Are you taking time for ritual or is time just taking you along for a ride?

Peter Bregman just wrote an excellent post on the value of ritual in your workday.  Here are 3 exceptional snippets from his powerful piece in the Harvard Business Review blog:

The power of ritual is profound and under-appreciated. Mostly, I think, it’s because we live in a time-starved culture, and ritual is time-indulgent. Who can afford the luxury of doing one thing at a time? Who has the patience to pause and honor an activity before and after we do it?

Imagine if we started each meeting with a recognition of the power of bringing a group of people together to collaborate and an intention to dedicate ourselves, without distraction, to achieving the goals of the meeting.

Each time we pause, notice, and offer respect for an activity, it reminds us to appreciate and focus on what we’re about to do. And by elevating each activity, we’ll take it more seriously. We’ll get more pleasure from it. The people with whom we work will feel more respected. And we’ll feel more self-respect. Which means we’ll work better with each other. And produce better results.

Transition rituals. I believe that ritual helps us make strong and engaged transitions. The rituals can be both simple and powerful and help us make a transition from where we were to where we are. We will never have full employee engagement without people working fully in the moment and ritual is a powerful step in the right direction.

Now take these two steps:

1. Read Peter’s great post by clicking here.
2. Determine a ritual for yourself or your team to work like a  samurai.

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David Zinger breathes employee engagement.  His writing, speaking, coaching, and consulting focus on helping organizations and individuals increase employee engagement by 20%. David founded the 3200 member Employee Engagement Network. The network  is committed to increasing employee engagement 20% by 2020. Contact David today to improve engagement where you work

(Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  / Phone 204 254 2130  /  Website: www.davidzinger.com)

All proceeds from Zengage sales for the next 3 weeks will go to Winnipeg Harvest to feed the hungry.

Click here to go to the order page

Zengage: How to Get More Into Your Work to Get More Out of Your Work. Zengage has been out for 3 months. It has been wonderful to receive such positive feedback about this pithy and inspiring book.

Readers have:

• enlivened young workers between the ages of 20 and 30 with it;
• dipped into a random page for inspiration;
• read it to other people aloud;
• stopped and pondered a statement;
• passed some slow time waiting for a plane;
• offered it as a gift to someone who felt disengaged;
• wrote their own Zengage statement;
• distributed a key statement through email at work; and,
• copied a page and posted it at work in their cubicle and in the lunch room.

To all who have found it helpful, thank you.

Until December 25  Zengage is 50% off. To purchase and ship it in Canada will be only $14.00 while to order and receive the e-book version through e-mail is just $5.00.

All proceeds for sales over the next 3 weeks will go to Winnipeg Harvest:

Winnipeg Harvest is a non-profit, community-based organization. They collect and share surplus food with people who are hungry. Their ultimate goal is to eliminate the need for food banks within my home community, Winnipeg.

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David Zinger, M.Ed., helps organizations and individuals increase employee engagement.  He is a writer, educator, speaker, and consultant. David founded the 3100 member Employee Engagement Network. He is committed to increasing employee engagement 20% by 2020. Contact David today to improve engagement where you work (Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  / Phone 204 254 2130  /  Website: www.davidzinger.com).

Employee Engagement: Do you try to capture employees or enchant employees?

Enchantment means captivation, a feeling of great liking for something wonderful and unusual. How do we create liking and wonder for work and engagement?

Enchantment is the art of changing hearts, minds, and actions.

View the slide presentation below on Guy Kawasaki’s 10 suggestions to find enchantment. If it does not load in this window, click here.

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David Zinger, M.Ed., works with organizations and individuals to foster engagement.  He is a writer, educator, speaker, and consultant who founded the 3000 member Employee Engagement Network. David wrote, Zengage: How to Get More Into Your Work to Get More Out of Your Work.  David’s website offers 1100 free posts/articles on the engagement. David is committed to fostering a movement to increase employee engagement 20% by 2020.

Connect with David Zinger today to improve engagement where you work.

Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  -  Phone 204 254 2130  -  Website: www.davidzinger.com

Employee Engagement: Do you have energetic focus for your work?

Dr. Ed. Hallowell has done tremendous work on focus and energy. He recently wrote a post on the Harvard Business Review blog: Will Focus Make You Happier?

The post outlines the challenges to bring focus to our work, how current work makes it a challenge to focus, and the benefits for happiness and productivity when we focus. Here is a delightful and insightful snippet from the post:

Focus imposes order. So focus requires energy. It requires work. It can hurt. People often avoid pain and work. We humans have mixed feelings about expending energy, even if we know it will bring us pleasure… recreate boundaries that technology has broken down so that you have some time actually to think when you’re at work. Turn it off. Close the door. Don’t jump online the minute you feel frustrated or vexed. Push on. Grapple with the problem. Go deep. Persist. Don’t allow intrusions into the precious process of creative thought.

Now, read the full post, grab a cup of focus and engage more in activities that intersect with what you’re good at, what you like to do, and what adds value to the world.

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David Zinger, M.Ed., works with organizations and individuals to foster engagement.  He is a writer, educator, speaker, and consultant who founded the 3100 member Employee Engagement Network. David wrote, Zengage: How to Get More Into Your Work to Get More Out of Your Work.  David’s website offers 1100 free posts/articles on the engagement. David is committed to fostering a movement to increase employee engagement 20% by 2020.

Connect with David Zinger today to improve engagement where you work.

Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  -  Phone 204 254 2130  -  Website: www.davidzinger.com

An Employee Engagement Leadership Classic

One of the employee engagement classic articles is: What engages employees the most or, The Ten C’s of employee engagement by Gerard H. Seijts and Dan Crim.

They offer their 10 C’s of what leaders can do to engage employees’ heads, hearts, and hands. If you are a leader, read the list and grade yourself. If you are an employee use the list to grade your leadership.

1. Connect
2. Career
3. Clarity
4. Convey
5. Congratulate
6. Contribute
7. Control
8. Collaborate
9. Credibility
10. Confidence

To read the full article, click here.

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David Zinger, M.Ed., works with organizations and individuals to foster engagement.  He is a writer, educator, speaker, and consultant who founded the 3000 member Employee Engagement Network. David wrote, Zengage: How to Get More Into Your Work to Get More Out of Your Work.  David’s website offers 1100 free posts/articles on the engagement. David is committed to fostering a movement to increase employee engagement 20% by 2020.

Connect with David Zinger today to improve engagement where you work.

Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  -  Phone 204 254 2130  -  Website: www.davidzinger.com

Are You Mything Out on Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement has been capturing the attention of organizations because of the potential benefits ranging from better financial results to employee well-being. Here are 5 myths or mistakes that many organizations make with their employee engagement work.

Engagement measures must be anonymous.  Engagement requires a name and a face not an anonymous survey. I engage when I know others see me and they are thinking about me.  Disengagement should not be a punishable offence; rather it should be the trigger for a conversation.  I believe we rely far too much on anonymous surveys for engagement data which means that we have organizations where it is not safe to talk about how all employees are experiencing their  work. If that is the case, we don’t have an engagement issue; we have a safety and conversational challenge.

Engagement is about them. Far too often I see employees referred to by managers as “them” and employees refer to leaders as them. We must realize that “them is us.” CEO’s and presidents are employees who may struggle with their own engagement and we will be sowing the seeds of connection or engagement challenges when we believe we are apart from the organization not a part of the organization.

Engagement is the organization’s method to just get more work out of people. Employees need to both know and experience the benefits of engagement. Engagement can increase well-being, create a positive model for our children, enrich the hours of our working days, help us make a difference, create a richer experience for our customers, energize our working day, etc. Engagement is not a problem to be solved it is an experience to be lived.

There is a way to engagement. Engagement is not something extra it is how we work and connect in this decade. Engagement is so much more than a happy dance pasted on YouTube or a half-day recognition and engagement program. Leaders and managers must stop seeing engagement as another item on an endless to-do list and start to integrate engagement ways to build relationships and achieve results through invitation, conversation, connection, co-creation, and community. There is no way to engagement, engagement is the way.

Engagement is something we do to you or for you. There is a wonderful principle from the field of positive deviancy that states: “never do anything about me, without me.” Engagement is not something we do to others it is how we connect and interact with all employees. Ensure employees don’t just answer survey questions – invite employee to have the opportunity to create the survey questions. Cease the endless time delay between surveys and results and bring all employees into the full process. I am often asked by people around the globe, “how do we get everyone on the same page for employee engagement?” My first response is to answer that question with another question: “did all employees have an opportunity to write on that page?”

Don’t myth out on the potential benefits of an engaging organization that fosters high levels of employee engagement through visibility, unity, experience, integration, and invitation.

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David Zinger, M.Ed., helps organizations and individuals increase employee engagement.  He is a writer, educator, speaker, and consultant. David founded the 3100 member Employee Engagement Network and he also wrote Zengage: How to Get More Into Your Work to Get More Out of Your Work.  He is committed to increasing employee engagement 20% by 2020. Contact David today to improve engagement where you work (Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  / Phone 204 254 2130  /  Website: www.davidzinger.com).

Taking Steps for Right Effort

What are you engaging in too little?
What are you engaging in too much?
What are you engaging in just right?

Now add something to the too little.
Take away something from the too much.
Keep doing what is just right.

That’s right effort.

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David Zinger, M.Ed., works with organizations and individuals to foster engagement.  He is a writer, educator, speaker, and consultant who founded the 3160 member Employee Engagement Network.

David wrote, Zengage: How to Get More Into Your Work to Get More Out of Your Work.

David is committed to fostering a movement to increase employee engagement 20% by 2020.

Do your employees have a shelf life?

Daily HR tips fused employee engagement and the employee life cycle from orientation to disengagement.

Here is the tip: Take a look at your key employees and determine their place in the ELC. Identify any actions or interventions you need to take—particularly for employees at ELC stages 4 and 5.

Click here. Now go read the article and see if the life cycle perspective can bring more engagement to your organization.

We need good managers for employee engagement

Julian Birkinshaw is a professor of strategic and international management at London Business School and a senior fellow at the Advanced Institute of Management Research.  He wrote a fine post on Who Want’s to be a Manager?

Here are two snippets from the post:

When you ask children what they want to be when they are older, how many of them say they want to be a manager?

Consider a recent study in the UK, where 40 executives who were working part-time for an MBA were asked to describe their job. While they were happy to talk about themselves as leaders, change agents, entrepreneurs and coaches, not one used the word manager to characterize what they did. The “M-word” has, apparently, become so pejorative that people would prefer to redefine what they do rather than admit to being a member of the management profession.

We need to overcome our management mayhem and it appears to be occurring based on work by Mintzberg, Birkinshaw, and many others. We are creating the seeds for effective management development and adding meaty management gumption and engagement back to the art of work. To read  Birkinshaw’s short post, click here.

Are you fully engaging in management while also managing to engage?

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David Zinger, M.Ed., works with organizations and individuals to foster engagement.  He is a writer, educator, speaker, and consultant who founded the 3100 member Employee Engagement Network. David wrote, Zengage: How to Get More Into Your Work to Get More Out of Your Work.  David’s website offers 1100 free posts/articles on the engagement. David is committed to fostering a movement to increase employee engagement 20% by 2020.

Connect with David Zinger today to improve engagement where you work.

Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  -  Phone 204 254 2130  -  Website: www.davidzinger.com