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

May 28, 2013 by David Zinger Leave a Comment

A good employee engagement speaker engages

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.

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.
Within every 15 to 20 minute period I encourage the audience to engage in an exercise to bring the concepts or practices to life.
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.
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.
I rely more on stories than statistics and each statistic should have a story behind it.
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.
I honor the experience that many people will learn more by what they say than by what they hear.
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.
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.

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.

Lesson Two From an Employee Engagement Speaker: Some Things Should Never be Radical!

May 21, 2013 by David Zinger Leave a Comment

It should not be radical to be either honest or transparent

Employee engagement thrives with honesty and transparency. I trust we don’t have to make the business case for honesty and transparency in the workplace but I am sure someone has set about calculating the return on honesty (ROH) or an even better Dilbert-like acronym, Return on Transparency (ROT).

In recent years, I have increasingly encountered articles and blog posts about radical honesty and radical transparency. Ryan Smith and Golnaz Tabibnia (what a wonderful looking and sounding name) near the end of 2012 wrote a Harvard Business blog post: Why Radical Transparency Is Good Business. They claim radical transparency improves business performance in terms of focus, engagement, and growing and recruiting talent. I guess there already is a ROT in our workplace. I don’t quibble with their premise or plea for transparency I just hope that we don’t see it as being so radical.

When did it ever become RADICAL to be honest or transparent at work. (Yikes, I think I am starting to almost write like Tom Peters and his tendency to try and shout through his writing with a plethora of BOLD UPPER CASE letters in a variety of colors.

Of course, maybe we do need to shout: YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE RADICAL TO BE HONEST OR TRANSPARENT. I yearn for the sound of respectful voices not shouting but rather being honest and transparent in our workplace.

One last thing, please do not ever approach me and ask, “Can I be really honest with you right now?” I am going to say no. Not because I don’t want you to be honest but because it makes me believe that you have not been honest with me before. Just go ahead all the time and be honest, really! Trust me, you probably will be real more than radical.

‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” ― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

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

David

David Zinger is an expert global employee engagement speaker and consultant who brings the topic 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.

Boosting Employee Engagement: 9 Lessons from the Winnipeg Jets

February 21, 2012 by David Zinger 2 Comments

9 lessons from the Winnipeg Jets for Employee Engagement

Are you game? Last week I attended my first Winnipeg Jets hockey game. It is a challenge to get tickets as the 15,000 seats are always sold and the season tickets sold out in a couple of minutes for the first 3 or 4 years. Thanks to my neighbour Andy, who knew someone, my wife and I finally got to a game with the Winnipeg Jets playing the Boston Bruins. We (notice the sense of identification) beat the Bruins, the Stanley Cup champions, 4 to 2. But the real story for this employee engagement site is the lessons we can learn from the Jets for employee engagement. To have a positive impact on engagement you don’t need to read another business or leadership book, you may just need to look at thing right in front of you and look for the lessons that apply to employee engagement. Engagement is the strength of connection to work, results, the organizations, and each other.

Lesson 1: An engaging story. Winnipeg lost their NHL franchise to Phoenix about 15 years ago. This season we got an NHL team back in Winnipeg. This has become an engaging and classic story of pride, loss, challenge, and victory through return of the team to Winnipeg. This is not quite the Odyssey but it certainly has elements of a very powerful story that fully engages the city of Winnipeg. Even my massage therapist wears a Jets jersey on game day because her young son will not let her leave the house without putting it on. Our logo, of the fighter jet, hints of the battle to win a team back. The feverish passion of Jets fans may be just as much about the narrative story as the players on the ice. What story does your organization tell that engages employees? Are your employees part of the story?

Lesson 2: An engaged brand. The Winnipeg Jets have a wonderful logo and a strong brand. In today’s age though your brand is less what you say it is and more what your customers and employees say it is. The company responsible for bringing the Jets to Winnipeg is True North Sports & Entertainment Ltd. It must thrill their ears before every game during the singing of O Canada to hear 15,000 fans shout out the words TRUE NORTH embedded in the lyrics of O Canada. What would it take for your employees and customers to” shout out” your brand?

Lesson 3: Results. There is general excitement about the team but don’t ever kid yourself, results matter. Results matter for hockey teams and organizations. It made a difference that the final score was 4 to 2 for us (see the identification again, as I wasn’t actually on the ice, I was sitting in the stands). Results must be something not only important to CEO’s and shareholders, results must matter to everyone. Do your employees live or die with your results?

Lesson 4: Performance. Results matter as does performance. You can’t always control the results but you can give your best to your performance. Fans got very excited by some key performances especially a save by Pavelec, the goalie, in the third period. A strong performance engages not only the performer but people around the performer. Are your employees seeing excellent performance and are those exceptional performances fully recognized? Do employees feed off of the strong performance of others?

Lesson 5: Progress and Set backs. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer in The Progress Principle wrote about how important progress is for engagement and that setbacks are very detrimental to engagement. Set backs are two times as powerful as progress so it is vital to prevent and guard against set backs. The Jets are built around solid goalies and strong defense. Is your organization designed to maintain engagement by being built to prevent setbacks that would diminish both progress and engagement?

Lesson 6: Ask and Trigger. The scoreboard at times would ask fans to make noise, as fans would start being loud the scoreboard would then flash: “LOUDER.” We sometimes overlook the simple approach of asking for what we want. Winnipeg is already one of the loudest places in the NHL. Are you asking and letting employees know that you want more engagement? If you have a very engaged group do you ensure triggers are in place to sustain that engagement?

Lesson 7: Keeping score. The scoreboard, at all sporting events, is a key element of the game. We knew how many shots each team had taken. We knew how much time was left in the game or in penalties. We knew the score. This is a fine example of a key principle of games. 2011 was a strong year for looking at the gamification of work. Do your employees have a scoreboard or dashboard where they can keep score? Are you utilizing the principles of gamification to enhance engagement?

Lesson 8: Offer feedback. Aligned with keeping score is the process of feedback. One area that has experienced a tremendous boost because of feedback is the 50/50 draw. When the Jets were here 15 years ago the 50/50 was often not that large by today’s standards. Technology now makes it possible to watch the pot grow every second and this has provided a huge increase in sales because of the power of feedback to trigger behavior. Are your employees getting frequent and timely feedback to encourage more engagement?

Lesson 9: The wave. Yes we can be prompted to make noise or buy 50/50 tickets but it is still powerful to see fans work out their own game within a game. The wave has been circling around stadiums for years but it is intriguing to watch as people work at getting others out of their seats, with their hands waved in the air, while creating a sense of movement around the arena. There were a number of failed attempts yet persistence on the part of the initiators eventually got the wave circling around the arena. Do you set up the conditions so the community in your workplace can start and create their own waves of engagement? Are the social media tools in place so people can connect with each others?

Conclusion. This was nine lessons from the Winnipeg Jets. Next time you are reading a book or at an event pay close attention and look for lessons that can enhance your engagement and work. Of course, be careful of flying pucks. Go Jets Go

David Zinger is an employee engagement expert and a fan of the Winnipeg Jets. He founded and hosts the 4600 member global Employee Engagement Network. If you would like to learn more about engagement visit his website or contact him at zingerdj@gmail.com