leadership — David Zinger - Employee Engagement Speaker

Where do you go to learn about work, engagement, management and leadership?

January 16, 2017 by David Zinger Leave a Comment

This last weekend I left Winnipeg and -33 degrees to go to Santiago and plus 33 degrees.

I am looking forward to learning about employee engagement, work, leadership, management, and Chile while I am there. I have travelled the world to teach about employee engagement but the reward for me has been to travel the word to learn about engagement. If nothing else, Santiago will unfreeze my view of work (and I won’t have to shovel snow for a month)!

The poetry of Pablo Neruda has opened my heart before I even touched down in Santiago. I invite you to read my short LinkedIN post about this.

You don’t have to be a world traveller but I believe it is valuable to ask yourself: Where do I go to learn about work, engagement, management, and leadership?

David Zinger is an employee engagement expert and speaker who travels the world in search of engagement.

Are your managers and leaders strong enough for employee engagement?

December 14, 2016 by David Zinger Leave a Comment

Yesterday I wrote a short post on LinkedIN.

Within 12 hours it was my most popular post on LinkedIn this year. It was from my heart and looked at wanting but not necessarily welcoming engaged employees.

Read the full post by clicking on the title: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/engaged-employees-wanted-always-welcomed-david-zinger.

Here is a short video about the topic:

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert from Winnipeg, Canada

Employee Engagement: What’s Cooking?

June 30, 2016 by David Zinger Leave a Comment

I recently devoured Dan Charnas’ intriguing book, Work Clean: What Great Chefs Can Teach Us About Organizations. The book outlines the method of mise-en-place. Mise-en-place is a way of working, being focused and disciplined — many chefs believe it is a way of life.

I enjoyed reading the book and could not help but think of the important lessons for all of us as we engage in our work, either inside the kitchen or anywhere we encounter our work.

Work Clean Cover

The key take-away for me was a focus on preparation, process, and presence. These 3 P’s offer strong guidance for anyone wishing to enhance their engagement.

Chefs commit to a way of working where preparation is central. You always need to be thinking ahead as cooking cannot happen without the prep coming first. Charnas stated that preparation becomes, “a kind of spiritual practice: humble, tireless, and nonnegotiable.”
Process is how we execute the plan. Chefs pursue the best process to do just about everything. Dan says that process is about “becoming a high-functioning human being and being happier for it.” It makes both our work and ourselves better.
Presence is fully showing up for our work. It is about being fully engaged, becoming one with the work and being mindfully engaged in everything we do.

Preparation, process, and presence are not abstract concepts. They demand a fourth “P” – Practice. We need to make engaged work a daily practice. This fits well with my 8 word definition of employee engagement: good work done well with others every day.

Dan suggests three commitments for engaged work:

Commit to preparation with a 30-minute daily planning session.
Commit to a process that makes you better.
Commit to being present in whatever you do.

I invite you to read the book to learn more, but even more importantly, I strongly encourage you to infuse your work with preparation, process, and presence as the essential ingredients in your employee engagement.

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert who enjoys cleaning the kitchen in creating a culinary tabula rasa for the next meal.

Employee Engagement: Beyond the Latte

March 22, 2016 by David Zinger Leave a Comment

Let’s Focus on Work and Love our Labor.

I have recently been looking at pictures of best employers and great places to work. There are so many pictures of fun that one could easily confuse engagement with just having fun, running on the workplace treadmill, and sipping away a morning with a lovely latte.

I love fun and I am fond of lattes but I think we need to keep a focus on the work itself and the people we work with. That is why I define employee engagement as: good work done well with others every day.

Engagement is less about lattes and more about labour, less about pizzas and parties and more about performance and productivity, less about a workout and more about getting into our work.

You just might find the more you get into work the more you will get out of it.

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert.

Employee Engagement in Doha: Geometry and Sun Light

March 26, 2015 by David Zinger 4 Comments

I am currently in Doha, Qatar to work on employee engagement. I strive to be influenced by the sights, feel, geography and architecture of wherever I am working. Flying to Qatar from Montreal I watched a brilliant video about I. M Pei and his architectural design and work on the magnificent Museum of Islamic Art by the Doha Corniche.

Creative commons Image by Jan Smith (Flickr) http://bit.ly/1OBUuwN

I was very impressed with the spirit, enthusiasm, smiles, discipline, and demands I. M. Pei had for this project. Two themes really stood out for me with some metaphoric parallels for employee engagement.

Pei was influenced by sand and water and Islamic architecture. He wanted the building to change based on the movement of the sun. He stated: “the movement of the sun makes the building come alive.” It made me think of engagement in our organizations never being static and the movement of energy offers vibrancy to help the organization come alive.

Pei also made use of water in the building. He talked about the power of water for sound, movement, ripple, stillness, trickling, and reflection. I believe in the same way we need to see the properties of water within our organizations. We need reflection at times and stillness. We need sound and movement. And we should see engagement as continually flowing, not merely an annual snapshot from a static survey.

I appreciated how Pei came from New York and used his insatiable curiosity to understand what needed to be built. There are many people in Doha from other parts of the world that play a role in employee engagement in Qatar. Pei gave massive credit to his team on the project and like employee engagement in an organization no one does it alone. Pei will be 98 in April — his smile, his way of working, and his engagement is an inspiration to me as I work on employee engagement in Doha, Qatar.