Here are some of the best resources to learn more about honest signals. This is part 2 of a 3 part series. Next Tuesday will be an examination of the potential links between honest signals and employee engagement.

Articles and A Diagram

The Science of Subtle Signals click here

In a wide variety of facets of everyday business, the keys to sustained success may actually lie in understanding the kinds of signals that are ordinarily overlooked: tone of voice, body language, the ways people congregate (or don’t), the time spent on tasks, the rhythms of workplace activity, and the patterns of social networks

NY Times: You May Soon Know if You’re Hogging the Discussion click here

PEOPLE who want to improve their communication skills may one day have an unusual helper: software programs that analyze the tone, turn-taking behavior and other qualities of a conversation. The programs would then tell the speakers whether they tend to interrupt others, for example, or whether they dominate meetings with monologues, or appear inattentive when others are talking.

Sociometric Badges: State of the Art and Future Applications (PDF) click here

Sociometric badges are wearable electronic badges capable of automatically measuring the amount of face-to face interaction, conversational time, prosodic style, physical proximity to other people, and physical activity levels, using social signals derived from vocal features, body motion, and relative location.

Waiming Mok’s diagram of honest signals click here

Video

Davos 2009 IdeasLab – Alex Pentland click here

Authors@Google:Alex (Sandy) Pentland click here

Part 3 Next Tuesday: Honest Signals and Employee Engagement.

Funny and not so funny. Let’s Get Crucial.

I teach Crucial Conversations from Vital Smarts for Shared Visions in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

I believe that Crucial Conversations are a vital behavior to foster full and authentic employee engagement and to work with people who are disengaged.

Vital Smarts just released 5 funny videos ranging from performance management to project management. I have included 2 of them here and you can view all 5 by clicking here.

The Tough Choice:

A Guy in a Cube:

Let the conversations begin! Contact David Zinger at (204) 254-2130 or Email dzinger@shaw.ca if you need more information.

Engage 5 is a weekly feature of Employee Engagement Zingers. Engage-5 asks leading thinkers, writers, consultants, and others involved in employee engagement to complete 5 sentences.

Read Mario Gastaldi’s 5 sentences on engagement:

1. I define employee engagement as a widespread dominant feeling allowing people to be vibrant, energetic, creative and determined while achieving organizational objectives.
2. A big challenge in employee engagement is about leadership confidence and serenity, (or lack thereof), that prevents people from fully expressing their capabilities and becoming engaged;
3. A powerful way to create grater engagement is to allow those who are ready, to co-design and co-develop organizational change, while supporting others, who are yet to fully develop and accomplish themselves;
4. I am personally most engaged at work when I am involved in new challenges teaming with people who have diverse perspectives, yet great opennes to others’ ideas.
5. To learn more about engagement I encourage people to keep asking themselves questions about what engages and what does not, and why.

Click here to learn more about, and from Mario Gastaldi

Listen to this BNET podcast of engaging Generation Y.

Part 1: Introduction to Honest Signals

Question. Are you familiar with or aware of honest signals?

Honesty below the surface. Are we signaling in a new era of employee engagement understanding and assessment with the use of the sociometer (a digital recording devise) and the measurement of unconscious honest signals between people?

Three part series. This is a three part series on honest signals. It will run for the next 3 Tuesdays on this site.

• Part 1 will introduce the concept of honest signals and the sociometer.
• Part 2 will offer you a range of resources to further you contemplation, understanding, and study of this very intriguing research.
• Part 3 will focus on possible applications of this to the study and assessment of employee engagement.

Sandy Pentland. These signals include synchrony, mimicry, activity and emphasis forming an unconscious channel of communication between people. Sandy Pentland and others have been doing major work on honest signals at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This work includes the use of a fascinating digital tool that captures various unconscious signals that occur between people.

The deciding factor. The most intriguing element of this study is how much honest signals accounts for decisions, actions, and positive interactions that the vast majority of people fail to notice.

A new transparent tool. Here is a key organizational statement from Pentland’s book, Honest Signals:

In the near future, we envision a new generation of management tools that are enabled by the sociometer’s capability to produce real time maps of an organization’s information flow and function. These sensible organizations will use these new sensing capabilities to make sure that the sales department really is talking to the marketing department, and that employees aren’t overloaded and miserable. To achieve this it will take special care to strike a balance between the “big brother” nature of such information and the benefits that can be reaped. We believe that this balance can be achieved by giving employees control of their own information, creating a transparent system with immediate benefits to everyone.

Sociometer. With the use of an intriguing digital tool called a sociometer Pentland and others have shown that the social content of a presentation may be more important than the information part – even in the choice of what business plans to finance. Current versions of the sociometer resemble a slightly larger version of the swipe cards most of us hear around our neck or clipped to our belt to navigate through office security doors.

Influence, mimicry, activity, and consistency. Conversations have a lot of give-and-take including unconscious gesturing, timing, energy, and variability in the conversations. Pentland focused on influence, mimicry, activity, and consistency.

Influence is measured by the extent to which one personal causes the other person’s pattern of speaking to match their own pattern.

Mimicry is the reflexive copying  of one person by another.

Activity levels indicate interest and excitement.

Consistency is the measuring such things as jerky movements. Consistency of emphasis and timing is a signal of mental focus.

Next Tuesday. Part 2 will offer you a rich list of resources to heighten your understanding of honest signals.

In two weeks. Part 3 will examine the potential application of honest signal research to employee engagement.

Zane Safrit from the Employee Engagement Network let us know about the following vidoe from Ricardo Semler.  I was so intrigued by Semler’s approach I obtained his book, The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works.

Watch this video and determine how you could apply his approach to your work. Thank you Zane for bringing this to our attention.