Step back. We seem so preoccupied surveying or measuring employee engagement that we fail to step back and question our questioning methods.

Good data sense. I assume the point of employee engagement work is to enhance and encourage engagement of all employees. We survey to see where we are at and we survey after a period of time to see if our interventions made a difference. This makes good data sense to me.

Creating questions. I am re-reading Peter Block’s, Community: The Structure of Belonging. The following quotation jumped off of page 24:

Accountability and commitment. The essential insight is that people will be accountable and committed to what they have a hand in creating.

Number One. So here is the #1 Employee Engagement Survey Question:

Do your employees have a hand in creating your employee engagement survey?

Salute. If they do, I salute you.

If they don’t,

• stop expecting accountability and commitment;
• recognize your engagement survey may be a tool of disengagement; and
• give employees the opportunity to have a hand in creating all future surveys or employee engagement initiatives.

The right questions, created in the right way, just might be the answer to employee engagement.

SATIRE

Are we engaging too much in Twitter? Join T.A. (Twitter’s Anonymous)

Hello:

My name is @David (A chorus of Hi @Davids is heard by the 14 people in the community hall).

I have not twittered for 7 days. Of course it is one day at a time (Smattering of applause).

It is so good to be in this Twitters Anonymous meeting, screening out Twitter, and accepting our higher power — EMAIL (Keyboard tapping is heard and Mike is asked to leave the meeting as he was caught twittering his insights at T.A.).

It started innocently, just the occasional tweet here and there. In the early days I had no idea about RT, DM, or how to get followers. But before I reached 1400 followers, it was out of hand and out of bed first thing in the morning to see if anyone had left 140 characters of personalized attention in my direct messages or talked about me @David. I was reduced to twittering about eating a radish and seeing a bird tweeting on my lawn.

My attention span was reduced to 140 characters minus the occasional RT or @Bob.

My life had lost meaning or any semblance of a thought over 140 characters. I hit rock bottom or the bottom of the cereal bowl with no Alphabets left and just some empty looking milk —You could say I had lost my character (a muffled chuckle is heard).

Thank you T.A. You are my type now that I no longer feel compelled to type out joyful tiny-urls to quotations from Gandhi or Mother Teresa.

I know I’ve gone way over 140 characters (cheers from the 13 people left in the community hall) telling my story at our meeting so thanks for listening. If anyone wants to RT me that would be okay and you can DM me at the coffee machine.

Thanks for listening and not letting a screen come between us.

@David

Numerology. Don’t get me wrong, I believe “the numbers” are important in employee engagement. By this I mean the relationships between engagement and productivity and profit. I also think the numbers of engaged versus disengaged workers is important to know. Yes, we must make the business case for engagement and organizations need engagement to stay viable.

Geometry. But what about geometry?

Geometry (Ancient Greek: γεωμετρία; geo = earth, metria = measure) is a part of mathematics concerned with questions of size, shape, and relative position of figures and with properties of space. Geometry is one of the oldest sciences. Initially a body of practical knowledge concerning lengths, areas, and volumes.

Down to earth. I like the idea of bringing employee engagement back down to earth. An earth measure that focuses on the size, shape, position, length, area, and volume of engagement not just the results of the survey. A geometry that connects the numbers with a bigger picture. A geometry of employee engagement that helps us see size, shape, and relationship. A geometry of engagement that may provide us with a richer image of engagement within our organizations and get us “thinking outside the pyramid.” I would love to see the circle as the quintessential shape for engagement rather than the pyramid or the box.

Geometric questions. Here are some questions about the geometry of employee engagement:

• How do we connect?
• What is the shortest distance between us?
• What is the shape of your organization’s engagement?
• What form does employee engagement take?
• Can you see it?
• Can you touch it?
• Will employee engagement have good length or dissipate away as the flavor of the month because of mind-numbing numbers?
• What would create the tipping point of employee engagement to foster a geometric progression of engagement in your organization?
• What are the spatial relationships between the key people and players in engagement: employees, customers, leaders, managers, shareholders, stakeholders, etc?
• Does employee engagement take up volume in the organization or is it relegated to the bi-yearly survey with big announcements about employee engagement devoid of true impact and robust resources?

Right Angle. Are you ready to start thinking about employee engagement from a geometric perspective? If you are, I think you just might have the right angle on engagement!

The image for this post came from the Wikipedia creative commons license: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Calabi-Yau.png

Where the whole man is involved there is no work.

Work begins with the division of labor.

~ Marshall McLuhan

Last week I attended Leonard Cohen’s concert in Winnipeg with my wife and two 17 year old children. I loved the concert and was engaged with Cohen’s words, music, and performance.

As we were walking away from our seats at the end of the 3 hour and 15 minute concert my wife said you should write about how engaging it was.

After some reflection I thought about how well Leonard Cohen created engagement and what we could learn about employee engagement from his work.

If you would like to listen to Leonard as you read this post I encourage you to scroll to the end of this post and click on the video to have his song Hallelujah as a musical background for your reading.

Gratitude. Leonard Cohen appeared so genuinely thankful to be with us and to experience the honor of entertaining us. His humility and his presence welcomed us into his world and the performance. His sense of gratitude is even more remarkable given how people he trusted took advantage of him financially.

• Do you approach work and the people you work with with an authentic and fully expressed spirit of gratitude?

Acknowledgment. Leonard introduced his band twice. He let us know about the people he was with and he let each band member shine in their own way.

• Do you acknowledge the people you work with at least twice every 3 hours and do you set the stage for them to perform at their best?

Rapture. At times, Leonard Cohen was in total rapture of the work of the musicians who were working with him. He often took off his hat or went on one knee as he listened to them play or sing. As the name of the concert and as the leader of this band he demonstrated excellent team work.

• Are you working with your team and on your team?

Encore. Leonard came back 3 times to give the audience more. He fully engaged us and gave us full value for the price of our tickets.

• Do you go the extra mile and offer discretionary “encores” to the people you serve?

Fusion. Leonard seem to fuse with his lyrics and music. He made the music and he wrote the words but the music and words seem to make him. Leonard Cohen has performed this concert numerous times but he made us feel that this was the only time that mattered.

• Do you bring engaged freshness to repetitive tasks so that they maintain an engaging freshness?

Energy. Let us never forget that Leonard will be 75 years of age this year. He brought so much spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical energy to his work and literally danced off the stage a number of times.

• What will your energy be like at 75, will you still be working, and do you manifest full energy for the work you do regardless of your age or other circumstances?

Hallelujah. Thank you Leonard Cohen for being such a fine model of a leaders role in employee engagement.  I encourage you to enjoy this video of Leonard Cohen and his band performing Hallelujah:

The image of Leonard Cohen for this post is from Wikipedia’s creative commons.

Personal branding is an innovative and robust contributor to employee engagement. I will be more engaged when I know and operate from my strengths. I will be more engaged when I know that I add and create value. I will be more engaged when I am visible.

I wrote about my a personal brand equation I created in a previous post.

The equation stated:

Personal Branding = (Strengths + Value + Visibility) x Engagement.

As a supplement to my previous work, I encourage you to watch the following video and view the slides of David Armano’s contribution to personal branding.

Watch David Armano, Critical Mass, Personal Branding in Tech & Gaming |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

In addition here are the slides you see in the presentation available on slideshare: