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Waggle: 39 Ways to Improve Organizations, Work, and Engagement (Coming May 29th)

Posted on May 20, 2013 // 1 Comment

Waggle is coming May 29th

Waggle Book New Cover Promotion

My newest free eBook Waggle is coming on May 29th. This book looks fantastic on a tablet or smart phone. It is based on 3 years attempting to convene honeybees and humans. It is not really about bees, don’t worry you won’t get stung. It is about what we can learn from bees to improve our own work, engagement, and organizations.

It will be released on May 29th. because that is Manitoba’s: Day of the Honeybee.

I will post it on this site and other places on that day. It is 68 pages long and has lots of pictures so it is an easy read, perfect while you are waiting at the gate for your flight to Timbuktu or waiting in your doctor’s office.

I no longer have the patience for most business books that drone on for 350 pages and generally I can find most of what I am looking for from an author in a good blog post. I just had so many great images that I wanted something that was easier to look at and pass around.

The book is free, you will just click on the image and read it or download it. There is no email or registration required. What I hope you will do is pass it on to others who may benefit by being able to think differently inside their hive.

Come back on May 29, catch the buzz, and start your waggle.

Waggle Promotion Image

David Zinger is an employee engagement expert and speaker who went to the honeybee hives for three summers to learn lesson for engagement from this enthralling species.

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Employee Engagement Friday Factoid #23: 93% of us work with a Slacker

Posted on March 15, 2013 // Leave a Comment

Are you slacking or picking up the slack?

Slacking co-workers cause a quarter of their hard-working colleagues to put in four to six more hours of work each week…four out of five say the quality of their work declines when they have to pick up their co-workers’ slack — a huge potential blow to the bottom line when you consider that 93 percent have a co-worker who doesn’t do his or her fair share.  Stuck With a Slacking Co-Worker?

Commentary

This survey was conducted by Vital Smarts and offered support for the importance of holding Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations when working with others who have disengaged.

David Zinger is a global employee engagement expert. He teaches both Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations for Shared Visions/Vital Smarts and believes in the power of conversation to foster engagement and to correct for disengagement.

 

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Employee Engagement and Work Criteria

Posted on December 11, 2012 // Leave a Comment

Do you have work criteria?

Viv McWaters is one of my favorite bloggers as she posts on Beyond the Edge. I like her sense of connection, community, improvisation, facilitation, and work. I appreciated the criteria she created to determine projects she would work on:

  • Can I make a real contribution? Is there a need for my skills? Will I make a difference?
  • Will it stretch me? Is it edgy? Will it contribute to my continued learning?
  • Is there an opportunity to build capacity, and transfer my skills, knowledge and enthusiasm to others?
  • Will it enable me to make money and provide for the future?
  • Is there an opportunity to travel to new or interesting places?
  • Will I be with cool people, especially friends? Will I potentially make new friends, and build existing relationships?
  • Will I have fun?
  • Am I excited by the prospect?

These criteria are specific for the type of work that Viv does. Do you have criteria for your work? What are your criteria? Do you use them to make your work decisions? I encourage you to get more from work and ensure you work on the right work, for you, by establishing a set of personal criteria for work. By the way, you don’t have to have each piece of work fulfill all the criteria but certainly the more criteria the work is aligned with the better for you and others.

David Zinger is a global employee engagement expert at work on his criteria for work in 2013.

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Employee Engagement: Achieve Strong Results

Posted on October 25, 2012 // Leave a Comment

Results: Strengthen the Pyramid of Employee Engagement One Block at a Time

I developed the 10 block pyramid of employee engagement model to demonstrate the keys to employee engagement. Here is a link to a 50 page booklet on the pyramid.

After taking the strengths inventory Strengthscope from Strengths Partnership in the UK,  I was determined to make a systematic application of my 7 significant strengths applied to each of the blocks of the pyramid. This will make the engagement work more robust while also enhancing my wellbeing through the application of strengths in the service of others. There will be 10 posts in this series. Not all will have the same bullet point format but all will involve  a structured application of strengths to engagement.

1. Achieve Results

At the apex of the pyramid of employee engagement is achieve results. We need to know and communicate the results we are trying to achieve. Our results should be engaging and we need to engage in the creation of results. To turbo charge results I am applying my significant 7 strengths from the Strength Partnership’s Strengthscope. The diagram at the top of the page shows “achieve results” embedded within my strengths of leading, enthusiasm, empathy, self-improvement, flexibility, creativity, and developing others.

Here are ways that my strengths can be, or have been, used to support and strengthen the “achieve results” block in the pyramid of employee engagement:

Leading

  • Create compelling and inspiring results that lead others towards a specific destination.
  • Ensure the people I lead are given opportunities to co-create results. I love the line, if you want to get everyone on the same page you must give them the opportunity to write on that page and the similar line from the field of positive deviance, never do anything about me without me. Leading does not mean telling people what to do and how to do it, leading means working together to determine destinations that benefit everyone.

Enthusiasm

  • My result statements need to generate an inherent enthusiasm and I must bring my enthusiasm to those results.
  • I want my results to have a sense of pulling me towards something of great value.
  • I will ensure the crafting of meaningful results and celebrate the achievement of all  steps and progress towards results. These are not gala celebrations but moments taken after a chunk of work to feel the enthusiasm of accomplishment.

Empathy

  • I will listen fully to others to learn from them and to learn their approach to results. I will embrace the Spice Girls’ line: “so tell me what you want, what you really really want?”
  • I will check to see if the results stated and generated create passion and purpose for others.
  • I will apply empathetic  imagination to determine the impact of results on all major stakeholders. As I develop results I can apply my empathy to thinking though the impact of each result on all major stakeholders.

Self-Improvement

  • I will fuse  work results with wellbeing results to develop both personally and professionally.
  • I will learn more about results by going back and re-reading Peter Drucker’s work on results and also reviewing JD Meier’s insightful approach to Getting Results the Agile Way.

Flexibility

  • I will embrace strategic improvisation by determining results but having the heart of improvisation to enhance or improve results based on feedback.
  • I shall craft the results less as statements carved in granite and more as intentions that have specificity and clarity yet flexibility based on feedback.
  • Failure and successes with results will be opportunities to learn and change.

Creativity

  • I love creativity and even took each of my 7 significant strengths and made my own symbol for each of them with the help of my graphic designer, John Junson.
  • Spend more time thinking about results and applying a variety of tools to create fresh or new thinking.
  • Use the full power of daily results to create larger results.
  • Start each day by crafting three result statement for that day phrased as mini heroic stories.
  • Work at communicating results as stories to capitalize on the power of narrative results for both meaning and memory.
Develop Others

  • Start conversations with others about results they are trying to achieve.
  • Help others install and achieve results as a focus for their work and engagement.
  • Enter meetings and courses with a clear focus on the results I would like others to achieve from our time together.

Exciting London Workshop – An Invitation to all UK and European Readers

Plan to attend the London UK Strength and Engagement Workshop Wednesday November 28 from 13:00 to 18:00.  I invite you to attend an afternoon workshop sponsored by Strengths Partnership on The Leaders Role in Optimising Strengths and Engagement to Achieve Innovation and Excellence. I will be presenting/facilitating on the Pyramid of Employee Engagement and Michael Farry, HR Director for PhotoBox, will also be presenting on how to build a culture of positive leadership, collaboration and innovation through a systematic, practical and integrated change and development programme.

For a modest fee of £75 plus VAT, you will receive:

  •  Entrance to the conference and networking over drinks after the event
  •  An opportunity to take the Strengthscope360™ profiler and receive feedback
  •  A free leadership book entitled “Stretch – Leading Beyond Boundaries”
  •  Delegate pack containing proven and practical tools to help optimise workforce strengths and engagement at the individual, team and organisational levels
  •  An invitation to join the Strengths HR Forum (over 1,300 members) and the Employee Engagement Network (over 5,000 members)

To register click here.

Next Post in the Series: Employee Engagement: Mastering Strong Performance.

David Zinger is an employee engagement expert. He will be in the UK in late November to support the Go Live event for the UK Employee Engagement Task Force and to co-lead an afternoon on the fusion of employee engagement and strengths for innovation and excellence.

 

 

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10 Stops for Employee Engagement

Posted on August 16, 2012 //

Please come to a complete stop before proceeding…

  1. Stop waiting for a magic moment to engage.
  2. Stop mistaking engagement as someone else’s job or responsibility.
  3. Stop conceptualizing engagement as a problem to be solved.
  4. Stop searching for a stronger business case for engagement.
  5. Stop thinking of employee engagement as an extra.
  6. Stop believing you need more data to begin.
  7. Stop seeing the CEO or President as someone other than an employee.
  8. Stop wasting time formulating big programs and splashy launches.
  9. Stop extensive consulting with experts so that you have time to consult with employees.
  10. Stop trying and start doing.
David Zinger is a global employee engagement expert. Email him today at david@davidzinger.com for speaking, education, or consulting services.

 

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Employee Engagement: Should We Ban Disengaged Employees?

Posted on August 1, 2012 // 4 Comments

An Olympic Action – An Organizational Consideration

The Olympics banned a number of female badminton players. One article stated:

The evening session of the tournament descended into chaos on Tuesday, with fans jeering two separate matches as players deliberately missed shots and dumped serves into the net in a race to the bottom, forcing the BWF to mount an investigation. A BWF panel charged the players with “not using one’s best efforts to win a match” and “conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport” were brought against the players.

Ban disengaged employees? I am not suggesting that we ban all disengaged employees from workplaces as there are many causes for disengagement but it makes me think that we should take decisive action and “ban” employees who deliberately don’t give their best to their work because of self-interest as they fail to consider the impact their poor performance has on their customers, peers, and organization. Even if we work in a disengaging workplace we should be engaging our best efforts to advocate and create change for the better.

What are your thoughts? Is this a crazy idea or something we have neglected in our workplaces? I encourage you to write a comment. To ban or not to ban?

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Saturation: An Employee Engagement Meditation

Posted on July 25, 2012 // 4 Comments

Dissipating saturation

This “too” shall pass. I am saturated. Too much information. Too many meetings. Too many tips. Too many infographics. Too many experts. Too many communities. Too many white papers. Too many updates. Too many tasks. Too many things to remember. I can’t engage because there is no capacity for absorption.

Saturation defined. The formal definition of saturation is: The state or process that occurs when no more of something can be absorbed, combined with, or added. But let’s not rest or rely on formalities. Saturation numbs, scatters the mind, and leaves a dull headache that throbs a hint of something missed or forgotten.

Dissipation through awareness. It is time to dissipate this saturation not by reading a time management book, writing a to-do list, or slumbering into an afternoon escapist nap that stretches until the next morning. I dissipate saturation not by using expectation and demand to squeeze myself like a dripping sponge but by taking one breath and accepting saturation by writing a short meditation on the experience.

Nudge. I feel less drippy and ready to re-engage with the vital work before me. I recognize the power of reflective writing to nudge myself through saturation and I celebrate impermanence for informing me that even the weight and numbness of saturation evaporates.

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