We often upgrade equipment and tools quicker than we “update” ourselves.
When is the last time you changed your mind?
How long since you established a new meaningful relationship?
What’s the last non fiction book you read?
Make today a day for a clean start because it is no fun being wrung out in a wringer washer or a dead end career.
Whoever said “it’s nothing personal” was not talking about work.
This post is personal. I apologize in advance for not offering you levers, drivers, or 11 action items to boost engagement. I took the pictures in the post, I am not inserting stock photography of people jumping with joy at work – perhaps stock photography should be only used for livestock not to represent real people at work.
I hope sharing a personal experience encourages you to reflect upon your own personal experiences with work.
At the end of this post, I will outline new directions and implications of what I learned for my future contributions to work, management, leadership, and employee engagement .
I experienced an employee engagement watershed day on November 3, 2016. A watershed is an event or period marking a turning point in a course of action or state of affairs.
On November 3rd, I was conducting a 2-day workshop on Employee Engagement in Troubling Times in Dubai with 3 people from Egypt. On the second day their phones starting vibrating and ringing around morning coffee break bringing them distressing economic news. During our second day together, the Egyptian currency was devalued 40%. Interest rates were raised 3% and subsidies were removed from basic goods. They were still doing the same work but within the course of just a few hours it was worth less, by about 50%.
Later that day, after I had returned to my hotel room in Dubai , my wife called me from Winnipeg, Canada, half way around the world from Dubai. Susan told me that she had been walked out of her leadership position without cause at a health care facility. I am not saying this because Susan is my wife, I am saying this because it is true: Susan is one of the most engaged people I know. She has extremely high levels of work engagement yet her years of work and contribution, irrespective of her engagement, was taken from her in a few minutes in a vacuous meeting room.
That day felt devastating and demoralizing. External events can literally make work worth less or make you feel worthless in relationship to your work. I felt a sense of violation against the hard work people were doing. Perhaps because I was in Dubai it triggered the belief that my work in employee engagement was equivalent to putting lipstick on camels.
Regardless of how much lipstick you apply, it is still a camel!
It was over 5 months ago that I felt washed away and carried downstream away from my work on employee engagement over the past 10 years.
During this interval, I had the good fortune in February to visit the powerful and mighty Iguazu Falls in Argentina. Iguazu Falls personifies a real watershed. I saw and felt the power of rushing water. My wife, son, and I took a boat that went through some of the falls. We were drenched and the pressure of the water left us feeling that we had experience a liquid sandblast. Yet, the next day we walked to an isolated falls where you could relax under the water and be rejuvenated and refreshed through the power of falling water.
I intend to transform the November 3rd watershed day away from being sandblasted by organizations and towards being refreshed by the stream of possibilities that lie, often dormant, in our work and engagement.
Not only do I feel differently, I want it to change how I work, and what I work on.
It is time for me to put the lipstick tube down and face up to all that is involved in engagement at work. I intend to be stronger and more personal in my writing, expressions, and work on engagement. You can see some of the early developments of this in my recent posts on LinkedIn and my regular contributions on the Halogen TalentSpace blog:
Watch for a stronger more personal focus on my keynotes, coaching, consulting, workshops, and online courses during the next eight months in 2017.
In addition, a major project during 2017 is researching and interviewing people for my fifth book on engagement and work. The working title is Wisdom at Work. I am interviewing 100 people who have retired to draw out their stories, perspectives, and wisdom on how to work. I chose retired people as they offer a full perspective on work and career and they are removed from day-to-day work and organizational politics. I believe they will feel freer to open up about work and engagement. I have only interviewed 12 of my 100 people but I have learned so much already, including:
David Zinger is a global employee engagement expert and educator who won’t be buying any lipstick for camels in the near future.
I was inspired by the sunflower growing outside of my office window. It is October in Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada yet this sunflower bloom is so alive.
Some of us as we get close to the end of something begin to coast but let this sunflower inspire you to stay engaged until the end. Engage near the end of the day, near the end of a project, near the end of a meeting, near the end of the year, near the end of your career.
Don’t let the autumn of your career mentally prevent you from being fully engaged.
You still have much to experience and contribute.
David Zinger is an employee engagement expert and speaker who is inspired by engaging with many things around him.
I encourage you to visit the Employee Engagement Network every week.
When you visit you will get:
The network has a wonderful design and is especially curated for engagement by myself.
Start your visit now, click here.
David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert.
Employee Engagement: Think Different #2
The September 24th issue of The Economist had an article against happiness at work.
The article stated that “companies that try to turn happiness into a management tool are overstepping the mark.” The one-page article also concluded that companies do not have the right to “turn happiness into an instrument of corporate control.”
I couldn’t agree more.
I have maintained for years that engagement is an invitation not an imposition. It is not about control but connection. We don’t make someone else engaged. People are not machines and you can’t pull levers or push drivers to engage them.
If you want to engage, invite do not coerce. And by the way, if you invite rather than compel, that will go a long way to making me happier about work and engagement!
David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert from Winnipeg Canada.