David Zinger asks you to raise your hand if you are disengaged?

Not 80%. What percentage of people that you work with are disengaged? I sometimes hear people site statistics as high as 80%. I don’t believe it. I also believe that some people are disengaged but not as many as statistics would have us believe.

Who is disengaged? Two weeks ago I made a presentation at a large HR conference. I had 120 people in my audience and I asked everyone who was disengaged to raise their hands! How many do you think raised their hands? That right, not one person! Some of these very same people believe we have huge levels of disengagement.

Who are you? I am not naive, some people who were disengaged might not have raised their hand. Yet, I think we need to go public with engagement measures. I don’t care about abstract measures of disengagement as much as I care about who specifically is disengaged, why they are disengaged, and what we can do together about it.

360 degree evaluations make me feel like I am going around in circles. As much as I think employee surveys and 360 degree evaluations can be useful I think they are getting overused.  I don’t need any more anonymous feedback or data, I want to connect with others so we can see what is behind the numbers and they feel safe saying what they are experiencing (I don’t know about you but that sure gets me engaged). What happened to authentic direct asking, conversation, trust, integrity, openness, caring, honesty, connection, collaboration, and listening?

Let’s bring employee disengagement out into the open where it belongs. Before you hand out another anonymous survey to employees, how about sitting down and having a real conversation where they feel safe to talk about what is going on, you are open to listening carefully, and together you work at addressing any key engagement or disengagement concerns.

Employee disengagement does not exist. Employee disengagement is far too abstract. It we really believe that engagement benefits the employee then they will want to come forward into the real conversation and reap the benefits of experiencing full engagement.

Organizational disengagement. If there are no benefits to employees being engaged then let’s change the term we use from employee disengagement to organizational disengagement. Why do we call it employee disengagement when it may be the organization is not fully engaging the employee?  It would seem to me that it is organizational disengagement not employee disengagement.

Goodbye employee disengagement. With one short blog post I just got rid of most employee disengagement. Now, lets get busy helping people who are engaged become more fully engaged by creating engaging organizations through engaged management and leadership.

Engage along with me the best is yet to be.

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Are you into the business or reading? Have you read the “best” books for managers and leaders? If you had to guess how many of the top 75 books do you think you have read?

Jurgen Appelo is Chief Information Officer at ISM eCompany (www.ism.nl), recently rated as the #1 fastest growing technology company in The Netherlands. He took the time to create a list of the top 100 best books for managers, leaders, and humans. Here is the first 14 books:

Click here to find out about the other 61 books Jurgen listed. If you want to know the top 100 you have to request a PDF version of the list directly from Jurgen (I was okay with just the first 75). I have either read or looked at about 53 of the books on the list and I found a few books that I was unaware of that I will now seek out.

Below is a short 4 minute video of Malcolm Gladwell on throwing our heart and mind into our work. Learn about the work of the Beatles and Bill Gates to reach their levels of achievement.

How much is passion pulling you through your work?

If the video does not open you can watch the video at BNET by clicking here.

Thank you.

Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers: The Story of Success, will be hitting the bookshelves very soon. It focuses on occupational success and the work we do — what happens when we go to work.

Gladwell’s states that it takes 10,000 hours to be a world-class expert in virtually anything. The time spent is also fused with a strong integration of practical intelligence.

Have you been ready, willing, and able to engage with your work for 10,000 hours to become an expert?

Here are 3 of Gladwell’s key elements of success:

1. Working harder than your peers.
2. Seeing things that others can’t see.
3. Finding or creating a good fit between your cultural legacy and what you choose to explore.

Photo Credit: 10000 close by http://www.flickr.com/photos/modifiedenzyme/495446268/

Helene Blowers, the digital strategy  director of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, has created a very informative and visually appealing presentation on innovation. Watch her 62 slides and determine how you can apply her recommendations to more innovative employee engagement.

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

My site Die Happy Today has been up for almost 8 months. It is a very personal site with just a few words and lots of powerful and beautiful images. I think the concept of die happy today gives a sense of urgency to engagement.

I invite you to click on the image above and visit this site.

Keep asking yourself:

If this was my last day, would I die happy today?

Are you looking for work in Employee Engagement? Here is a current posting with the Alberta Government.

Job Title: Director, Employee Engagement
Job Classification: SENIOR MANAGER
Salary Range: $93,156 TO $118296
Closing Date: November 20, 2008.
Corporate Human Resources , Edmonton

This is a unique opportunity to influence employee engagement and the quality of our work environment.

Your leadership focus will be on the engagement priority in our Alberta Public Service Workforce Plan. You will work closely with senior executives and the human resource community to develop and implement leading edge employee engagement initiatives. With your proven team leadership strengths, you will promote a work environment where innovative actions are consistently advanced. Key areas of accountability include recognition programs, including the Premier’s Award of Excellence, performance management plans and support to the Deputy Minister’s Council in championing the Alberta public service vision and values for a strong and vibrant workplace.

Qualifications: You have a related degree and extensive human resource management experience with a demonstrated capacity in developing relationships, leading significant projects and working with diverse teams. Consulting expertise, excellent communication and facilitation skills and a collaborative approach to achieving results. Equivalencies will be considered. Preference will be given to those with public sector experience.

Click here to go to the job posting.