Engagement and career. Career development is a contributing factor in employee engagement. How do we help people with their career development or how can we more fully engage in our own career development?

Visual resumes. As an active member of slideshare, I have noticed a number of visual resumes appearing. The slide show creator used slides to present who they are and what they do. I believe this is a very useful career development exercise so I took a stab at it myself and encourage you to do the same. Take a glance at what I created:

If the slideshow does not load in this window, click here.

Pecha Kucha. My first attempt was 15 slides. I now think it would be both interesting and creative to pair visual resumes with Pecha Kucha – 20 slides shown for 20 seconds each resulting in a 6 minute and 40 second presentation.

What is Pecha Kucha? Here is a little information on Pecha Kucha:

The 20×20 format of Pecha Kucha is now also being adopted in the business world, with some company internal business presentations being run in a strict 6 minutes 40 seconds, with all discussion and questions held to the end of the presentation. This is primarily a device to help timebox presentations, force presenters to be more focused in their message, allow them to flow uninterrupted, and ultimately to avoid the “death by powerpoint” syndrome, of sitting through long and often tedious PowerPoint presentations.

Visual resumes using a Pecha Kucha format. You could combine your slides with voice over or music and set them to change every 20 seconds. You could send out these visual resumes or share them within your organization. You could post it online if you have a blog or website. You could post it on slideshare. You could present your resume for a job interview and ask for just 6 minutes and 40 seconds to do this. In addition, there are many more format or applications of this medium, I have only touched upon a few basic applications.

Benefits. I found the slide format forced me to think both visually and succinctly. Here are some of the benefits of creating a visual resume paired with Pecha Kucha:

1. A fresh and innovative way to think about yourself and what you do.
2. The opportunity to make your efforts and contributions more visually appealing.
3. The discipline of being concise and determining the essence of who you are and what you do.
4. An easy format to make a career development presentation in your organization, for a job move, or to put online so people know more about you.
5. A significant contribution to developing your personal brand so others know your strengths and the value you offer.
6. Ease of revision, you can quickly revise a slide, delete a slide, add a new slide, etc.
7. A simple and easy format for organizations to learn more about you.
8. Make your career points with power rather than just having another long and drawn out PowerPoint presentation.
9. Saving time for people who view your slides or attend your presentation.

Try it on for size. I encourage you to try this and let me know how it turns out or send me a link so I can view it. My thinking on this is in the very initial stages but I believe there is great potential. We are so overloaded with information. I believe this format may help us be noticed in a way that does not overload others with too much information.

I want your feedback. Let me know what you think of this idea or offer some feedback on my first attempt at using this medium. I plan to revise the first attempt and make This is David Zinger Version 1.1 into 20 slides. In another revision I will add sound and have 20 second slide transitions.

I was flying back to Winnipeg on Air Canada and spotted the following advertisement in the in flight magazine.

I admire the flexibility of the young lady in the picture but I question  the copy in the ad: “there are no prizes for juggling one ball really well…help you keep more balls in the air…you can do even more – explore, create, organize, and accumulate – at the same time”

It made me ponder how much engagement is enough?

Do we need to bend over backwards?

When do we got so overloaded that we get our backs up while our engagement falls down?

It is one thing to go head over heels but what about heel over head?

I think we must be careful of getting stretched so thin that we disappear.

What do you think?

Employee engagement is never self-made. Connections with others are the glue, lubricant, and fuel for full engagement. Here is a snippet from Malcolm Galdwell’s Outliers:

No one — not even rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires and not even geniuses — ever makes it alone.

In terms of employee engagement, who is helping you and who are you helping?

Employee engagement means we stand side by side.

During times of uncertainty we need support and we need to offer support. Feel the power of music to make connection.

Will you stand by me? Will you hear the music?

I found this short video, part of Mark Johnson’s bigger project to unite through music, very powerful and inspirational. I strongly encourage you to watch and listen. As you do, think about who is supporting you and who you can support in employee engagement.

Watch the video:

If the video doe not appear in this window, click here. Rosa Say made me aware of this video and you can read more by clicking here.

Many people are fearful during this time up of economic upheaval. It is easy to lose engagement and find yourself disengaged at work. Don’t let fear make you fall, fail, or fumble.  Look fear in the face and do the thing you think you cannot do.

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Photo credit: Mother cheetah looking upwards by http://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako/2536772224/

Here are 10 inept ways to fail as a manager to get employees engaged in work at work:

1. Bully for you. Threaten, bully, badger, control, and scare employees into working harder. Fear is your greatest weapon and motivator. Tell employees they have nothing to fear but fear itself, and you, if they fail to get the job done.

2. Wreck-ognition. Forget about recognition, reinforcement or praise. Employees are getting paid, that’s all they need. Trophies are for toddlers. If you must recognize employees buy a box of donuts for dieters or secure preferred employee of the month parking spots for employees who take the bus or subway to work.

3. Busy bees. Keep everyone busy. If anyone pauses to reflect on how they are doing be sure to load three more projects and two more teams on to their work plate. Remind your employees that they are worker bees, and drone on and on about how hard you worked in the old days when you were a mere employee. Your historical and motivational work buzz will be sure to inspire all employees to greatness.

4. Because I said so… Be a master manager of mystery. Don’t ask, don’t involve, don’t empower. If employees ask why they need to do something keep it a mystery and master employees by retorting, “because I said so, that’s why.”

5. What’s his name? No need to learn employees’ names — just yell out, “hey you.”

6. Text trumps talk. Avoid all personal contact with employees. Text trumps talk, email trumps engagement and memos trump meetings.

7. Career development means getting employees’ rears in gear. If employees request career development tell them they are lucky to have a job, tell them to stop talking about work, and tell them to just do it.  Swoosh, you can now run off to provide additional dynamic career development coaching throughout the organization.

8. Topple work/life balance. Hang pithy motivational posters around the office. For example get a big framed picture of an employee in his cubicle wearing a crown and another picture of an employee at home in a jester outfit.  The employee engagement caption could read: Work Rules – Home Life is for Fools!

9. And the survey says… Limit all employee engagement efforts to a yearly anonymous survey. If you don’t like the results do nothing about them and just repeat the survey again next year.

10. Suck it up buttercup. Manage work like a vacuum cleaner. Suck as much discrentionay effort out of your employees as possible and keep the noise level as loud as a vacuum so that no one can hear themselves think or let other employees know what you are up to. Don’t forget to empty the lint bag!

Photo Credit F on Flickr by http://www.flickr.com/photos/24471966@N04/2647675338/

As the economy experiences economic mayhem there are some indicators that engagement levels are also dropping. This is quite disconcerting as this is when organizations need their best from everyone. What are you and your organization doing to ensure that engagement is not only sustained but enhanced during these turbulent times?

Modern Survey found a drop in employee engagement levels in the United States:

Don MacPherson, the president of Modern Survey, concluded:

These findings should serve as a wake-up call to leaders and managers in any type of organization. As economic conditions worsen, you’ll be counting more and more on your employees to put forth their best efforts and to pull your organization through. These results suggest that unless you pay special attention to the engagement of your workforce, and to maintaining the type of work environment in which employee engagement flourishes, fewer and fewer of your employees will be willing to “give their all” to help your company succeed.

To read the full press release from Modern Survey, click here.

Go to the top of the article, click on the small comments link, and let us know what you are experiencing and doing about employee engagement in your organization.

There was a tremendous response to the post on Employee Engagement Does Not Exist. This site averages about 4000 pages views a day and I had 10,000 pages views the day the article appeared.

I appreciated a comment that Bill Hogg wrote on the worldwide over 615 member Employee Engagement Network: Hence I put forward that organizational engagement is the goal — employee engagement needs to be viewed as an outcome.

Well said Bill.

To read the original post, click here.

Click here to listen to a 9 minute interview  Nick McCormick asked me do on Be Good Ventures. He asked for my one management tip and I suggested a strong strength focus to foster engagement.