David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and global expert.
Archives for 2015
Employee Engagement: Can you make the mundane engaging?
Check out my short post today on LinkedIN by Duane Bray on how IDEO strives to make the mundane engaging. There is also a short slide show included on The Little Book of IDEO. To read the post click on the picture by Peter W. Hart or click here.
David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert.
Employee Engagement: Are You A Toasted Marshmallow?
Don’t get burnt at work by lacking the vital human skills of leadership.
I hate the term soft skills. Here is my latest post on LinkedIn on why we should stop referring to the human skills at work as soft skills: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/employee-engagement-dont-marshmallow-david-zinger
David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker, educator, and consultant. He only enjoys toasted marshmallows when he is camping!
Employee Engagement: Gathering is Our Work
3 Men in a Boat
Do you gather before you start your work? Do you see gathering as part of work.
In Turkey, I watched these three men gather before they began to get their boat ready to cast off. They seemed so connected and joined being with each other.
I encourage you to gather before you work by taking time to check-in with each other or to huddle or to chat a bit over the phone or text a bit on the computer. We do not get work done through relationships, we get work done with relationships so remember that relationships, not just tasks, are your work.
David Zinger is an employee engagement expert and speaker who believes engagement can help us to make both relationships and results more robust.
Employee Engagement Lesson From Pamukkale, Turkey: Not Everything is as it Seems
As a Canadian I tend to believe that everything that is white is snow or ice.
While in Turkey this November, my wife and I visited Pamukkale. Pamukkale means cotton castle. It seemed that we were back in Canada near a glacier. Yet, this was a deception caused by the white terraces composed of travertine, a sedimentary rock deposited by water from the hot springs. This was not the cold glacial water I have experienced in Canada — this was warm water from the hot springs.
To bring this back to the field of employee engagement, it is important to remember that not everything is as it seems. Sometimes surveys don’t just measure engagement they disengage employees and create cynicism. We sometimes create discouragement when we keep broadcasting that our workplace is a great place to work when we know even great workplaces are not great for everyone.
Sometimes we condone disengagement by not having conversations – disengagement should be a trigger for a conversation not a punishable offence. Sometimes we say we want engagement but we fail to devote any time, resources, or energy to improving engagement.
Leaders can be like kids in the candy store who want to eat everything, including the cotton candy, even though there is no more room to eat another bite of anything. In a world where we have gone from doing more with less to everything with nothing we must carefully consider what we can fully work on with our limited time.
The next time you look at employee engagement in your organization, or for yourself, take a second careful look because not everything is as it seems.
David Zinger is a global employee engagement expert and speaker who recently completed his fourth book, People Artists: Drawing Out the Best in Others.