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How to Leverage 5 Pathways for Strengths Based Employee Engagement

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6. Leverage Strengths – An outline of why employee engagement needs to be strong stuff.

(Part 6 of an 11 part series on how managers can improve employee engagement)

Let’s get strong in 2012.

Engagement is strong stuff. When you know your strengths, live your strengths, and leverage your strengths in the service of others you will have increased engagement, happiness, and well being. To bring out the strengths of others we must be aware of our own strengths. Powerful managers “spot” employees’ strengths and make strength training and strengthening routines a daily endeavor.

Strength Based Leadership. I have been a student of strength based leadership for 7 years. If you go back and read blog posts on this site from 5 years ago you will see most of them had a strength based leadership focus. In fact, this specific blog was started November 11 2005, the day Peter Drucker died.  I dedicated the website to his legacy and encouragement of a strength based approach to work. I have taken inventories of my strengths, taught strength based approaches, encouraged thousands of employees to learn more about their strengths and believe that strengths are a foundation cornerstone in the pyramid of employee engagement. Overtime I realized that strength based approaches for work were best subsumed under the broader perspective of employee engagement.

5 pathways to strengthen your engagement and work:

  1. Don’t be a sucker, heed the advice of Peter Drucker.
  2. Follow Martin Seligman’s strong path towards happiness and well being.
  3. Gallup along with your strengths, your winning combination is 40-22-1.
  4. Set aside your trombone and find your strengths by looking at what engages you (Marcus Buckingham).
  5. See your best reflections as others offer you your reflected best self.

Don’t be a sucker, heed the advice of Peter Drucker.  Peter Drucker was a prolific management writer who focused intently on strengths at work  in his final years. In 1999 in an article in managing our own career Drucker said we have to place ourselves where we can make the greatest contribution to our organizations and communities. And we have to stay mentally alert and engaged during a 50-year working life, which means knowing how and when to change the work we do. It may seem obvious that people achieve results by doing what they are good at and by working in ways that fit their abilities but Drucker believed very few people actually know–let alone take advantage of–their fundamental strengths. He challenged each of us to ask ourselves and hold conversations with  others at work about:

  • What are my strengths?
  • How do I perform?
  • What are my values?
  • Where do I belong?
  • What should my contribution be?

Accept yourself. Don’t try to change yourself, Drucker cautions. Instead, concentrate on improving the skills you have and accepting assignments that are tailored to your individual way of working. If you do that, you can transform yourself from an ordinary worker into an outstanding performer. Today’s successful careers are not planned out in advance. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they have asked themselves the above questions and rigorously assessed their unique characteristics.

Follow Martin Seligman’s strong path towards happiness and well being.  If Drucker is the dean of management then Seligman is the dean of psychology and leader of positive psychology. Seligman is a cautious academic, former head of the American Psychological Association, and a true difference maker. He was instrumental in turning psychology toward a balance of the positive and the negative. Starting with Learned Optimism and then moving to Authentic Happiness Seligman created a constructive and positive foundation for psychology. In regards to strengths the single greatest resource Seligman was involved in creating was the is the VIA Strength Survey of Character Strengths – measuring 24 character strengths. Of all the strength assessment inventories available I recommend this one the most. It has a universal perspective, it can be applied both inside and outside of work, and best of all it is free. Research has gone on to demonstrate that is you know your top 5 strengths, use them on a daily basis, and leverage them in the service of others you will have a much higher level of happiness and well being.

My top 5 VIA strengths going back to November 2004 were: humor, creativity, curiosity, love of learning, and perspective.

Gallup along with your strengths, your winning combination is 40-22-1. As an organization Gallup has been at the forefront of helping individuals and organizations bring strengths to work. The third question in their famous Q12 survey of employee engagement is: At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day. Marcus Buckingham and now Tom Rath have created powerful and popular books and resources for strength based work. Their primary strength-based assessment is StrengthsFinder 2.0. You can take the online assessment after purchasing one of their books related to strengths at work and entering the code at the StrenghsFinder website. Gallup does an impressive job of creating helpful information and resources to learn more about your strength and how to put them to work. They offer a number or resources in addition to StrengthsFinder 2.0 to get the most from your strengths.

My top 5 StrengthsFinder 2.0 strengths are: maximizer, strategic, positivity, ideation, and empathy.

Set aside your trombone and find your strengths by looking at what engages (Marcus Buckingham). Marcus Buckingham worked with Gallup and is now a very popular independent strength based speaker, writer, and coach. He has just developed yet another strength assessment tool for work in StandOut – designed to help you find your edge and win at work. His assessment is okay but I believe his best contribution was in the book Go Put Your Strengths to Work and the video, Trombone Player Wanted. I especially appreciated how, at that time, Buckingham encouraged us to find out strengths not in an assessments or inventories but by paying very close attention to what we looked forward to doing each day at work, what fully engaged us at work while we were there, and what gave us our greatest sense of satisfaction.  In other words, we looked at what engaged us to determine our strengths and then we maximized these activities and roles to enhance our engagement. There was no need for an inventory or test. I think his delightful video series on Trombone Player Wanted was a great way to help a team build strengths by watching the videos together, having conversations about the applications and implications of what he said, and holding each other mutually accountable for bringing their best to work each day.

Here is a sample video  from that series:

If the video does not load in this window, click here.

See your best reflections as others offer your reflected best self.  The University of Michigan’s Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship developed the Reflected Best Self Exercise to use stories collected from people in all contexts of our  life to help us understand and articulate who we are and how we contribute when we are at our best. These stories collected from people who know us can strengthen and connect us to others, help us experience clarity about who we are at our best, and refine personal development goals so that we can be at our best more often. I think the strength of this approach is the social element and as opposed to the anonymous feedback of a 360 evaluation it offers triggers for further discussion and elaboration from the people who let us know what we were like when we were at our best.  Many of us have blind spots or lacunas about our strengths and the reflected best self exercise can fill in the holes.

Seven strong suggestions:

  1. Ensure you go beyond taking a test and saying you’ve “done that strength thing.”
  2. Don’t merely reduce strengths to a list of 5 attributes.
  3. Be mindful of what truly engages you and work backwards from engagement to strengths.
  4. Notice other people’s strengths and give them lots of strength based feedback.
  5. Develop a daily structure or reminders so that you don’t lose your strengths in the flurry of demands and activities.
  6. Be disciplined about your strengths and turn your strength based work into the foundation of your work.
  7. Gain additional strength perspective and insight by taking another  popular assessment for strengths at work: Strengthscope.

Consult these  5 sources to enhance your engagement and put you in the moment:

    • Peter Drucker, Managing Oneself.
    • Martin Seligman, Flourish: A Visionary new understanding of Happines and Well-being
    • Tom Rath, StrenghtsFinder 2.0
    • Marcus Buckingham, Go Put Your Strengths to Work 
    • Marcus Buckingham, Trombone Player Wanted (Video)

Next post in this series: Make meaning.

David Zinger built the 10 block pyramid of employee engagement to help managers bring the full power of employee engagement to their workplaces. If you would like to arrange to have this course or workshop for your organization or conference contact David today at 204 254 2130 or zingerdj@gmail.com.

Bonus Trombone Player Wanted Guide

Here is a free e-book I created for the Trombone player video series which includes a review of StrengthsFinder 2.0. Click here to read or download.

 

 

6 Powerful Moments of Employee Engagement

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5. Master Moments – The healthy and productive path to great micromanagement

(Part 6 of a 10 part series on how managers can improve employee engagement)

Making moments.  Engagement resides in the moment. Learn to master moments from high quality connections to powerful touch points. When we balance challenge and skills we enter the flow zone as we dwell and work within the moment. In addition, focusing our work within the moment alleviates work stress.

6 ways to engage the moment:

  1. Access even 1% of the 20,000 opportunities for engagement.
  2. Be a micro-manager, really!
  3. Reach out and TouchPoint somebody.
  4. Transform IQ into HQI to power up the organization.
  5. Dwell in the moment to banish stress.
  6. Intersect challenge and skill to find flow.

Access even 1% of the 20,000 opportunities for engagement. According to Nobel Prize-winning scientist Daniel Kahneman, we experience approximately 20,000 individual moments in a waking day. Each “moment” lasts a few seconds and each offers an opportunity to engage.  Within a moment we can fuse with our task at hand for full engagement or reach out beyond ourselves to appreciate and recognize others. Even at just 1%  fulfillment we would experience 200 powerful and engaged moments everyday.

Be a micro-manager, really! Generally, being a micromanager is not perceived to be an admirable quality in a manager or a helpful connection to the manager or work for the employee. But what if we manage our moments and focus on our moments of interaction. Small things make a big difference.  Engagement, to be effective, must be reduced to the verb of engage and when we fully engage the moment seemingly miraculous things begin to occur. Instead of the energy sapping interaction of micromanagement based on command and control of trivial details become a manager of the micro moments of work by enhancing connection, input,  interaction, authenticity, and co-creation.

Reach out and TouchPoint somebody. This approach to managing engagement is the Campbell Chicken Soup for the Organization as it originates from the former CEO of Campbell soup, Doug Conant. Doug used TouchPoints to transform Gallup’s dismal engagement scores at Campbell Soup  into some of the best scores Gallup has seen. Doug believes the moment of interruption is the real work of management. Each of the many connections you make has the potential to become a high point or a low point in someone’s day. The point of getting in touch is that each touch point has the opportunity to “establish high performance expectation, to infuse the agenda with great clarity and more energy, and to influence the course of events…TouchPoints take place any time two or more people get together to deal with an issue and get something done” (page 2).   Our interruption interactions are not distractions but rather the real work of management. In the moment of engagement action resides in the  interaction.

Transform IQ into HQI to power up the organization. Jane Dutton believes that there is tremendous power in our connections and interactions and we must guard against corrosive connections that  corrode motivation, loyalty, commitment and engagement. Rather, we must enhance high-quality connections or interactions marked by mutual positive regard, trust, and active engagement on both sides. A cornerstone of high quality connections is respectful engagement characterized by being present to others, affirming them, and communicating and listening in a way that manifests regard and an appreciation of the other person’s worth. Even small acts of respectful engagement infuse a relationship with greater energy. An ongoing stream of high quality interaction by people within an organization may be the single most powerful way to renew and contribute to an organization’s energy to achieve results through strong relationships. It takes some energy to initiate a high quality interaction but usually we find a return of energy through the interaction.

Dwell in the moment to banish stress. If you make where you are going more important than where you are there may be no point in going. Stephan Rechtschaffen stated in Time Shifting:  ”there is no stress in the present moment.” Rechtschaffen advocates time awareness — living fully in the moment.  The practice of timeshifting recognizes that every moment has a particular rhythm to it, and that we have the capacity to expand or contract an individual moment. One way to shift what’s going on in our world is not to try to rush to do more, but to allow ourselves to go deeper into that moment. Our ability to shift gears, to shift our rhythm to meet that moment and be present in it. We waste great chunks of time by thinking about what we’ve just done and what we’ve got to do next, instead of what we’re doing now. Much of our stress comes from regret and dread. Rechtschaffen offers a number of practical tips to improve our moments at work:

  1. Get to meetings early so you can compose yourself before the others arrive.
  2. When the phone rings, let it ring one extra time to “get centered.”
  3. Practice “mindfulness” by doing just one thing at a time, giving it your full attention.
  4. Pause after you finish one task before beginning another. If possible, make it last for several minutes.
  5. While waiting for a fax or an elevator, think about the present instead of succumbing to the rush and anxiety of tasks still waiting.

Intersect challenge and skill to find flow. Work in the moment by working on tasks that balance challenge and skills level. Csíkszentmihályi’s book Flow is over 21 years old yet offers timeless perspective and advice on how we approach a state of great time shifting or  über engagement. He has found that we experience more flow in work than our leisure time and suggests we frequently overlook the richness of the experience engagement at work offers us. Many of the current game developers have studied flow very closely to ensure their games are designed to help players experience flow. We need to do the same in our workplaces. Some of the key characteristics that promote flow at work are:

  1. Clear goals – expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one’s skill set and abilities.
  2. Concentration – a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention.
  3. Lack of self-consciousness – the merging of action and awareness.
  4. Timelessness – one’s subjective experience of time is altered.
  5. Powerful feedback  – successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed.
  6. Balance of ability and challenge – the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult.
  7. Sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
  8. Intrinsic rewards, so there is an effortlessness of action.
  9. Full aborption into the activity, narrowing of the focus of awareness down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.

Read these  5 sources to enhance your engagement and put you in the moment:

    • Douglas Conant and Mette Norgaard, TouchPoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments.
    • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
    • Edward  Hallowell: Crazybusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD
    • Tom Rath and Donald Clifton, How Full is Your Bucket?
    • Stephan Rechtschaffen, Time Shifting: A Guide to Creating More Time to Enjoy Your Life.

Next post in this series: Why employee engagement needs to be strong stuff.

View Moments. I strongly encourage you to watch the wonderful 4 minute brilliant video on moments at the end of this article.

David Zinger built the 10 block pyramid of employee engagement to help managers bring the full power of employee engagement to their workplaces. If you would like to arrange to have this course or workshop for your organization or conference contact David today at 204 254 2130 or zingerdj@gmail.com.

Bonus Video: Moments

4 Ways Managers Can Build Relationship BACKbone into Employee Engagement

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3. Build Relationship –  The Manager’s Employee Engagement Relationship BACKbone: Bids, Authenticity, Caring, and Knowledge 

(Part 4 of a 10 part series on how managers can improve employee engagement)

Foundation of relationships. Obviously relationships and relationship building are a foundation of employee engagement. Linda Hill in a Harvard Business Review article on Building Effective One-on-One Relationships cited research by John Kotter that found “that one of the factors that distinguished  those general managers with consistently outstanding performance records from their counterparts was their ability to develop and maintin a strong network of relationships.” Work is a relationship and engagement experience. One third of Gallup’s quintessential Q12 survey asks directly about relationships to uncover engagement at work while most of the other items are also influenced indirectly by relationship. Four of the twelve statements employees are asked to respond to are:

  1. I have a best friend at work.
  2. In the last seven days I have received recognition.
  3. My supervisor or some one at work cares about me as a person.
  4. There is someone at work who encourages my development. In the last six months someone has talked to me about my progress.

Relationship defined. A relationship is s a connection between two individuals. Interpersonal relationships usually involve some level of interdependence. People in a relationship  influence each other. Because of this interdependence, most things that change or impact one member of the relationship will have some level of impact on the other member. Exercising a strong BACKbone as a manager will have an impact on other employees. This BACKbone is comprised of: bids, authenticity, caring, and knowledge.

People are people, don’t depersonalize with terms such as assets or human capital.  From a distance we can view employees as assets and human capital but engagement and relationship requires closeness. Employees are human and we inadvertently dehumanize employees when we refer to employees as assets or capital. Remember, as a manager you are an employee too. One classic definition of management is getting work done through people but in an engaged workplace work is done with people. We don’t have relationships with assets or capital we have relationships with other humans. An employees locus of engagement is frequently a task while a manager’s locus of engagement is the working relationship with the employee.

Don’t go soft. Too often the human element of engagement is dismissed as a fluffy soft skill afterthought.  Soft skills sound mushy and unimportant while hard skills sound like the foundation of management. I want to add some fortitiude, gumption, and moxie to relationship building in employee engagement by adding BACKbone to a manager’s work. The backbone is our central source of support and stability, it refers to fortitude and determination, and it is part of a network that connects the other networks together.

Dissecting the relationship BACKbone. BACKbone is an acronym for bids, authenticity, caring, and knowledge. John Gottman offered an excellent micro skills focus to building relationships by examining relationships through the lens of bids and the other person turning towards or turning away from that bid for connection. Authenticity is central to trust and true relationships as our brains are social and detect in-authenticity in fractions of seconds. Relationships are built on meaningful and personal connection not manipulation tactics. Caring is a fundamental engagement key and a core to both relationships and management. Knowledge creates our foundation for relationship as we learn more about each other and ensure we acknowledge the people we work with.

B is for Bids. John Gottman in The Relationship Cure outlined a very powerful practice to build better relationships in all elements of our life including work. He examined the smallest of exchanges between people that communicated a request for connection followed by one of three responses. A bid is the fundamental unit of emotional communication. It can be a question, a gesture, a look or any expression that says, “I want to be connected to you.” A bid is followed by a positive or negative response to the other person’s bid or request for emotional connection. The response can be turning towards (a positive response to a bid); turning against (a negative response); and turning away (ignoring another’s bid). In a future post we will examine how working with bids and responses can help us master moments and transform micromanagement from a creepy control mechanism to a fluid and authentic relationship builder that infuses and energizes our work and the work of the people we manage.

A is for Authenticity. Being authentic is key to trust, respect, and genuine relationships. Authentic managers demonstrate integrity, with a profound sense of purpose and willingness to live by their core values.  Bill George, author of True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership believes that authentic managers genuinely desire to serve others through their management.  They are interested in empowering the people they manage to make a difference; more than they are interested in power, money or prestige for themselves.  They are guided equally by the heart and the mind – practicing heart-based guidance grounded in passion and compassion,  as well as thoughtful management.  People follow authentic managers because they are consistent, reliable and strong.  When they are pushed to go beyond their beliefs and values, authentic managers will not compromise.  If we want to foster full engagement we must be real or “get real.”

C is for Caring. Without caring for others and what they are trying to achieve and experience our management and relationship building is shallow and insignificant. Caring is valuing the people who report to you and focusing more on their needs than your own. Caring is not a fluffy emotion but a number of powerful behaviors demonstrated by managers. Caring can include “care-frontation” where we hold others accountable for their performance and don’t shy away from having conversations about bad behavior or variances in performance expectations. An excellent source to read on  how caring is infused in conversation to create safety while building relationships and achieving results is Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler.  Michael Kroth and Carolyn Keeler in a thoughtful article entitled, Caring as a Managerial Strategy in the Human Resource Development Review outlined a number of actions by managers that demonstrate caring:

  • Invites employees
  • Is receptive and fully available to the employee
  • Is emotionally accessible
  • Pays attention
  • Shows interest in the employee
  • Accepts the employee
  • Remains open to ideas, possibilities (is open minded)
  • Empathizes
  • Advances employees
  • Has a desire to help the employee succeed
  • Puts employee plans and goals ahead of his or her own
  • Advocates for the employee
  • Commits to employee success
  • Protects employees
  • Seeks opportunities for advancing employees
  • Builds employees capacities
  • Sees individual potential and helps employees grow and learn
  • Informs employees
  • Facilitates problem solving
  • Gives generative feedback
  • Encourages employees
  • Believes in employees
  • Teaches and mentors employees
  • Connects with employees
  • Shares feelings
  • Develops relationships of mutual trust and obligation

K is for Knowledge. Interpersonal knowledge is a key to relationships. We begin to learn more about other people and can respond in ways that create and invite more engagement based on the other person’s needs, values, beliefs, experiences, culture, personality, etc. It helps to have knowledge of how to build relationships but even more important is the knowledge we gather as we fully connect with each other. It can be very engaging to notice something is amiss for one of our employees without them saying a thing. Strong relationships are based on knowing the other person. Do we take time to “know” and do we retain that knowledge of employees’ interests, motivators, and uniqueness to further develop both the relationship and engagement at work? Interpersonal knowledge is greatly heightened by acknowledgement, as we show or express recognition or appreciation and gratitude. Notice the word now is contained in the larger work knowledge — gather and act on your knowledge now and in the moment of relationship.

Get BACK to work. When we tell people to get back to work we are usually suggesting that they get on task. We need to achieve results and we need to understand that work is also social. You can enhance engagement for your employees and yourself by putting your BACKbone into it. Make bids and respond positively to employees bids. Be fully who you are. Demonstrate the power of caring. Build your knowledge base of employees to acknowledge each employee as the unique person they already are.

Read these  5 sources to strengthen your employee engagement relationship BACKbone:

    • Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter, 12: The Elements of Great Managing
    • John M. Gottman, The Relationship Cure.
    •  Michael Kroth and Carolyn Keeler Caring as a Managerial Strategy in Human Resource Development Review.
    • Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler, Crucial Conversations.
    • Bill George and Peter Sims, True North.

Building the pyramid of employee engagement. Review these 4 previous posts as we build the 10 block pyramid of employee engagement actions for managers:

Next post in this series: Recognition.

David Zinger built the 10 block pyramid of employee engagement to help managers bring the full power of employee engagement to their workplaces. If you would like to arrange to have this course or workshop for your organization or conference contact David today at 204 254 2130 or zingerdj@gmail.com.

December Assorted Zingers E-book Special $3.99.

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