How to really accentuate the positive in Employee Engagement.

by David Zinger

Part 1 of a 2 Part Interview

Jerry Pounds is a management consultant with over 30 years of experience in applying positive reinforcement, reward, and recognition strategies to business and industry.  He has written and spoken on the application and problematic nature of corporate motivational and rewards programs and personally trained thousands of executives, managers, and supervisors in the use of praise and rewards. Jerry is a thoughtful and engaging blogger and writes Positive Influence a blog that offers positive strategies that encourage employee engagement.

1. Jerry, what got you so interested and involved in positive strategies to encourage employee engagement?

While I was working my way through college, I got a job as a clinical assistant at a psychiatric hospital that used behavior modification.  Positive reinforcement was used to encourage behaviors that would get the patients back into the community as productive people.

In 1971 I began consulting to business and industry—where the command and control leadership model promoted a “that’s what the hell that get paid for,” approach to managing people. That model did not work; I knew that positive reinforcement would work to elicit high levels of engagement and performance.  Having worked at hourly jobs for several years, I knew what it was like to work for punitive, authoritarian supervisors.

2. What are 3 to 5 key actions a manager can take to encourage employee engagement?

1. Treat all of your direct reports with respect.  I think real engagement is emotional commitment to the company which is direct product of your relationship to your supervisor. The supervisor’s verbal and non-verbal behavior has to send the message that they respect the employee, even when they are presenting corrective feedback. You have to be in charge of your emotions and be aware of your own behavior—the effect it has on others.  Envision a moral leader—someone you respect and honor—and talk to everyone as if you were talking to him or her.  I use Albert Schweitzer.
2. Talk to your employees—I mean talk, not lecture or posture. Show an active interest in their daily job life. I don’t mean socialize, although that’s fine at some level.  I mean talk to them about the job, safety, their work, systems, processes, resources—give them feedback about what they have done that is contributory; let them know what they need to do differently
3. Learn how to listen—one of the hardest things for anyone in a position of authority to do.  Talking at people becomes a habit.  Listening is one of the best ways to positively reinforce people.  Look them in the eye, nod your head as they speak, and punch good comments with—“Right; uh huh; that’s great; how did that work…?”  Attention is a positive reinforcer that we don’t use tactically.

3. What is the strength of a behavioral model to focus on engagement?

The behavioral model has been misinterpreted as a prescription for praise.  I don’t like that word when used in the work setting—and neither do managers or employees.  Providing employees with objective positive and corrective feedback is good for them and for business.

The behavioral model points out the value of managing behavior in addition to results.  Results are easy to throw plaques and tangible rewards at; managing (strengthening critical safe or productive behavior) requires a manager to be where the work is being done—where employees are behaving.  It requires the manager to provide some form of positive verbal or non-verbal consequence for employee behavior that is linked to safety, quality, or customer service.

If you talk to your employees frequently (several times a week) and weave performance coaching feedback into the dialog, it has the proper effect.  Noting the things an employee did right is positive reinforcement—most of the time.  Walking out into the workplace every week or so and saying something appreciatory about something they did comes across as insincere and manipulative.

Positive reinforcement, recognition, and rewards can be perceived as gimmicks if they are not delivered properly. Nobody wants to work for someone who is using tactics with them—trying scripted approaches to get them to work harder.  Nobody wants to work for someone who cannot talk and listen respectfully, treat them with dignity and behave like a human.  You have to be able to say, “I’m sorry, I made a mistake.”  Or, “You were right about X, I should have listened to you.”

Read part 2 in the next post on Employee Engagement Zingers.

We have only moments to work…

by David Zinger

Troubling surveys. I am troubled by the plethora of employee engagement surveys and assessments. There are endless statistics generated to look at the various percentages of employees who range from full engagement to disengagement.

Change in 10 seconds. I believe that many of us have our relationship with work change in 10 seconds.

Fluctuating engagement. When I look at my own work – my engagement with each task and each person fluctuates. I am engaged in one task for the first hour of the day…I procrastinate on the next thing demanding my attention and end up doing an Internet search on puffins rather than making some important phone calls.

Disengagement as texting during meetings. I engage fully with one of the teams I am on and go the extra mile with full discretionary effort yet while sitting in a meeting with the next team I am barely present and thinking about other tasks while I watch 3 other members of the team text-ing their way right out of the meeting as the engage with their Blackberries.

Macro and mirco engagement. So we have these global assessements or macro views of employee engagement but our engagement fluctuates guite a lot each day. We must ensure that our macro view of engagement does not blind us to these micro moment changes of engagement. Perhaps we might be missing phenomenal levels of engagement by reducing it to a single number. Reducing employee engagement to a singe number may be a gross oversimplification of engagement that does a diservice to the actual daily fluctuations of engagement.

22% disengagement for 56% of their time. Rather than a number saying 22% of our employees are disengaged, we may need to refine this to say 22% of our employees are disengaged about 56% of their time. So even if your are a “disengaged” employee, if I find out what engages you I might help you work effectively most of the time.

Strengths as engagement. I believe this is where the current work of Marcus Buckingham on strengths is so important. Rather than create a list of strengths we look at those activities that strengthen us. From his perspective, strengths are those activities we fully engage in.

Leader action plan. Spot what engages people where you work, have discussions about this with them, and work at crafting their jobs to help them fully engage with their strengths.

Engaged in writing to stay disengaged from grading. By the way, I was 100% engaged with writing this article but I know I am engaged here as a partial avoidance or disengagement from marking student papers in the university course I am teaching.

What about you? What do you think about employee engagement assessments? Are we missing the moment? Write a comment and let us know.

The Employee Engagement Network has grown to over 500 Members. We achieved this in under 8 months. If you have not already joined us I encourage you to check us out and join. Here is an outline  of the special interest groups that have already been formed:

400!

400 Posts. This is the 400th. post of Employee Engagement Zingers. This number has been achieved one post at a time and I hope that you have found the writing helpful for employee engagement, strength based leadership, and general life engagement.

Leader/Manager Focus. I plan to make some changes later this fall. You will find more detailed posts offering some specific education and engagement actions. I also plan to offer specific guidance and writing for leaders and managers to enhance their own engagement and to improve the employee engagement of their organizations.

Good-bye Slacker Manager – Hello Fully Engaged Zinger. I have been writing 1/2 of Slacker Manager for the past 13 months. In addition to 400 posts here I wrote 200 posts in the last 13 months at Slacker Manager. I will end my relationship with Slacker Manager on October 30th. I had always appreciated the paradox of being so focused on engagement while also writing a blog called: Slacker Manager. The message beginning November 2008 is clear…no more slack!

The leading employee engagement site. I plan to devote more time to post on this site and ensure it remains the leading site for people interested in the various facets, strategies, tactics, assessments, implications, and applications of employee engagement.

Engage along with me, the best is yet to be!

Working with both relationships and results in high stress conditions

by David Zinger

Getting Up and Getting Back. Leadership and engagement are more than getting to the top or the mountain or achieving quarterly results. We need to come down from our heights and establish connections with others.

Brotherhood of the rope. This site’s original focus was on strength based leadership. I have also written previously about the Brotherhood of the Rope. This was a concept used by Edmund Hillary about the physical and psychological connection between climbers. On mountains and life there is a curious intersection of results and relationships. Hillary was appalled when 42 climbers achieved the summit of Everest yet failed to try and save the life of David Sharp in the spring of 2006. David died on the mountain.

Dead Lucky. Two week later Lincoln Hall was rescued in some similar circumstances. I just finished reading Hall’s book, Dead Lucky: Life After Death on Mount Everest. Until reading this book I never realized how much was entailed in Lincoln getting down from Everest including being bullied and beaten, fighting terrible frostbite, and warding off hallucinations. It could take hours to move inches.

Loss. In his own words: The day I climbed Mount Everest was the day I died. I lost my life, the tips of eight fingers, a toe and a half, thirty-seven pounds, and two-thirds of the energy I need to live in my normal fashion.

United yet fallible. Yet Hall wrote about never giving up. I appreciated his conclusions on the last page of this inspiring, frightening, and educational book:

My habitual responses to everyday issues were deprogrammed. I found myself holding fewer opinions when I realized that they only created dichotomies, and the next step from there is judgment. Too often we judge when we have no need to do so, and just as often we ignore…What I do have is a stronger feeling of the unity of which I am a part…I am just as fallible and imperfect as I have always been.

Hall-way learning. Hopefully none of us will ever have to go through Hall’s ordeal but by reading the book and thinking about our own lives perhaps we can learn from his experience. I encourage you to read the book to draw your own conclusions.

One step. I hope it might contribute to a combination of more sensitivity and tenacity, fused with an appreciation of complexity. This would also be wedded with the reality that ascending or descending is done one step at a time.

Gumption. My conclusions from reading the book were a further confirmation that everything is more complex than it seems, we often only get half the story, it often isn’t over when we think it is over, yet we can accomplish much when we don’t give up and we encounter others who are prepared to sacrifice to help us.

Your question. How are you fusing relationships and results in your life, family, and work?

Michael Stallard and I had a wonderful conversation on the power of connection in employee engagement. The 30 minute webinar includes a few slides and lots of ideas.  Listen or listen and watch the webinar by clicking on the screen image below, or click here.

You’ll need to register with BrightTALK but this will also give you access to creating your own monthly talk!