WE(E) Factor – Exiting Crazybusy

1. Determine what matters the most to you.
2. Stay connected to what matters most to you.
3. When you begin to feel crazybusy again return to number 1 and 2!
4. Still crazybusy, read Dr. Hallowell’s book for additional perspective and actions.

Real Perks: Monday Morning Percolator #6

Percolator Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/sti/

You might have wondered why this series is called the Monday Morning Percolator.

Monday is the day most of us start our work week. Morning is when we wake up and coffee is often used to transition from sleep to work.

In the age of designer coffee, why an old fashioned percolator and perked coffee when you can have 87,000 different beverage choices from Starbucks?

It may seem paradoxical to use an old coffee icon to look at employee engagement - a relatively new term in the workplace. Yet I appreciate how these old coffee percolators slowly made coffee while infiltrating the room with a coffee aroma and a soothing perking sound as the water bubbled to the top of the percolator and flowed down through the waiting coffee.

I believe effective engagement is a slow process that goes right to the top of the organization and flows through everyone within an organization. Authentic and engaging percolation helps everyone within an organization gain and gather energy.

Some workplace try to ignite engagement with a few perks. These privileges or tangible items given as part of a compensation package are nice but I don’t believe they foster genuine and sustained engagement.

I think real perking take time to seep through our daily grind and transform out jobs into engaging work.

There is an art in making coffee with a percolator. According to wikipedia:

As the brew continually drips through the grounds, the overall temperature of the liquid approaches boiling point, at which stage the “perking” action (the characteristic spurting sound the pot makes) stops, and the coffee is ready for drinking. In a manual percolator it is important to remove or reduce the heat at this point, as most coffee-drinkers agree that it should never be allowed to boil; an adage to this effect states, “Coffee boiled is coffee spoiled“.

Do you take your time to brew a robust fully engaged organization while ensuring that tasks and emotions don’t boil over?

Perk-Ups:

1. Perk-Ups is the new subtitle for the action section of the Monday Morning Percolator. Much like a push up will strengthen you physically, a perk up will strengthen your mental, emotional, and relationship engagement. Similar to a push up, when you first start they can be hard to do and quite draining but with regular practice you will gather strength as you continue in your training and practice.
2. Take 10 minutes to perk up on Monday morning. Develop and practice a Monday morning routine that helps you let go of the weekend and begin your focus on the work ahead for the week. This routine needs to be short and powerful – don’t let it take any longer than the time it takes to make a great pot of coffee. Your perk-up could be 10 minutes of freewriting about the week ahead. You could connect with two co-workers to hear about their weekend and what their plans are for this week. You could devote 10 minutes of concentrated focus to 1 or 2 pivotal goals you have set for the week ahead.

What are you waiting for? Get perking.

Technorati Tags : employee engagement, perks, percolator, David Zinger

Flow into Engagement: Monday Morning Percolator #5

Do you flow into engaged activity? Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has researched flow and outlined how we can achieve flow at work. I have appreciated his ideas on flow for years and I believe flow can be seen as a close synonym for personal engagement.

You experience flow when you are fully immersed in what you are doing. You experience energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.

Here are the ingredients to percolate flow:

1. You set clear goals
2. You concentrate and focus
3. You lessen or lose self-consciousness
4. You have an alterted sense of time while being immersed in the moment
5. You have direct and immediate feedback
6. You create balance between your ability and the external challenge
7. You act out of personal control
8. Your motivation or reward for the activity is intrinsic
9. You are fully absorbed in the task at hand.

Have you experienced flow at work? Blend the ingredient above to design your work to achieve flow – the psychology of optimal experience.

Marcus Buckingham in his latest book on strengths, Go Put Your Strengths to Work, has defined strengths in a similar way to flow. He outlines 6 powerful steps to achieve outstanding performance. Strengths are defined as an appetite for an activity, strengths strengthen us, we look forward to working on these activities, and we feel high levels of satisfaction after completing activities based on our strengths. Look to experiences that provide flow as keys to unlock your strengths in the workplace.

Like freshly brewed coffee poured into a waiting mug, flow into your strengths to experience higher levels of engagement.

Go with the flow…

Get Engaged:

1. Click here to read a more detailed outline of flow.
2. Read Steve Palvina’s 7 Rules for Maximizing Your Creative Output.

Technorati Tags : employee engagement, flow, percolator, David Zinger

The WE(E) Factor: Baby steps to leadership feats

Strength resides in relationship – leadership is moving from me to WE. The Brotherhood of the Rope asks us to connect past me to we. The rope connects us, ties us together, helps us summit, and come to the assistance of others.

Recently, I have facilitated leadership workshops on The WE Factor because I want to reinforce the connections so important between leaders and their direct reports. WE stands the “M” of me on its head to move leadership from the singular me to the plural we.

While conducting my last leadership workshop I had a small epiphany. By adding an additional “e” to we we have wee, hinting at the small actions that can make big differences while still embedding WE in the title. I will now be calling this leadership workshop: The WE(E) Factor.

Most of my participants are overloaded with duties, tasks, and responsibilities. Leadership education can feel like an imposition – an additional item to comply with in an already overloaded and overbooked day. As participants attend workshops they dread the work that is filling their vacated cubicle, inbox, and voicemail.

The mundane has reached a new sense of urgency. I am seeing more participants race out of education sessions to the vibrating demands of their electronic leash and more participants are impervious to how disconnected they are to the people right in front of them as they try to thumb out a quick message as they half-heartily brainstorm ways to be more respectful in a group that is being driven to distraction by the incessant demands of a workplace gone wild!

As leadership educators I believe we must foster WE(E) steps with our leadership learners to maximize their connection and results? For example, if I don’t hear the following comments I sense them:

Who has time to do this leadership stuff? Yes, it might be good and it might be helpful but do you know how busy I am? Where will I find the time? Where will I find the energy? And even though I know leadership is about WE, how can I be helpful to WE when there is no time or energy left in me?

So in the vernacular of Bob Wiley – Bill Murry’s character in the movie What About Bob? – it is time to gather strength through baby steps. The WE(E) steps of leadership that can strengthen results and relationships while not taxing the limited time and energy resources of leaders.

In the next four posts I will outline 4 WE(E)-Factor initiatives weaving the small with the significant to achieve a stronger expression of leadership:

1. The step of connection to lessen the conundrum of crazy busy (Ed Hallowell).
2. The step of 5 minutes to move beyond contact to connection (Rosa Say).
3. The step of flipping over a business card to achieve authentic focus (Mike Morrison)
4. The step of 2 weeks to achieve a breakthrough (Lisa Hanenberg).

Technorati Tags : strength based leadership, we, leadership, David Zinger

Employee Engagement: Monday Morning Percolator #4

As stated in a recent post, the number 1 driver of employee engagement is the relationship with our direct leader.

Sometimes we are fortunate and have a great boss who:

• provides numerous high quality interactions,
• demonstrates how we are part of the organization and team,
• cares about us,
• encourages our career development,
• offers genuine appreciation and recognition, 
•  knows our strengths, and designs our work so we can use our strengths on a daily business.

With these characteristics in place, employee engagement flows from us in rivers of productivity and emotional well-being.

But sometimes we need to manage our boss to foster engagement. How do we do this?

BNET has provided a wonderful set of articles on how to manage our boss. Their feature package includes:

1. How to manage your boss
2. Bosses: A field guide
3. Troubleshoot bad boss behavior
4. How I got here: Boss-management tips from the pros
5. Five myths of managing up

The feature provides perspective, humour, insight, and actions to change the relationship.

I loved the humour of the field guide providing a “birder’s eye view” of bosses and their characteristics. For each of the 10 boss types you get a playful image of the type with an outline of the following descriptions: characteristics, plumage, archetype, quote, pros, cons, warning, care and feeding.

In addition to the humour of the field guide the other resources have an eclectic range of useful tips. For example in how to manage your boss you will read about how to:

1. Make “keeping the boss in the loop” a regular activity
2. Create a core message for your boss
3. Tap a vital resource: The boss’s influences
4. Learn everything you can about your boss’s career
5. Cultivate compatible personal interests

Get engaged:

1. If you don’t have the boss you want, put some coffee in the percolator, click into BNET’s manage your boss feature, and learn to manage the person who manages you.
2. If you work for someone who creates employee disengagement – don’t leave home for work without this resource.

Employee Engagement: Think-It(2)

Wake up!

Engaging our jobs intelligently and without resistance does not require that we redefine our entire approach to our livelihood. We can engage our jobs sanely and openly without giving up on success or disregarding our feelings or ambitions. What is required is surprisingly ordinary: simply to be who we are where we are, to subtly shift from getting somewhere fast to being somewhere completely. By taking such an approach, we discover not only a larger view of work but also a basic truth about being human: by genuinely being ourselves in the present moment, we naturally become alert, open, and unusually skillful.

From Michael Carroll

Awake at Work, page 7.

Employee Engagement: In the “Driver’s” Seat!

The conference board published a report on “Employee Engagement: A Review of Current Research and its Implications.” Patricia Soldati summarized some of the work in a recent post at management-issues.

Looking at 12 different studies the report outlined 26 key drivers of engagement.

At least 4 of the studies agreed on these 8 drivers:

1. Trust and integrity
2. Nature of the job
3. Employee understands how their work contributes to the organization’s performance
4. Career growth opportunities
5. Pride about the organization
6. Relationships with coworkers and team members
7. Employee development
8. Relationship with one’s manager

The number 1 driver regardless of age, location or study was the direct relationship with one’s manager.

Hertz had an old slogan about putting you in the driver’s seat but it appears it is the manager or leader who really drives engagement for the organization and the individuals who report to him or her!

The conference board defined employee engagement as

A heightened emotional connection that an employee feels for his or her organization, that influences him or her to exert greater discretionary effort to his or her work.

High levels of engagement influence organization performance and enhance retention, productivity, customer service and loyalty. Highly engaged employees outperform their disengaged counterparts by 20 to 28 per cent.

Get Engaged:

1. If you are a leader, get behind the wheel and start driving engagement by connecting strongly with the people who report to you.
2. Become a back seat driver – have a conversation with your leader to ensure she or he is steering you and the organization in the direction of higher employee engagement.

Employee Engagement: 30 Inches Away

Humantech Inc. has introduced the “30-inch view of business.” As opposed to leaders taking the 30,000-foot view of business Humantech suggests leaders get close to their people and environment.

“The lesson is that people matter and they’re everywhere,” Keith R. Bossey from Humantech said. “We believe that, ‘within 30 inches of your employees sits all of the profit your organization will ever capture.’ Therefore, you need to remove or minimize the friction between people and their work environment. The 30-inch view of people and performance can help companies uncover new found sources of sustainable financial gain.”

Edward Hall, who studied proxemics – the distance between people – stated that less than 30 inches between people fostered more personal interactions and relationships. In today’s workplace we must lessen the space between people and maintain our connections rather than relying on contacting people through text messages and cell phones.

Engagement does not occur by distant decree but by close, personal, and meaningful connections.

Get Engaged:

1. Do you make an effort to get close to the people at work? Make closeness part of your high quality interactions that foster energy and engagement at work.
2. Do people feel touched by your closeness?
3. Read this short article on Wikipedia about proxemics to get a close view on the distance between people.

Employee Engagement: Monday Morning Percolator #3

This Monday’s percolator is a slow percolator. Slow Leadership is a wonderful blog with the tag-line:  Real leadership isn’t an instant activity any more than a healthy diet is a hamburger, fries, and a large soda.

It is good to see someone take a strong focus on slowing down and reflection. The articles are thoughtful, well-written, and laced with leadership insights. This blog is invaluable for leaders and strongly encourages leaders to slow down and think, and maybe even think some more.

Carmine Coyote looks at a variety of key points around leadership. I encourage you to become a regular reader of the blog.

The post highlighted for today is: Are we having fun yet? The author looks at nine principles of having fun based on the Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun. Here is a list of the principles, scan the list then go read the post:

1. Stop hiding who you really are.
2. Start being intensely selfish.
3. Stop following the rules.
4. Start scaring yourself.
5. Stop talking at all so damn seriously.
6. Start getting rid of the crap.
7. Stop being busy.
8. Start something.
9. Don’t worry what others will think of you.

I would call the principles of fun outlined on this post “deep fun.” They are not the superficial activities of passing around silly e-mails or having a crazy dress day at work, rather they are approaches that will add more meaningful fun to your day. After all, tortoises only make progress when they stick their necks out. Here is the conclusion to the post.

When do people perform best at any task, from sport to nuclear physics? When they’re relaxed, intent on what they’re doing and more of less oblivious of everything else. When they’re having fun. So loosen up and enjoy your life.

If you want to brew up some powerful engagement recognize what you need to stop, act on what you need to start, and don’t worry — be engaged!

Photo by Jenny Rollo

Ampersand Leadership

I recently read a post by Chris Bailey: If leadership were a punctuation mark, what would it be?

I quickly wrote a comment to Chris as I thought the post was very effective in thinking about leadership and distilling the essence to a short symbol. I made some spelling and grammar errors in the comments as I was excited and I wanted to react right away to his questions on leadership.

I have never been one to write within the lines but I love the simplicity of Chris’ question. The symbol I latched on to was the ampersand. I love how the ampersand’s function is to join. As leaders we join people together and we focus on results & relationships.

After further reflection there were a few other thoughts I had about the “&” symbol and leadership. I think we need more improvisation in leadership and one of the central functions is to say “yes and…” When we “ampersand” others input we help co-create and bring out the best from both of us.

In conclusion, I like how the ampersand looks like someone sitting and meditating. I think most leaders would benefit from a more mindful, reflective, or meditative approach to our practice of leadership.

Thanks Chris & that’s the way I see it & & & not . . .

Technorati Tags : strength based leadership, ampesand, leadership, Zinger