Employee Engagement with David Zinger
The best in employee engagement...
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. ~ Heny David Thoreau
In the large pond of workers are you suffering from employee disengagement or hearing your song of engagement? Read my review of the third video of Marcus Buckingham’s Trombone Player Wanted for some guidance on how to leverage your strengths for full engagement.
Photo Credit: Jordan makes light music by – http://flickr.com/photos/jasoneppink/80772526/
zen perspectives on employee engagement
The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic and, to some extent, even antibiotic – in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea – known to medical science is work.
Thomas Szasz
Well, well, well. If you work well you may be well at work. Instead of a vicious cycle of disengagement work may create a vivacious cycle of engagement.
Photo Credit: Good Luck and Happiness by http://www.flickr.com/photos/hobo_pd/339564960/
Fear not!
The 7 Olympic quarters offered as the prize in my last post are not the “spy” quarters that created the U.S. Defence Department warnings. The olympic quarters show peaceful Canadians engaged either in curling or hockey. Okay, hockey isn’t necessarily peaceful but it is not exactly espionage either.
Here is the snippet of the story:
WASHINGTON — An odd-looking Canadian coin with a bright red flower was the culprit behind a U.S. Defense Department false espionage warning earlier this year about mysterious coin-like objects with radio frequency transmitters, The Associated Press has learned.The harmless “poppy coin” was so unfamiliar to suspicious U.S. Army contractors traveling in Canada that they filed confidential espionage accounts about them. The worried contractors described the coins as “anomalous” and “filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology,” according to once-classified U.S. government reports and e-mails obtained by the AP. The silver-colored 25-cent piece features the red image of a poppy – Canada’s flower of remembrance - inlaid over a maple leaf.
You have 6 more days to enter the contest and I have decided to sweeten the prize by offering an additional Canadian quater - The Veteran quarter: A 3-headed quarter that will only flip heads.
I have one entry so far from Dan Whitmarsh who suggested all is one. Click here to read the last post and create a unexpected comment about: Employee Engagement for All.
Employee Engagement Monday Morning Percolator #12
There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes.
Richard Buckminster Fuller
This is the third in the series of articles outlining the employee engagement application of Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. Dan Heath in an interview in Tom Peter’s Cool Friends stated that for an idea to stick means three things:
The idea is understood, it’s remembered, and it changes something — it changes people’s minds, it changes their behaviour, and it changes their values.
In regards to the unexpected he added:
We have to tell people things they don’t know. Because if we spend all our time talking about common sense or speaking in abstractions, we can’t expect people to remember the conversation, and certainly not to change anything.
How do you make employee engagement unexpected or surprising. Do you have a statistic or story that can jolt employees out of lethargy or complacency.
Now be careful, don’t make your point pointless with an overabundance of PowerPoint slides as you blur into a darkened room dimly lit by glowing BlackBerry screens as participants drift off to bulging email in-boxes.
Can you offer something more than hype, hyperbole, or trite expressions. Unexpectedness adds a richer dimension to simplicity. For example, my last post’s statement about Employee Engagement for All is simple yet is it really unexpected? It is surprising? I wrote it and I don’t think so. It may be sincere but is it surprising?
This is your chance to be unexpected!
If you are surprising you will also win a prizing of quarters.
I will send 7 minted Canadian Olympic Quarters to the person who writes the most surprising or unexpected suggestion in the comment section of this post on how to make the statement: Employee Engagement for All unexpected or surprising.
Help me please! Don’t let employee engagement drip away in drabness.
Now I know if you are in the United States the total value of 7 minted Canadian quarters is less than a buck fifty but who else do you know in Lubbock, Tempe, or Kansas City who has a bunch of minted Canadian quarters jingling in their pocket.
Remember: The unexpected element helps us get people’s attention and keep it. Surprise functions to get attention while interest functions to hold attention.
Get Perking:
Photo Credit: Untitled by http://flickr.com/photos/unsureshot/93671849/
Are you looking for more guidance, examples, and illustrations of how to put your strengths to work? I am part of the Joyful Jubilant Learning Group. Visit the website to partake of the rich range of reviews and resources. Make sure you visit the Teaching with Aloha Blog to get more detailed guidance, examples, and discussion.
After reading and applying the material, you will get really strong. No one will be kicking sand in your face as you transform from a workplace weakling to face up to your full strength potential and make significant contributions to your organization and customers.
In many of the organizations I work in, the overperforming criticize the underperforming and ultimately call for what’s considered the ultimate cure: “holding people accountable.” Just saying the words in a pathetically stern tone warms the hearts of vindicators. What’s curious is how the question is never, “How can we get better at helping these people succeed?”
We still live under the rock of mythology that suggests that fear and punishment are sustainable factors in authentic personal transformation. They are not and never were. People become more engaged when they become conscious at higher levels, and a negative deficiency approach only creates lower energy vibrations of consciousness.
Being accountable is the act of authentic commitment, which is the opposite of bartering compliance for rewards. And this only comes about in relationships where people are supported to make commitments not contingent on conditions.
Jack Ricchiuto
If you value ZENgagement I encourage you to read the plethora of pithy insightful and inspirational posts at jack/zen.
Photo credit: Zen rocks by http://flickr.com/photos/pyrsokomos/441063276/
No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
Alan Watts
Are you ready to TED?
Last month I posted a theme song for my Strength Based Leadership Blog by Eddie Reader on “what you do with what you’ve got.”
This post is another song from the TED blog by Nora York, “What I Want.” Take a 4:42 minute interlude and hear the music and follow Nora’s lyrics that gives note and voice to personal engagement. Find the place where your mind won’t stop and your heart says go!
Photo Credit: Unique by Irina Riri http://www.flickr.com/photos/stillmemory/1348220/
Do you mind?
Are you willing to grow for it or are you fixed - stuck in a mental rut that inhibits learning, risk and effort?
Carol Dweck, a noted social cognitive psychologist, has studied attributions and performance for many years. I recall studying her work during my B.A. at the University of Manitoba in the 1970′s. Her current contribution is a popular book on attributions and understanding of ourselves called: Mindset. Our mindset influences so much in our lives including engagement.
Dr. Dweck distinguished between two main types of Mindsets.
In support of the growth mindset, scientists have found that people have tremendous capacity for lifelong learning and brain development. Robert Sternberg stated that expertise is “not some fixed prior ability but purposeful engagement.”
When we engage we grow and as we grow we engage more and more. Employee engagement is influencing not only the attitudes of employees but also their minds. Can we win their hearts and minds? The growth mindset overcomes a sense of entitlement in favour of discretionary effort. My success is more a reflection of my effort and openness and growth as opposed to raw talent, ability, and past history.
Here is an overview by Guy Kawasaki of how the fixed mindset can lead to problems:
Here’s some food for thought: perhaps this explains the inexorable march toward mediocrity of many (temporarily) great companies. Let’s say a start-up is hot. It ships something great, and it achieves success. Thus, it’s able to attract the best, brightest, and most talented. These people have been told they’re the best since childhood. Indeed, being hired by the hot company is “proof” that they are the A and A+ players; in fact, the company is so hot that it can out-recruit Google and Microsoft.
Unfortunately, they develop a fixed mindset that they’re the most talented, and they think that continued success is a right. Problems arise because pure talent only works as long as the going is easy. Furthermore, they don’t take risks because failure would harm their image of being the best, brightest, and most talented. When they do fail, they deny it or attribute it to anything but their shortcomings.
And this is the beginning of the end.
In the race for engagement the start line begins with, “on your mark….get ready….get set….GROW!
Get Perking:
Photo Credit: This is my brain by http://flickr.com/photos/killermonkeys/304439098/
I have just finished attending, along with 800 other participants, the Leadership Conference 2007 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. There is strength in Saskatchewan and momentum in leadership. Here are just a few of the strands of strength I drew from the presentations:
J. P Pawliw-Fry encouraged us to PLAY BIG and recognize the vital role of emotion in our motions from the delays in eating marshmallows to handling the 60,000 thoughts we have during the day. We learned about the strength of mindful breathing and to 1. stop 2. oxygenate and 3. seek information – especially when we feel HALTed (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and Tired).
Joseph Grenny, from Crucial Conversations, gave a masterful overview of how to get results by stepping into the crucial conversations that are not being held and holding us all back. This was a very strong presentation on weaving together results and relationships through communication based on safety. We gather individual and organizational strength through conversations not through silence.
Craig Kielburger energetically encouraged us to move from me to we and how to be a leader in social involvement even at age 12. We need to come together for the community good and remember Mother Teresa’s line that it is not about doing great things so much as doing small things with love.
Ian Percy encouraged us to find our purpose and see the world through his “I’s” of innocence, independence, institution, irritation, insight, and integration. He encouraged us to gather strength through our irritation and realize how irritation irrigated our growth and engagement. Our leadership strength is developed as we interact, connect, create, engage, enable, expand, question, explore, and discover.
Elder Betty McKenna gave us strength through her aboriginal teachings and the wisdom of the medicine wheel. She demonstrated that the true PowerPoint is the connection between a speaker and her audience and that we don’t always need a bunch of swooshing slides to get people’s attention. She warned us to watch out for the Big IAM that lurks in leadership, too much ego. You could have heard a pin drop in the room as she quietly and confidently shared her stories.
The conference is every 2 years and GUESS WHO will be “Running back to Saskatoon.” Kudos to all involved in Saskatoon’s Leadership Conference 2007 for a well done conference that helps leaders move forward through strength.
Photo Credit: University bridge at night by http://www.flickr.com/photos/heather-dietz/211514108/
Are you ready to host?
David Zinger from Winnipeg Canada is an expert on engagement. He founded the 4500 member Employee Engagement Network. His work is designed to increase engagement for your organization.
He is a management consultant with over 25 years of experience. His education services are enhanced by his 20 year background as a University educator for the University of Manitoba and over 15 years managing an employee assistance program for Seagram Ltd.
David's services mix current research with practical approaches to build authentic relationships and achieve powerful results. To learn more about David, click on "About David" on the link bar near the top of this site.
Contact David Zinger at:
Phone (204) 254-2130.
Email dzinger@shaw.ca
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