What role does energy play in employee engagement?

• Do you have the energy for engagement?
• Does your energy engage others?
• How do you recharge for full engagement?

Rosa Say on Leadership and Management Energy. Are you using an energy lens to examine engagement in your workplace. I strongly encourage you to read Rosa Say’s recent post on 3 ways managers create energetic workplaces.

Say’s snippets. Read then practice the recommendations in the article. Here were a few of Rosa’s very helpful statements:

Workplace energy functions the same way batteries do for your favorite electronics: You can have the most high tech camera in the world, and it will do absolutely nothing if its battery is dead.

LEADERSHIP is the workplace discipline of creating energy connected to a meaningful vision.

MANAGEMENT is the workplace discipline of channeling that mission-critical energy into optimal production and usefulness.

If you are a manager (and all business owners are managers too) assume the role of energy creator in your company. Change the title on your business card to Energy Creator; come on, I dare you.

Be relentless about being the best, and excel. Eliminate or reinvent any process which drains energy instead of generating it.

Energy bounce back. I agree with Rosa that we need a stronger focus on energy and the impact energy has in the workplace. Leaders and managers can play such a key pivotal role and the paradox is that when you create energy for others you are also creating more robust energy for yourself.

Energy Co-Creators. I encourage everyone in the workplace, regardless of their role, function, or position, to take seriously their role of Energy Co-Creators. We must strive to create energy gains not energy drains in our work and connections with others.

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David Zinger is a leading expert on employee engagement. He is committed to creating authentic and sustained work engagement for the benefit of all. Contact David at (204) 254-2130 or Email dzinger@shaw.ca.

Photo Credit: Dream by http://www.flickr.com/photos/allegra_ricci/149049741/

Here is a very good basic slide presentation by Amir Saif on employee engagement and engaged team members:

Are you a screen sucker?

Pull up the covers turn on the screen. According to Credant Technologies 25% of employees in Britain go to bed with their laptops, cellphones and BlackBerrys. 57% of those who work in bed work between 2 to 6 hours a week.

Good vibrations? Do you screen the very person in front of you to connect more strongly with text on a small hand held screen?

3 Disengaging Questions:

1. How do you disengage to sustain engagement over a long period of time.
2. How engaged do you get with the various screens in your life?
3. Can you reside in the “white space” without trying to fill it?

I appreciate Elizabeth Perry’s drawing on Television with the sense of so much white space.

Are you relaxing into the white space of your life and honoring purposeful disengagement to achieve higher levels of intentional employee engagement?

Drawing Credit: http://www.elizabethperry.com/woolgathering/2009/05/television.html

Here is a wonderful snippet from Jon Gordon’s blog about Will Smith’s Secret to Success.

What does a treadmill have to do with Will Smith’s success as a movie star and actor?

When asked by an interviewer to explain his success, he responded: “I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be outworked. You may be more talented than me. You might be smarter than me. And you may be better looking than me. But if we get on a treadmill together you are going to get off first or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple. I’m not going to be outworked.”

What treadmill are you on?

Photo Credit: New Year’s Resolution: 36/365 by http://www.flickr.com/photos/sashawolff/3171917389/

Harvey Mackay writes a wonderful newsletter. In a recent edition he discussed Richard Florida’s work on Richard The Rise of the Creative Class and  Flight of the Creative Class. Florida believe that about 30% of our workforce could be considered creative workers.

Florida  offered the following advice for engaging your creative staff:

• Everyone needs the opportunity to contribute their creativity.
• Make sure every worker feels challenged and motivated.
• Make sure creative people have time to apply themselves creatively. (Don’t put them on silly jobs that others can handle.)
• Make sure workers have a chance to gain peer respect.
• Evaluate creative workers by what they deliver, not by how many hours they put in.
• Keep hassles away from creative workers. Don’t feel like it’s their responsibility as workers to do this. Decide whether you want them to spend time filling out paperwork—or being creative.

What are your creative approaches to engaging creative workers?

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 Peter Leather’s 5 sentences on engagement:

1. I define employee engagement as feeling personally aligned to the goals of your organisation and what you need to do to make it a success.
2. Our biggest challenge in employee engagement is helping leaders see the value and not just seeing it a the latest fad or buzz word.
3. A powerful way to create greater employee engagement is to create and share interesting personal stories.
4. I am personally most engaged at work when I do things I enjoy doing and that I see add value.
5. To learn more about employee engagement read Flow: Psychology of Happiness by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

To learn more from Peter or more about Peter click here.

Alex Grech did a fine job of presenting the basics of Buckingham and Coffman’s classic book, First Break All the Rules.

If you have already read the book it is a nice review. If you haven’t read the book it is a great preview. And if you have little time it is a chance to get a view of some of the key ideas.

If we break all the rules, we may break open disengagement and create higher levels of employee engagement within our organizations.

I have been a big fan of Ted Talks for a a few years and see it grow and grow in popularity. What relationship do you see between happiness and employee engagement?

Watch the following Ted Talk by Nancy Etcoff on the surprising science of happiness. If the video does not load in this window, click here.