Employee engagement obviously has a strong emotional component and it is heightened when authentic emotional connections occur at work. Emotional suppression or lack of authenticity can weaken, damage or even destroy engagement.

Daniel Goleman, the leading author on emotional intelligence, wrote a wonderful book on Social Intelligence.

Carefully read the following snippet from his section on, radar for insincerity:

Forthrightness is the brain’s default response: our neural wiring transmits our every minor mood onto the muscles of our face, making our feelings instantly visible. The display of emotion is automatic and unconscious, and so its suppression demands conscious effort. Being devious about what we feel — trying to hide our fear or anger — demands active effort and rarely succeeds perfectly.

The employee engagement moral to this snippet: We must be genuine in our connections with others if we expect our connections to have a positive impact on employee engagement and our moods and emotions will be communicated in all our interactions. Watch your own mood and be careful about emotional contagion at work.

Photo Credit: Radar by http://flickr.com/photos/benfrantzdale/1056282822/

If you are involved in employee engagement this interview is a must read. We must bring an artistic viewpoint to employee engagement if we are to create significant and meaningful results.

I appreciate the art work of Elizabeth Perry. Click here to visit Elizabeth’s blog and her latest drawings.

I have featured her pictures every few weeks. I find the images both sooth and inspire me. I believe artists have much to teach us about engagement and that there is an artistic approach to employee engagement. After you read this interview I also encourage you to click here to read an interview I conducted with Aganetha Dyck, an artist who collaborates with bees.

Elizabeth, thank you for letting me post some of your pictures and thank you for participating in this interview. How did you develop the idea to feature sketch book images in your blog? What has been the response to this?

I wanted to learn how to draw.  Artist friends told me that the way to learn how to draw, was to draw – and to draw every day.  So I bought a small sketchbook and began drawing.  I made two rules for myself: one, I would draw in ink and not worry about mistakes or erasing;  and two, I would not criticize the faults in any of my drawings, because I knew that once I started finding fault, there would be no stopping point.  I drew in the book for 28 days, and was so excited by what I’d done that I posted a slideshow to my blog.  The next day I liked my drawing, so I posted that, and then the next day… and the next…   and so on. Today is day 1197 of my daily drawing project. 

Occasionally travel or technical difficulties will knock me off line for a bit, but the daily drawings continue (they are part of my life, now) and as soon as I can get back online, I post everything.  My site gets visitors from all over the world, and I treasure the emerging relationships and the altogether amazing moments when people have responded to my work with work of their own. 

How do you maintain your own engagement creating your frequent sketches?

The daily nature of the blog keeps me engaged. Any one drawing is only at the top of the page for a single day.  Good or bad, the next day’s attempt is different, and that keeps the project interesting. I am quite willing to fail with any single drawing – part of the delight is in letting go of the need to play it safe.  I try new things.  I vary my approach. I lean into discomfort.  And slowly, my skills improve with practice, and that confidence leads me to stretch further, and take new risks, and the cycle continues…

Can you briefly describe how you “connect” with what you are drawing?

For me, drawing is not a verbal activity.  To draw, I have to slow way down.  I get myself to sit still and look.  The more slowly I let my eye follow the edges or shapes of something I want to draw, the more I enter a state of relaxed awareness, and the rest of the world and its distractions fade. Most of the time I draw something very ordinary: a box of tissues, a piece of fruit, the mail on the table.  My blog has become a museum of these tiny moments, a cartography of everyday life.

What has doing these images on such a regular basis taught you?

No one attempt is important – what matters is the accumulation of attempts.

What do you believe your engagement in this process may offer others about engaging in their work?

The novelist G. K. Chesterton wrote, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”  Too often, we can be afraid to engage in something important, knowing that we might not succeed and we might look foolish.  But I’ve learned that if a project is sufficiently important and challenging, I will need to let myself do it badly before I will be able to do it well.  So I offer you this: If there is something you would really like to do (run a marathon? play ukulele? write a sonnet?) please consider this interview answer as a permission slip – go ahead – have fun – make a mess.  Do it again.  And again.  And see what happens…Thanks for asking me these wonderful questions, David.

Photo Credit: Cherry Tree by Elizabeth Perry: http://www.elizabethperry.com/woolgathering/2008/04/cherry-tree.html

The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence. ~ Robert J. Shiller, Irrational Exuberance.

Photo Credit: Focusing on the target by http://flickr.com/photos/misscarpinteiro/95927246/

Do you extend full effort towards full employee engagement?

Satisfaction lies in the effort, not the attainment. Full effort is full victory. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Photo Credit: Life routine – act 2 by http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcse/1743995/

The employee engagement network has expanded to 211 members. We are an active and engaged network.

We have 52 different forum topics. You could participate in just one forum topic a week and we would keep you engaged for a full year!

After you visit us you will want to be a part of the leading network on employee engagement.

Photo Credit: Calendar by http://www.flickr.com/photos/28481088@N00/315721257/

Yes by David Zinger

Are you asking the right questions to achieve higher or more significant levels of employee engagement. Too often we focus on the “how to” without fully considering what matters and why it matters.

I have always learned significant ideas and perspectives when I read the works of Peter Block. If you have not read his work, I recommend that you read: Flawless Consulting, The Empowered Manager, and Stewardship.

In the book, The Answer to How is Yes: Acting on What Matters, Peter chastises management for asking how questions at the neglect of asking yes questions.

Change your questions and you will change your answers.

Feel the power of yes by changing:

1. How do we do it? to What refusal have I been postponing?
2. How long will it take? to What commitment am I willing to make?
3. How much does it cost? to What is the price I am willing to pay?
4. How do you get those people to change? to What is my contribution to the problem I am concerned with?
5. How do we measure it? to What is the crossroad at which I find myself at this point in my life/work?
6. How are other people doing it successfully? to What do we want to create together?

I think a paradox here is how deep the “how to” mindset is fixed in our brains. After I wrote this, I realized I had turned the yes questions into how-to questions and I know that is not what Peter intended. Rather than a list of questions to rapidly change the workplace I encourage you to ponder the bold questions and let the answers evolve out of authentic reflection and dialogue.