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Employee Engagement: Energetic Strengths

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Employee Engagement: Strong Energy

The pyramid of employee engagement offers a model of the 10 blocks of employee engagement. Here is a link to a 50 page booklet on the pyramid. There are 10 posts in this series. To learn more with a chance to be interactive on strengths and engagement plan to attend an educational workshop in London on the importance of strengths for employee engagement and a fusion of the pyramid of employee engagement with a strength-based approach to work.

Strong Energy for Engagement

The raw material of engagement is energy. Jane Dutton from the Positive Organizational Scholarship organization has demonstrated that the key to energize organizations is frequent high quality connections between people connected to the organization such as employees, suppliers, and customers. Three of my strengths, empathy, developing others, and leadership all contribute to engaging in these type of connections. My strengths draw me towards these relationships and in turn, these relationships enhance my overall energy for work.

To assess the energy you and others have for work, I encourage you to ask a great energy question posed by Donald Graves in the Energy to Teach: What gives you energy, what takes it away and what for you is a waste of time?

Remember to fuel energy as your renewable resource for engagement.

Here are the links to the other posts in this series on strengths and engagement:

Educational London Workshop on Strength Based Approaches to Leadership

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: Pure Strengths

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.

Employee Engagement: Strengthening Wellbeing

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Employee Engagement: Strengths Make Me Well

The pyramid of employee engagement offers a model of the 10 blocks of employee engagement. Here is a link to a 50 page booklet on the pyramid. There are 10 posts in this series. To learn more with a chance to be interactive on strengths and engagement plan to attend an educational workshop in London on the importance of strengths for employee engagement and a fusion of the pyramid of employee engagement with a strength-based approach to work. See the workshop details at the end of this post.

Infuse your wellbeing with strengths

Martin Seligman, the former President of the American Psychological Association has made phenomenal contributions to happiness and wellbeing. His recent book, Flourish, is an examination of how we can have a positive impact on wellbeing. I believe that we must find wellbeing inside of work and that it is more integral to who we are and what we do twenty-four hours a day than only something we do after work with a period of meditation, a healthy meal, or a short jog.

Engagement and strengths are vital contributors to wellbeing. Seligman believes that the five contributors to wellbeing are positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. These five sources of wellbeing are available to us inside of work. In addition, strengths turbocharge these five factors. Seligman and others in the positive psychology movement have demonstrated that when we know our strengths, use our strengths on a daily basis, and leverage our strengths in the service of others we will enhance our personal wellbeing.

We will get a phenomenal return on our energy invested in well being when we attach our strengths to create positive emotions, experience engagement, participate in relationships, develop meaning, and accomplish desired goals. Seen from a wellbeing perspective, my seven significant strengths of leading, developing others, enthusiasm, self-improvement, creativity, flexibility and empathy are good medicines for me at work.

I encourage you to work towards being well by drawing deep upon your strengths by bringing them to the daily surface of work.

Educational London Workshop on Strength Based Approaches to Leadership

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 5,400 members)

To register click here.

Next Post in the Series: Energetic strengths and engagement

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.

Working with Why: Employee Engagement and Meaning

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Employee Engagement: Putting Strengths on a Weekly Calendar

The pyramid of employee engagement offers a model of the 10 blocks of employee engagement. Here is a link to a 50 page booklet on the pyramid. There are 10 posts in this series. To learn more with a chance to be interactive on strengths and engagement plan to attend an educational workshop in London on the importance of strengths for employee engagement and a fusion of the pyramid of employee engagement with a strength-based approach to work.

Add strengths to meaning and engagement

Meaningful work is one of the most important things we can impart to children. Meaningful work is work that is autonomous. Work that is complex, that occupies your mind. And work where there is a relationship between effort and reward — for everything you put in, you get something out… Malcolm Gladwell

When you have a why to work you can bear any how. Are we having enough meaningful conversation about the why and purpose of work as employees engage in efforts that have a greater purpose. We don’t find meaning or purpose so much as create our purpose. My strengths of creativity and flexibility are powerful attributes to help me in creating meaning and being flexible in viewing the purpose of my work. For example, the Employee Engagement Network I founded is a labor of love so that other people will love their labor. This is not some sort of mushy soft feeling about work but the gumption, discipline, concentration, and patience required when we really love something.

Dr. Paul Fairlie from York University stated meaning is: “self-actualizing work (work that enables you to realize your full potential, values, and life goals), social impact (having a positive impact on people and things through your work), feelings of personal accomplishment, and believing that your highest career goals can be achieved within your current organization.”

Some common dimensions of meaning include having a purpose or goals, living according to one’s values and goals, autonomy, control, challenge, achievement, competence, mastery, commitment, engagement, generativity or service to others, self-realization, growth, and fulfillment. My experiences with employees is that most of us value our strengths, strive to use our strengths in the service of others, have a greater sense of accomplishment when we use our strengths for specific tasks, and our strengths used on a daily basis contribute to our wellbeing at work.

As we fuse strengths with meaning and apply this to results and progress we create stronger engagement. To me, strengths function as the link between who I am (identity), how I work (strengths), what I offer (contribution), and why I work (meaning). I hope to see you at the London workshop to further our discussion about the pyramid of engagement, strengths, innovation, and excellence.

Educational London Workshop on Strength Based Approaches to Leadership

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: Wellbeing

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.

 

Employee Engagement: My Daily Discipline of Strengths

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Employee Engagement: Putting Strengths on a Weekly Calendar

The pyramid of employee engagement offers a model of the 10 blocks of employee engagement. Here is a link to a 50 page booklet on the pyramid. After completing the strengths inventory, Strengthscope, from Strengths Partnership in the UK,  I have embarked on a systematic application of my 7 significant strengths to each of the 10 blocks of the pyramid. This will make the engagement work more robust while also enhancing wellbeing through the application of strengths in the service of others.

There are 10 posts in this series. To learn more with a chance to be interactive on strengths and engagement plan to attend an educational workshop in London on the importance of strengths for employee engagement and a fusion of the pyramid of employee engagement with a strength-based approach to work. Here is information about the workshop followed by an outline of strengths applied to performance mastery.

Week Moments of Strength

One thing I appreciate about the Significant 7 Strengths is that you can work with a different strength each day of the week and our strengths can be applied at work and outside of work. The tool above is a weekly calendar or strength nudge to help me focus on one specific strength each day. It ranges from Leading on Monday to Self Improvement on Sunday. I find that most of us are so busy we often fail to utilize our strengths because so many other things crowd out their application to our daily work. We suffer from strength myopia.

Rather than attempting to apply all 7 strengths all the time this calendar encourages me to focus on just one strength each day.  For example, I will post a sticky note on my computer on Wednesday morning with the strength cue question for enthusiam: How can I demonstrate my strength of enthusiasm more fully today to enhance my own engagement and foster the engagement of others?

What’s on your calendar at work? Grow strong along with me, the best is yet to be!

Educational London Workshop on Strength Based Approaches to Leadership

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: Pure Strengths

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.

 

Employee Engagement: Strengths and Relationships

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Employee Engagement: Strengths and Relationships

The pyramid of employee engagement is a 10 block model of employee engagement. Here is a link to a 50 page booklet on the pyramid.

After completing the strengths inventory, Strengthscope, from Strengths Partnership in the UK,  I embarked on a systematic application of my 7 significant strengths to each of the 10 blocks of the pyramid. This will make my engagement work more robust while also enhancing personal wellbeing through the application of strengths in the service of others.

Adding strengths to relationships and relationships to strengths

Powerful employee engagement is bi-directional. What I mean by this is that we need to engage with our strengths while our strengths also engage us. I believe successful organizations achieve results while building relationships and that we never sacrifice one at the cost of the other.

Using strengths and relationships to go both directions at once:

  1. Developing others and self-improvement are two of my strengths and they directly connect to relationships. For example, I have had the good fortune to have a number of mentors in my career and even at the age of 58 have a mentor (Thank you Peter Dyck). In return I have mentored some younger career professionals and I expect that this will increase as my way of saying thank you to all those who mentored me. Mentoring has contributed to my self improvement and also developed others. As a mentor, even with my focus on the other, I find that I have also had my own development enriched.
  2. Leadership ceases to exist without relationships. Need I say more?
  3. Creativity is enhance through relationship. John Junson, my designer and partner on projects, and I have developed very creative approaches to work and our books on work. Do you know anyone else who combined poems and cartoons in a book to take a bite out of work? The symbols you see in this post would not be possible without the creativity and contribution of John Junson and I know he would say our conversations have helped him develop some of the weekly cartoons he offers on the Employee Engagement Network.
  4. My relationships are enhanced through my strength of flexibility. I had the good fortune to work with Keith Johnstone, a world master of improvisation, for a week in Calgary a few summers ago and I learned about the key of flexibility in improvisation and how flexible we must be in powerful partnerships.  I do not improvise on the stage but I certainly demonstrate high degrees of flexibility in my relationships.
  5. Enthusiasm is better shared. When I am around genuinely enthusiastic people I feel more enthusiasm and I know my enthusiasm can be contagious when I am teaching and speaking. I have a gentle enthusiasm that comes from the inside out and makes a huge difference in the emotions I experience while working.
  6. Empathy is the foundation of relationships. I spent 25 years of my life in counselling psychology either being empathetic with clients or teaching my students the approach and skills of empathy. Empathy is the strong glue between people and being understood can change a person’s life. Empathy can eliminate all the distance between us and take relationships to places we never imagined.
A few years ago I revised the pithy statement of If it is to be it is up to me to If it is to be it is up to we! Engagement is better together and everyone benefits when we bring out strengths to engaged relationships.
There are 10 posts in this series. To learn more, take the strengthscope yourself, and to be interactive on strengths and engagement plan to attend an educational workshop in London on the importance of strengths for innovation and excellence with a fusion of the pyramid of employee engagement. Here is the information about the workshop followed by an outline of strengths applied to performance mastery.

London Workshop on Strength Based Approaches to Leadership

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: Empathy Strengthens Recognition

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 workshop on the fusion of employee engagement and strengths for innovation and excellence.