg offers a solution in her book: Two Weeks to a Breakthrough.

Lisa moves beyond simplistic pop psychology or self-management and offers a very practical and explicit method to get fully engaged.

She recommends taking 2 weeks to create the breakthrough and gives you guidance each day on how to proceed. The daily practice is the key to move beyond dreaming of change and breakthroughs to zooming towards your goal.

Each day is configured slightly differently but the practice consists of 3 fundamental components:

1. Share your goal with others
2. Take action that support your goal
3. Make request that will help you move towards your goal

Share-Action-Request makes our breakthrough method public, tangible, and connected. I know one of the first times I tried this method I let the sharing part of the method slip. I thought I could just do it on my own. I now realize how important this was to create what I call an accountability allies - others who will both support and challenge me on my work.

Here is a short outline on the approach if you are a leader striving towards creating more engagement in your workplace:

• You will get specific about what you are trying to achieve.
• You will be talking with many people about your plans and actions to foster fuller employee engagement.
• You will be taking multiple actions to increase engagement.
• You will be requesting help - full employee engagement can not be achieved on your own.
• You can monitor the progress and results.

One thing I love about Two Weeks to a Breakthrough is how short it is. If you did not get the results you hoped for you can start again with a fresh two weeks and use what you learned from the last breakthrough approach to ensure more success.

Fostering high levels of employee engagement will be both a service and a contribution you make to your employees and the organization.

How about it? What are you planning to do for the next 2 weeks? I hope you make a break for full employee engagement.

Get Perking:

1. Read Lisa’s book: Two Weeks to a Breakthrough.
2. Visit and engage in Lisa’s breakthrough blog.
3. Learn from your own experience, apply the method and monitor results.

Do you hear what I hear?

Who are you listening to in relationship to employee engagement? You can listen to the work of management consultants or university professors but I encourage you to go to the source. Listen to the people in your family and workplace.

Here are 4 snippets I heard this week from family and friends in regards to employee engagement. I did not ask for any of these statements they simply came up in our conversations.

From my 15 year old son who washes dishes for a restaurant in Winnipeg

I really like working with that guy. We have fun, we don’t take it too seriously but we get the job done.

From a health care manager talking about a management colleague

She knows so much but she is letting the management of her staff get to her and treating them in a way that is creating more conflict rather than increased engagement. I worked in that unit and I had to make some unpopular decision but I kept informing the staff, letting them know the rationale, telling them how tough this was, and at the end they were even thanking me even though I had to ask so much extra from them.

From a real estate manager

I have a new direct report. He is good but I have to keep watching how I treat him. It took me a year to find him and I don’t want to have to look for someone else.

From my fifteen year old daughter at the end of 3 weeks of volunteer work with autistic children

I have learned so much from those children. They are so interesting and do such neat things. It is funny and a challenge but I love working with them.

Get Engaged:

1. If you really want to learn about grass roots employee engagement listen to the people in your family, social circles, and workplace every day. How engaged are they? What factors influence their engagement?
2. Listen to their perspective and determine how you can apply the learning to yourself or with other people at work.

Joseph Libertia has written a fine short post on how to overcome Bad Boss syndrome with emotional intelligence. He cites the common statement that people don’t leave organizations, they leave leaders. Bad bosses are not always jerks or worse. Joseph listed some of the reasons for being a bad boss:

• Have a lot on your plate
• Are under pressure to perform
• May be in over your head
• Don’t know a better way
• Are scared
• Fight to stay in control
• Have you identity and value attached to the results you produce
• Don’t get the support you need

Joseph Liberti offers 5 solid suggestions on how to apply emotional intelligence to forge better relationships with your employees. He writes,

Solicit people’s feelings and just listen. A leader I once had as a coaching client started by simply asking, genuinely, “And how do you feel about that?” in conversations with direct reports about current issues. and improved relationships. You don’t have to fix them. Just hear them!

Go to Emotional Intelligence at Work to read Joseph’s other suggestions. While you are there, I encourage you to read more articles from his blog by clicking here.

Are you flying with a six pack of employee engagement?

In this case, I don’t mean half a dozen beers.

The six essential instruments in a light aircraft are often referred to as the six pack:

• airspeed indicator
• attitude indicator
• altimeter
• turn coordinator
• heading indicator
• vertical speed indicator

Do you monitor 6 strong “indications” of your employee engagement to get you successfully to your destination?

1. Airspeed indicator - how fast can you move towards your goal?
2. Attitude indicator - is everyone maintaining a strong and positive attitude and avoiding too much wobble?
3. Altimeter - how high can you climb with fully engaged employees?
4. Turn coordinator - are you responsive to change to turn back to employee engagement if you begin to drift off course? Can you feel exhilarated while making a steep turn?
5. Heading indicator - do you stay vigilant about where you are headed?
6. Vertical speed indicator - how quickly can you climb to new levels of employee engagement?

Grab a coffee, jump into the workplace cockpit, and prepare to take off with these indicators of employee engagement.

Of course, you could also grab a six pack of beer or root beer and have a down-to-earth discussion about employee engagement with the team of people you work with.

At the turn of this century, the Campbell Soup Company’s employee engagement was not “mmm mmm good.” In addition, soup sales were stagnant and the stock was slumping. The executive wanted to assess employee engagement but many employees, including managers, did not want to complete the anonymous Gallup employee engagement questionnaire and when the results were in, Gallup told Douglas Conant, the CEO, that it was the worst level of employee engagement they had ever seen.

Douglas Conant now focuses as much on employee engagement as he does on soup, manufacturing facilities, and marketing efforts:

Every day, you’ve got to be making deposits in the emotional bank account of your company. When people do something right, you have to celebrate it, and then you have to celebrate it again. And if they do something wrong, you have to thoughtfully call them on it, because this isn’t a patronizing culture, it’s a performance culture.

Conant believes that lifetime loyalty is a thing of the past, but said that doesn’t worry the young people joining Campbell Soup today right out of college.

They are not looking for a job for life; they want meaningful experiences where they can do something special and contribute. It’s not about security. It’s about making a better world.

Get Perking:

1. Heat up performance and engagement for the benefit of employees and the organization by making the workplace a better place to be.
2. Carefully craft the ingredients in your recipe to create chicken soup for the employee engagement soul? Make the cultural broth of your workplace performance based not patronizing or penalizing.
3. Transform your organization so that employees are slurping up nourishing work and saying, “mmm, mmm, good” rather than cracking under too many demands, lack of meaning and trust, and an increasing sense of disconnection from the work and each other.
4. Click here to read the New Jersey Star-Ledger article that inspired this post.

TIME OUT!

This is the week with July 4th in the United States and Canada Day, on July 1, in Canada. Many people, especially with children, use July to start their summer holidays and students have a long “time out” from school. I hope you have or had a good time on your holiday.

This leads into the post for today - the importance of time out or disengagement to enhance engagement.

Employee engagement is not a 24/7 way of being. Our engagement levels should fluctuate during the day, during the week, and during the year. Our energy levels change, the demands of work increase and decrease, and relationships at work can also fluctuate. Our rest and recovery can fuel our performance and give us a much needed perspective on our direction.

Do you consciously disengage to foster higher levels of engagement?

Much like a time out during a basketball game where the players huddle to get ready for the next few plays we must also consciously disengage from work to strategize for more efficient and effective performance. We need to pause or come to a complete stop to determine our next step.

Get Perking:

1. Take time to savor and smell the coffee.
2. Turn your phone or blackberry off for parts of the day. Do you really need to be available 24/7?
3. Don’t bring work home with you - physically or mentally.
4. Engage in an activity that takes your mind completely off of work — from playing with children to even playing basketball.
5. After every 60 to 90 minutes of work take a few minutes to stand up, stretch, or walk around the office.

Foster more powerful employee engagement by making the effort to also consciously disengage from work. As Jon Kabat-Zinn wrote: you can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf.

Have you thought about how the world and work is changing and what this means to employees, leaders and organizations who want to foster and maintain high levels of employee engagement?

I encourage you to view these 67 slides on change - shiftHappens:

[slideshare id=33834&doc=shift-happens-23665&w=425]

After viewing the slides what are you thoughts and ideas about fostering employee engagement?

Here are a few of my thoughts:

• Maybe being one in a million is not such a big thing.
• How unique are we and how much do we experience a sense of entitlement?
• How do we keep people engaged as they work in so many different jobs over their careers?
• We need to look beyond Canada and the United States to see what is going on. We need to look beyond today to know how to respond. We can look at history to notice that the landscape of work has changed. Are we open to changing approaches to employee engagement? For example, when you look at how engaged people are with text messaging are you creating a method to make use of this medium to enhance employee engagement?
• 50% of the workforce has worked for their company for less than 5 years. What does this mean for commitment and engagement?
• Are you visiting one of the largest countries —- MySpace?
• Looking at another type of engagement: 1 in 8 couples married last year in the United States met online. What are your methods to meet online with employees to foster employee and workplace engagement.

Now that you have focused on shiftHappens, how are you going to apply it to employee engagement?

As things keep shifting we need good questions much more than ready made answers.

Employee Engagement: Monday Morning Percolator #16

by David Zinger

Stories engage us and we can foster engagement with stories. This is the final of 6 reviews about the book: Made to Stick. Make your ideas sticky by making them simple, unexpected, concrete, credible and emotional as you communicate your ideas within stories.

Stories are a way to embrace the principles of Made to Stick. They are concrete, they often have both unexpected and emotional elements, they can be simple. You might not even have to create a story. You may just need to take some time to spot the stories that come out of experiences.

Take this quick memory test:

1. What do you remember about the story of the 3 little pigs?
2. What is the plot of the tortoise and the hare?
3. What is your organization’s strategic plan?
4. What percentage of your employees are fully engaged at work?

Chances are you will remember stories better than facts and figures. Do you also remember to use stories to make your ideas stick? Stories are the glue that holds listener to speaker and reader to writer.

The power of story is

it provides simulation (knowledge about how to act) and inspiration (motivation to act)…a credible idea makes people believe. An emotional idea makes people care…the right stories make people act.

For example the authors cite the use of Jared’s inspirational story as a spokesperson for Subway. His story mobilized people to eat at Subway after Jared lost so much weight from his original 425 pounds after eating only Subway food for a year. It took some perceptive people within the Subway organization to spot the power of this story and to recognize the value and stickiness of the story.

… springboard stories mobilize people to act. Stories focus people on potential solutions. Telling stories with visible goals and barriers shifts the audience into a problem-solving mode.

There are 3 main structures that create effective stories. When you are trying to spot stories to foster engagement look for stories that have the themes of overcoming challenges, making connections or creative development. A really good  story might have all three themes woven into the telling.

To start filming a movie a director may shout: lights, camera, action! Use engagement stories and engaging stories to enlighten, help people get the picture, and create action to move into high levels of employee engagement.

Marcus Buckingham, a leader in the strengths approach to work, has a 6 part DVD series about putting our strengths to work: Trombone Player Wanted. 

Buckingham is a skilled speaker, the strength focus is vital for employee engagement, yet what adds stickiness to the 6 videos is the use of a story involving a young boy who is stuck playing the trombone in the school band yet really wants to be a percussionist. By the end of the final video, the boy has found someone else who loves the trombone to take his place and he is drumming with delight. The story in relationship to strengths development embraced challenge, connection and creativity. The school band subplot demonstrated that it wasn’t easy, it was important, and if a young boy can do this than any of us who are disengaged at work can make moves to foster much richer levels of employee engagement.

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Added bonus to the Monday Morning Percolator:  If you would like to read David Zinger’s 18 page free booklet on the videos with suggestions for action click on the following link to a PDF E-booklet .

Trombone Player Wanted - Free E-Booklet.

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Get Perking:

1. Uncover the stories of your workplace or life that can be shared to mobilize others into engaged action.
2. If you are going to make a major presentation on employee engagement try ditching the PowerPoint slides and hitching your message to 3 or 4 powerful stories that create a real power point of engagement between you and the audience.
3. When you spot a good story develop a method to keep track of it for later use. This can be as simple as creating a document, call it stories, and everytime you encounter an experience that would make a good story put a few key words and perhaps a title in the document to remind you of the story. If you don’t track your stories you can easily lose that you could use. Review the document when you are looking for a good story to make employee engagement sticky and to mobilize actions.

Picture credit: gluey harmony by http://flickr.com/photos/giveawayboy/414806681/

Benjamin Zander is a master of engagement. His passion for music and to bring out the best is very inspirational. Read the following statement he makes as he coaches a student:

We are about contribution, that’s what our job is … everyone was clear you contributed passion to the people in this room. Did you do it better than the next violinist, or did he do better than a pianist? I don’t care, because in contribution, there is no better!

Now: Watch a 6 minute video clip of Ben at work.

Can you change your view of employee engagement and performance management into passionate contribution? There is no better.

Picture credit: rosita by http://flickr.com/photos/schaaflicht/346073/