Yes! outlines 50 scientifically proven ways to be persuasive.

If you want to influence others to higher levels of employee engagement strive to enhance your request with the personal touch.

An ounce of personalized extra effort is worth a pound of persuasion. the more personalized you make a request, the more likely you’ll be to get someone to agree that request. More specifically, this research shows that in the office or in the community, a personalized sticky not could highlight the importance of your reports and communications and prevent them from becoming the proverbial needle in a haystack of other reports, letters, and mailings that are also vying for attention. What’s more, the timeliness and quality of compliance with your request are likely to be enhance as well.

Photo credit: and yes I said yes by http://www.flickr.com/photos/itsgreg/707054525/

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

When we are divided or disconnected how can we expect anything different than disengagement.

To be humble is not to make comparsions. Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor smaller, than anything else in the universe. It is nothing, yet at the same time one with everything. ~Dag Hammarskjöld

Photo Credit: this city will squash you by http://flickr.com/photos/mugley/1567333379/

David Zinger

The authors present 95 theses about the changes in business. I encourage you to view the slide-show of the 95 theses and think about them in relationship to employee engagement and internal communication and marketing within the organization.

Here are 4 sample theses out of the 95 the authors have created:

3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

15. In just a few more years, the current homogenized “voice” of business — the sound of mission statements and brochures — will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.

16. Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.

21. Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. they need to get a sense of humor.

Are you on the cluetrain? Slide into the 95 statements below and determine what you can do to improve employee engagement within your organization.

| View | Upload your own

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.

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

These videos will be 1 to 3 minutes long and offer you quick tips or perspectives on leadership. The primary focus will be on the topics of strength based leadership and employee engagement.

Watch for more videos on this site and better videos as we progress into 2008.

The great question about leadership, about taking real steps on the pilgrim’s path, is the great question of any individual life: how to make everything more personal. How to understand life or leadership not as an abstract path involving devious strategies but more like an inhabitation, a way of life, a conversation, a captaincy; an expression of individual nature and gifts and a familiarity with the specific nature of your own desires and fears. In a conversation there is always more than one voice, and one of the voices must be our own or it is no conversation at at all (p55-56).~ David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea.

Photo Credit: Auroville 014 —– Colour Purple by http://flickr.com/photos/pandiyan/133235475/

Thank you Michelle, I am so tired of seeing books or articles that pair motivation with carrots. We are not rabbits and the only carrot we are looking for is a diamond or high quality level of workplace engagement for all.

Michelle believes that what employees want is to use their gifts and talents to accomplish work that aligns with their interests. Here is the list of what they need:

• Context, context, context – surrounding their role relative to strategy, their role relative to their managers, their role relative to their peers, their role relative to others within the organization, and about the task’s they’ve been assigned.
• Clear accountabilities and authorities
• Proper task assignment
• Resources to get the job done – time, money, training, their manager’s paving the way for access to others, the use of others, information from others
• Regular feedback on performance with the opportunity to account for their decisions
• Assessments based on overall effectiveness in light of prevailing conditions, rather than by the numbers only
• Fair pay
• Their manager’s willingness to address performance issues or inappropriate behavior

I encourage you to visit Mission Minded Management by Michelle Malay Carter and read her insightful posts on management and employee engagement.

David Zinger

Here is a short snippet from PR News Online:

I see this as an enormous opportunity for communications executives, as they are the common denominator – at least they should be – in every business function; after all, they have their hands in employee, customer, media investor and human relations, internal and external outreach, and issues management. Because the connection between employee relations and customer relations is obvious, if not quantifiable – Matt Gonring, a consultant with Gagen MacDonald, has conducted research that inextricably links employee engagement to customer loyalty – it should be natural to address one in order to positively impact the other.

How do you enhance employee retention?

John Eckmire did an excellent job of interviewing and writing about his podcast with Leigh Branham on the 7 reasons employees leave. This was one podcast in a series that will be conducted on the Canadian Management Centre blog. I thought the podcast was well conducted and informative. I appreciated that in addition to the audio portion the post included a detailed interview summary.

Here are a few tidbits from the session:

• Create a feedback rich environment.
• One of the largest “push” factors employees face is the feeling of being undervalued for the contributions they make to a company.
• Given the constraints on time which exist within every organization managers believe that they are too busy doing work to manage people.
• Don’t let two weeks pass by without checking in with each employee - provide frequent feedback.
• Great managers are those who act more like athletic coaches offering “positive neutral feedback” on a continual basis.

Click here to listen to this 18 minute podcast and learn more about the following 7 reasons employees leave:

1. It’s not what they expected
2. Bad person-job fit
3. No feedback and coaching
4. No career growth or learning
5. Feel devalued/unrecognized
6. Feel overworked/stressed out
7. Don’t trust senior leaders

The last Monday Morning Percolator outlined 7 organizational inputs to foster employee engagement. This post will outline the key inputs into employee engagement from leaders and managers within the organization.

Engage yourself. Before you can foster or enhance the engagement of employees, never lose sight that you are one of those employees. Keep a focus on your own levels of employee engagement as you also champion engagement for others.

Hold engaging conversations. Avoid making employee engagement an announcement or policy. Ensure your employee engagement has a grass roots conversational quality to it. Talk with your employees. Doc Searls talking about conversational marketing stated: conversations are about talking, not announcing. They’re about listening, not surveying. They’re about paying attention, not getting attention. In many ways, employee engagement is less about what you put in and more about what you draw out of employees.

Be strong and strengthen others. Employees who work from their strengths and have work designed around their strengths are more engaged. As leaders, we must also talk with people about their strengths. There are many pathways to strengths. Click here to read my strength based leadership articles if you would like to learn more.

Apply the simple and significant. I am passionate about employee engagement and believe it makes a huge difference for all in the workplace and I recognize how many things the average leader must attend to. It is not my intention to make employee engagement an imposition in an already overcrowded day. I encourage you to find the simplest yet most significant thing you can do to advance employee engagement.

Engage the clutch. My experience with the majority of leaders in organizations is that they respond to the full slate of demands with an excess of engagement and hours worked. We must regularly engage the clutch and go to neutral. Engaged leaders also find time for rest, recovery, and renewal. The path to full engagement also involves periods of disengagement — our walk to the desert for renewal.

Contact David Zinger if you would like more information.

Picture Credit: Desert Leaders by http://flickr.com/photos/hamed/327939900/

 I strongly encourage you to read the article: Employee Engagement  from the blog,  Yearning Mice on Fire: Random Ravings From the Midnight Hours.

Here are some of Dee’s words:

Employee engagement. It is the latest and greatest corporate buzz phrase, at least for the corporation I work for. But what does it mean?

If you ask the company it is a quotient based on what an employee says about the corporation, their strivings to do for the company, and whether the employees are staying with the company over the long-term or not. If you ask the employee, especially the ones who have been deemed “not engaged”, it is the level of abuse you are willing to put up with for the salary and benefits you receive.

Just like the abusive parent who sits at the table with the liquor and smokes while moaning that their children just don’t love them, the corporation’s board of directors spends a great deal of time wondering where it all went wrong. Surveys are done and staff meetings are called to go over the results. The presenter always says the same thing, “We just don’t know why you’re not engaged.” Anyone who tries to explain it to them is quickly shut up and shuffled out the door.

You’ve probably guessed by now that I am “not engaged” at work. It’s hard to care about the corporation when the corporation has made it clear that they don’t care about you. Programs put into place to benefit the employee are used instead to control and manipulate them. Incentives are used to create tension and discord between employees. The contract is interpreted and re-interpreted constantly until very few of us are even sure what the words mean anymore. Information in place to be used by all employees is instead withheld and/ or requests for information are instead funnelled to your manager who berates and threatens you. Pride in a job well done has been twisted to mean that we must give 150% effort in 50% of the time and for 30% of the costs.

I encourage you to read the full post by Dee and determine how you would respond to her if you were a leader in the organization she talked about.

By the way, I believe this is much more than just one person’s perspective on employee engagement - I believe that many employees feel this way.

David Zinger specializes in employee engagement.

Email David at dzinger@shaw.ca

There are a plethora of methods and approaches to fostering and enhancing employee engagement. Actions can be launched by individuals, leaders, and organizations. When all 3 are working together we move beyond simple employee engagement to workplace engagement with engagement for all!

Yet, the workplace of today is asking more and more from everyone with less and less time to stop and determine what to do and how to do it. If we are given too many things to do we may give up or avoid them simply because we are overwhelmed and there are too many things to do already. It can be a challenge simply to remember to focus on employee engagement.

I recommend a 2 x 2 x 2 design structure:

1. What are 2 actions organizations can take to enhance employee engagement?
2. What are 2 actions leaders can take to enhance employee engagement?
3. What are 2 actions individuals can take to enhance employee engagement?

When everyone is taking action and working together we move beyond employee engagement to workplace engagement with engagement for all. You also get the multiplier effect as 2 x 2 x 2 = 8. The multiplier effect from a systems perspective means: changes in one field of human activity (subsystem) sometimes act to promote changes in other fields (subsystems) and in turn act on the original subsystem itself. This becomes full workplace engagement when we are seeing actions from leaders, employees, and the organization.

In the next 3 Monday Morning Percolators I will outline the actions of each of these groups. In the interim I encourage you to think about what are the 2 most powerful actions you can perform to create high levels of engagement.

Picture Credit: 2 x 2 x 2 = fun by http://flickr.com/photos/bofh/30900799/

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.

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.

How about a short video with your Monday morning coffee?

Could you use a little help in getting higher levels of engagement at work? Does feedback trap you to the past and give you little idea about what to do next?

I encourage you to watch this 4 minute video of Marshall Goldsmith, one of the top leadership coaches, present on getting instant coaching. Not only will you get some coaching from Marshall he will show you how to solicit feedforward from others to move ahead. He has done this with thousand of participants in leadership coaching.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFX74GIxca4]

Marshall Goldsmith has such a caring and articulate way of presenting his top coaching concepts. Goldsmith adds some good rules to the exercise - such as let go of the past and develop ideas of the future without judging or critiquing the ideas.

You don’t get everything on this video but it is a start in understanding some of the contributions that Goldsmith makes that can make a difference in your level of work and employee engagement.

If you are intrigued by what you saw I encourage you to visit Goldsmith’s free library of resources. There are articles, videos, podcasts - a virtual plethora of resources you can use to develop your leadership, performance, and engagement.

A special thanks to Phil Gerbyshak for his ever watchful eye in spotting resources and helpful information to Make It Great!

Employee Engagement: Monday Morning Percolator #17

Today, I have the honor of featuring George Ambler and his leadership blog. George Ambler writes an insightful leadership blog - The Practice of Leadership: It’s only in the practice of leadership that we influence our world…

He has written a number of excellent short articles on employee engagement.

George summarized a study from PeopleMetrics:

…creating emotional connections to employees is what truly matters because this is where organizations can dramatically boost employee productivity and business outcomes….. Building an emotional bond with employees, … requires organizations to create a ’sense of meaning and purpose’ among employees by connecting them to the ‘higher vision and purpose’ of the organization…. Equally, organizations need to build trust and confidence through regular dialogue with managers and senior leadership as well as celebrating successes, having fun and showing individual appreciation.

In addition, the study of 5,095 workers, across the United States found

• that Fortune 500 companies in the lowest quartile in profitability had 50% fewer engaged employees compared to those in the top quartile.
• high performing employees were twice as engaged as their lower performing counterparts

Kate Feather, PeopleMetrics Executive Vice President gave love and passion for one’s organization wings:

the concept of feeling love or pasion for one’s company is gaining ground because a passionately engaged workforce is becoming an important differentiator in the marketplace.

Get Engaged:

1. Click here to read 5 of George Ambler’s other employee engagement blog posts. If you read the Monday Morning Percolator on Monday you could read one of George’s post every other day during the week.
2. Make the connection with your employees and offer a valuable vision and purpose for the organization that they can connect with. Ask them to tell you what the vision and purpose is to see how well they understand what your organization is doing and why it is doing it.
3. Maintain constant and never ending dialogue with the people you work with. Celebrate success, have fun and voice individual appreciation.

Picture credit: Zen rock garden Portland Oregon by http://flickr.com/photos/canuck01/128562559/