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Employee Engagement and the Verb of Engage

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I am currently crafting a 21-point manifesto for employee engagement.

Zinger Employee Engagement Manifesto

I trust I will have it completed in the next 2 weeks and look forward to sharing this document and engaging with people based on a strong action statement of what I believe is required to move employee engagement forward for the next 15 years. Here is a list of the verbs that begin each statement:

  1. simplify
  2. change
  3. make
  4. rewrite
  5. diminish
  6. monitor
  7. recognize
  8. offer
  9. substitute
  10. awaken
  11. ensure
  12. reframe
  13. integrate
  14. mobilize
  15. energize
  16. enable
  17. learn
  18. commit
  19. elevate
  20. build
  21. forge

Look for this action manifesto within the next two weeks then engage along with me because the best is yet to be.

Employee Engagement: Focusing on Results Does Not Mean We Can’t be Playful

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Why we need to be more like the Spice Girls

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I believe there is a much greater connection between employee engagement and the Spice Girls than most people imagine. I am not talking about having to form a female quintet dressed in colorful clothing. I am not talking about creating a musical recruiting YouTube video.

I am talking about knowing what you want when you attend an employee engagement event and knowing what you want from employee engagement. To be more specific about the Spice Girls, it all comes down to one of their songs. Be careful, the next lines might create an earwurm, a snippet of a tune that gets into the brain and won’t leave.

I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want
So tell me what you want, what you really, really want
I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want
So tell me what you want, what you really, really want.

Just because we focus intently on results does not mean that we can’t be playful. We need to know the results we are looking for.

Engage along with me, the best is yet to be.

David Zinger is an expert  global employee engagement speaker and consultant who uses the pyramid of employee engagement to help leaders, managers, and organizations increase engagement.

David Zinger Employee Engagement Speaker: Don’t Manage Change (Lesson 4)

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Are you ready to change employee engagement?

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Employee engagement involves change. Virgina Satir, an exceptional family therapist once taught me that people do not resist change. I asked her why people didn’t change and she responded that “the gravity of the familiar keeps pulling us back into its orbit.”

What people resist is being compelled or coerced to change. In the dying days of leadership command and control we still seem to want to make people change and we are very poor at inviting people to change.

I loved (a strong choice or words for a blog post) Daniel Markovitz’s Harvard Business Blog post on May 16:  No One Likes to Be Changed. Here are a few of his pearls of change wisdom:

I propose that we dispense with the concept of “change management” entirely. History shows that’s a recipe guaranteed to foment fear, resistance, and — ultimately —failure.

Research shows that there’s actually a decrease in cognitive function when people feel as though they lack control over their work environment. Moreover, repetitive change initiatives — particularly ones that include layoffs — inevitably lead to cynicism and often to a kind of learned helplessness.

The key is to pose a business problem to the workers actually doing the job and then having them design the change

The real secret to successful change, therefore, is not to change people at all. Let them figure out how to solve their own problems, and they’ll do the rest.

If employee engagement is a problem in your organization are you letting employees be the ones to solve it? As my friends at Juice ask: As a leader or manager, are you a parent or a partner with your employees?

David

David Zinger is an expert  global employee engagement speaker and consultant who brings the engagement  down to earth while striving to enliven the pyramid of employee engagement to help leaders, managers, and organizations increase engagement and results while also building relationships. David has worked on employee engagement from Winnipeg to Warsaw, Saskatoon to South Africa, and Boston to Barcelona. In 2013, David has spoken in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Berlin, New York, Chicago, and Toronto. Contact him today at: david@davidzinger.com

Lesson Three from David Zinger Employee Engagement Speaker: 9 Ways to Engage the Audience

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A good employee engagement speaker engages

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I have been to a lot of conferences and witnessed many presentations on employee engagement. I have spoken on employee engagement on at least 200 occasions. The best presentations engage the attendees with each other and with the topic even in a one hour keynote. We don’t need 100 PowerPoint slides and the speaker rattling off statistics about engagement like an auctioneer voicing bids at an auction. We need to ensure that employee engagement sessions transform the noun of engagement into the verb of engage.

Here are 9 things I do to make sure they speech is engaging.

  1. I use just one slide or no slides. This also help me to ensure that I don’t try to cover too much. Many times I tell audience when I show my first slide that this is my first slide and only slide. I have had audiences applaud then they hear it is just one slide. I find that audiences often prefer one slide to no slides because it gives them something to look at. This slide I use most is the Pyramid of Employee Engagement. See this slide at the end of these 9 points.
  2. Within every 15 to 20 minute period I encourage the audience to engage in an exercise to bring the concepts or practices to life.
  3. I never make my audience engage in an exercise or meet with a partner. I invite them to do this and respect their choice not to engage. Real engagement starts with authentic and compelling invitations.
  4. I offer online resources people can use to get more information after the speech/facilitation so that they don’t feel compelled to write everything down.
  5. I rely more on stories than statistics and each statistic should have a story behind it.
  6. I voice tentative statements so that audiences can determine for themselves if the ideas or practices are viable or valuable. We learn in a richer more expansive way when we are given good tentative information.
  7. I honor the experience that many people will learn more by what they say than by what they hear.
  8. My VIA signature strength is humor and playfulness so I ensure my speeches have both humor and playfulness built in to the design and delivery of the session.
  9. By the end of the speech I know I have been successful if I have a hard time getting the audiences’ attention back from an invited exercise because they are so engaged with what they are doing.

Zinger Model of Employee Engagement

David

David Zinger is an expert  global employee engagement speaker and consultant who brings the engagement  down to earth while striving to enliven the pyramid of employee engagement to help leaders, managers, and organizations increase engagement and results while also building relationships. David has worked on employee engagement from Winnipeg to Warsaw, Saskatoon to South Africa, and Boston to Barcelona. In 2013, David has spoken in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Berlin, New York, Chicago, and Toronto.

Employee Engagement Cartoonist John Junson is One in a Million

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David Zinger, Employee Engagement Speaker, on Cartoonist & Designer John Junson

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This is cheating but I feel so right in doing it that I will go ahead and cheat.

John Junson, the Employee Engagement Network weekly resident cartoonist, has just published cartoon number 360 on the network. He has completed a full circle of 360 cartoons.  His work is exceptional and he now performs cartooning and design work for many other members of the network.  I encourage you to contact him to create some great cartoons or design images for you with the same quality I have admired and appreciated for many years.

Yes, John created the logo above about five years ago for another project we worked on but most of his design and cartoon work is timeless. He also created some wonderful images for my new eBook, Waggle, including the great image of one bee in the picture below.

One Bee Lives Image

John is one in a million. Here is the cheating part, I am using his latest cartoon to recognize him, without the humor, as he truly is one in a million for customized cartooning and design.

Today At Work 360

John was my neighbor almost forty-five years ago when I moved to Winnipeg to complete grade nine! His mom made him take me to Bruce Junior High and even today he is schooling me on humor, cartooning, photography, and design. Thank you John. I know my work would not be what it is without your work.

By the way, if you want to contact John Junson for design or cartooning, email me: david@davidzinger.com and I will connect you to him.