Recording and transcript. Here is the recording and transcript for a 20 minute dialogue with Alex Kjeulf on happiness and engagement. Alexander is the founder of Woohoo inc. and one of the world’s leading experts on happiness at work. He has a masters degree in computer science from The University of Southern Denmark and is the author of 3 books including the international bestseller Happy Hour is 9 to 5 – How to Love Your Job, Love Your Life and Kick Butt at Work. In his spare time Alexander reads. A lot. He also does Crossfit and watches tons of movies.

Employee Engagement and Happiness from David Zinger on Vimeo.

David Zinger: Hi, my name is David Zinger, and I want to really welcome you today to a focused dialogue on engagement and happiness. I’m so thrilled to have Alex Kjerulf from Denmark here with us today to talk about happiness. He’s The Chief Happiness Officer and has done tremendous work on happiness for, I would say before it was popular; Alex, welcome. [00:27]

Alexander Kjerulf: Thank you so much, David. [00:29]

David Zinger: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself – I know we have a slide up on your background – but what steered you in the direction of happiness and work? [00:37]

Alexander Kjerulf: Oh yeah, well I used to be in the IT business; I had my own IT company that I co-founded with two other people in Copenhagen way back in 1997, and when we started this IT company sort of our #1 goal was to make it a happy workplace. I mean sure we wanted to have a profit and have great clients and so on, but more than anything else we wanted a happy workplace where people could have fun. We ran that company for five years, it became quite successful, and then we sold it in 2002, and I sort of stopped at that point and asked myself what is my vision, what is my passion, you know, what do I want to contribute to the world, and I realized that what I was really passionate about was not IT solutions anymore; it was this idea of happiness at work, how do you create really happy workplaces where people just love to work, and so I founded my current company which is called Woo Hoo inc., and not woohoo, the company’s called WOOHOO! Yeah and just picking up the phone is a hoot. I founded the company in 2003. In fact, May 1st, 2003, we had our first paying client, so as of yesterday we’ve been doing this for nine years now making people happy at work. We do speeches, workshops, consulting work for workplaces all around the world. [01:55]

David Zinger: Well, congratulations, and so the primary focus in the audience is around the world of employee engagement, and the way I see engagement, it’s a little bit of a buzz word. I just define it as connection; connection to our work, connection to each other, connection to results, connections to customers. Before we launch into happiness and the connection between happiness, and engagement, and work, what engages you currently most with your work, Alex? [02:21]

Alexander Kjerulf: You know what really gives me a major kick is seeing that the work we do has an impact. In fact, we sat down last year to sort of formalize our company values and vision, and our vision is it’s a world where happiness at work is the rule and not the exception, and we defined certain values, and sort of our most important value is we optimize for impact, you know, we want to make a difference in everything we do. So, when I hear back from a client that we had a workshop with you three years ago, we’re still using the principles, it still helps us make the company more effective, or when I hear from people who have read our books or read the website I just love that kind of thing. I got an email from a lady saying she had been considering quitting her really crappy job for ages, and finally she got up the courage to do it, and that was because one of our articles, and that’s the kind of thing that really engages me. [03:27]

David Zinger: So, really seeing the results and the elements of what you’re doing. So, the big question in the short period of time we have is what is the relationship between work, happiness, and engagement, and if I can, you know, in doing some research to interview, and looking at your material, again I’ve been looking at it for years; I was really struck by your talk about the connection between happiness, results, and relationship, because I think so often people think of happiness as something extra, and outside, and oh my god I’m too busy for happiness, but you really seem to have weaved it right with results and relationships. I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. [04:03]

Alexander Kjerulf: Yeah, I think the two major sources of happiness in the workplace are results and relationships, you know when you do good work that you can be proud of, that work that is meaningful to you, that makes us happy, and also good relationships, you know when you like your co-workers, you like your boss, you like your employers, you like your clients for that matter. Those are the two major sources of happiness, positive emotion in the workplace, and what we know now from decades of research in psychology, sociology, and neurology is that happiness has a major impact on our performance at work, and when we are happy we are more productive, we are more creative, we are more helpful towards other people, we deliver better customer service. Happy people are better managers and so on, so very simply put, we are more effective and more successful when we like what we do, which of course goes completely against the old idea that work, you know, it’s all about hard work, it’s all about effort. Right, it’s all about suffering, and the more you suffer, the more effective you will be, and of course this is completely wrong. [05:10]

David Zinger: Yeah, and I mean Tony Hsieh from Zappos did a whole bunch of work on happiness and you’ve predated him by many years in what you’re doing and how you’re looking at that, and you would say the Scandinavians are one of the few to have a language that has a word for happiness at work; I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that. [05:28]

Alexander Kjerulf: Sure, the word in Danish, it’s arbejdsglæde, and this is going to sound really weird of course to the rest of the world, but arbejde in Danish means work, and glaede is gladness, happiness, so arbejdsglæde is literally just work-happiness, and the cool thing about this is that this word exists only in the Scandinavian languages. We’ve checked and there is no word for this in any other language in the world except Danish, Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian, and this is not a coincidence; there is a long standing, you know, decades old tradition inScandinavia for focusing on happy workplaces. This is something we’ve been doing for 40-50 years now and this is something they do not have in the rest of the world, this focus on creating great workplaces. [06:14]

David Zinger: I was watching your TED Talk recently. You made a nice distinction between satisfaction and happiness, because I think some people would just equate those two things together. [06:24]

Alexander Kjerulf: Oh yeah. Yes, that’s actually one of the misguided preconceptions we’re fighting is that it’s employee satisfaction, and of course you know the sources of satisfaction – are you satisfied with your work – the sources of that are there’s stuff like, you know, salary bonuses, perks, your job title, promotions, raises, that kind of thing, those are the things that make us satisfied, but those are not the things that make us happy, and the research confirms this again, and the thing is that those benefits I talk about, you know, being more productive, and more creative, and so on, you don’t get those benefits from being satisfied. You know, overall I’m very satisfied with my job. You get those benefits when you’re happy right here and right now; when you’re sitting at your desk today going oh my god, I love my job, it’s awesome! That’s when you’re more productive, and more creative, and so on. So, and there’s nothing wrong with job satisfaction in and of itself, it’s just that it shouldn’t be the major focus of our careers, and work lives, and workplaces. We should really focus on happiness, because that is where we get all those performance benefits and that’s when the company makes more money. [07:35]

David Zinger: Yeah, and it seems to me that satisfaction is a fairly anemic measure of how we are at work, and when it’s reduced to a bi-annual or an annual survey that we call engagement, it’s got very little to do with happiness and engagement, because those seem to be things of the day-to-day and the moment-to-moment. [07:52]

Alexander Kjerulf: Exactly. [07:54]

David Zinger: Right now I have one of your websites up – The Chief Happiness Officer, and you have a ton of excellent blog posts, and articles, and resources on there. How long have you been at that and if people go there what should they be looking for? [08:10]

Alexander Kjerulf: Well, I started blogging in 2002, believe it or not, I mean everybody and their dog was getting a blog at the time, so I thought what the hell, I’ll get one too, and been blogging every since, and the blog has been getting really, really popular; I think we have about a million visitors a year, which is just awesome, and on there are we have different categories. We focus a lot on… I think our main focus is still what can I do, and you know what can I do tomorrow to make tomorrow a great work day, because happiness at work is something you do, it’s something we do together every single day. I mean we create a happy workday today or we don’t and then we do it again tomorrow or we don’t. It’s not like you can sit around and just wait for somebody else to come and make you happy, so that’s really the main thing we have on there is, you know, tons of tips, and videos, and articles on what can I do tomorrow to be happier and more engaged with work? Actually, I’d like to ask you, David, because you, you know, I really wanted to ask you this: how do you see the connection between happiness at work and engagement, because I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I’m not sure I have a clear answer. [09:16]

David Zinger: Well, you know I think there’s a very, very strong connection, I mean engagement tends to contribute to happiness or wellbeing and wellbeing or happiness contributes to engagement. I, originally when I created a pyramid of engagement that had 10 sources, happiness was one of them. I’ve since changed the label to wellbeing with happiness embedded in that, and yet I think sometimes the danger of that is that then people don’t look closely and see the key component of happiness in there, and you know I think we’re beyond that for most people in the field thinking of happiness as something fluffy, or something extra, or a soft skill or something, but I still think, and many people in the workplace they’re still equating happiness as something extra, or frilly, or whatever, and I think that’s doing a disservice to an experience that we spend so much of our time at. [10:12]

Alexander Kjerulf: Exactly. It sounds like we agree that happiness and engagement, it’s not like it’s the same thing, but they’re very closely tied together. Would that be fair to say? [10:23]

David Zinger: Yeah, I think, you know and we need to engage with our sense of wellbeing and happiness, and its bidirectional; I see all engagement as bidirectional. [10:33]

Alexander Kjerulf: Yeah. [10:33]

David Zinger: We engage with our work as our work engages us. We bring a happiness to work and our work can make us happy, and so that bidirectional element is important. I liked your term that we’re responsible for our own happiness, but our managers and organizations are also responsible for setting up the conditions. [10:53]

Alexander Kjerulf: Yes, exactly, I mean as a manager you can create conditions where it’s almost impossible to be happy at work, and let’s face it, a lot of managers do, but also again as a manager, as a workplace you can create conditions where it’s very, very easy to be happy, however no matter how good those conditions are, you can never make people, you know, you can never force people to be happy; that’s just not the way it works. People have to want to be happy within those conditions, and I think they…  [11:23]

David Zinger: And so you’re… Sorry about that, but usually happy hour is after 5:00PM, and your popular book is Happy Hour is 9-5. [11:32]

Alexander Kjerulf: Yeah. [11:32]

David Zinger: And it’s happy hours; it’s hour after hour with that, and that’s… [11:38]

Alexander Kjerulf: There’s a famous episode of the Drew Carey Show where they say, you know, where they talk about these people who needed the bar, and they complain about their jobs, and they complain about their spouses, and they complain about everything, and that’s called happy hour, and so I thought, you know, what if happy hour wasn’t from 5:00PM – 6:00PM at the local bar, what if happy hour was, you know, 9-5; what if we could actually wake up in the morning and be excited about going to work, and I think that’s where most people should be, not necessarily every single day, but most days. [12:10]

David Zinger: And that’s a book that’s in a number of languages and accessible from a number of resources from your website and other sources and even some of it’s freely available; if people are starving for money they can always read the book online with that. [12:24]

Alexander Kjerulf: Yeah, the English translation is available completely free on the blog on www.PositiveSharing.com if anyone wants to read there. [12:31]

David Zinger: And if we go back even further, not only do you have a book, you have a manifesto on happiness, and I’ve always liked the people at the Change This site, and it’s a delightful manifesto because it’s short, it’s got I think what, about 25 points in the manifesto if I remember correct? [12:48]

Alexander Kjerulf: Yeah, very good, exactly. [12:49]

David Zinger: What stands out in your mind right now out of those items in the manifesto that seems to be either what’s really challenging workplaces or what seems to be improving for workplaces? [13:01]

Alexander Kjerulf: I think it really, really comes… For me it always comes back to the same thing, which is that my happiness at work is my responsibility, and you know if I want to be happy at work I have to start with myself. Not that I have to go it alone, OK, it’s just that I have to be responsible for my own work life, and for my own life in general, and one area I see right now that’s really challenging for people is if you have this horrible job, can you still quit, you know, in these uncertain economic times with the financial crisis and so on, can you quit your job, and right now I see a lot of people staying on in jobs they absolutely hate, and I think that’s horrible. I think this is something, you know, we know from the research that hating your job can make you sick, it can ruin your career, it can even ruin your relationship with your partner; it can in the end kill you, so I always encourage people to, you know, if you really hate your job, quit, move on, sometimes it is the only way even in these times. [14:13]

David Zinger: Yeah and you’re not minimizing the economic currency, but there’s a currency of happiness and wellbeing. If we don’t attend to that currency, as you say at the end of that first page in the manifesto – because the future belongs to the happy – and you would also say the present does too. [14:29]

Alexander Kjerulf: Yeah, exactly. I think it does, and the thing is when people are considering should I quit, what they really focus on is, you know, if I quit, what will I lose, and you may lose, you know, you will lose your salary, and you may lose your healthcare benefits, and you may lose your pension, and your co-workers, and so on, but the question people never ask themselves is if I stay at this job that I absolutely hate, what might that cost me, and I think you’re not having a balanced look at it unless you also consider that question, and in the end staying at that horrible job that you absolutely hate, it can kill you, yeah. [15:09]

David Zinger: Yeah and you have a number of rules of productivity, and particularly in the field of engagement. I get so frustrated with our field when we do these biannual or annual measures and somehow believe that we kept our engagement. There are shifts wildly from day-to-day, and I love your point #1 – your productivity will vary wildly from day-to-day and this is normal. [15:30]

Alexander Kjerulf: Yes. [15:31]

David Zinger: And what role does happiness have in that wild productivity? [15:35]

Alexander Kjerulf: I think… Well, one way I apply is that when I come into work in the morning I don’t necessarily go by my to-do list, you know, it’s not like I start working on the top of the list and then go to the next item, the next item. There’s all this stuff and I ask myself, you know, what do I feel like doing today; do I feel like, you know, tackling emails, do I feel like calling some clients, do I feel like writing a new blog post, and then I do that, and some days I will come into work and I will feel like doing absolutely nothing, and on those days I will go home or go do something else, because why hang out at work if you’re not getting anything done anyway, and my point is this is normal. I mean this is… For knowledge workers your productivity depends on your creativity, you know, on your ability to think of new things, on your ability to write, or whatever. There are some days you will do great work and there are some days you will do no work, and this is completely normal. [16:36]

David Zinger: OK. Well, we don’t have too much time left, and I’m pulling this question out of left field, it just kind of occurs to me. The statistics suggest that we are now… You talked about knowledge workers, that we’re the billion mobile workers. What’s the potential or the challenge for happiness for people who are mobile workers, any thoughts about that? [16:59]

Alexander Kjerulf: Yes, one challenge for mobile workers is relationships. I mean if you work out of this one office in this department, then you’ll have co-workers, you have a boss, and you have strong relationships; people who know what you’re doing, who can give you encouragement, criticism, praise, advice, companionship, and as a mobile worker that becomes a lot harder, so that’s a challenge, and as a mobile worker you may have to find your relationships somewhere else, maybe in networks, or knowledge groups, or whatever. However, the cool thing about mobile workers is that they often get to choose. They have more ambivalence over what they do, so they have more of a chance of picking, you know, interesting tasks, challenging tasks, meaningful tasks, however only if they remember to do so. [17:50]

David Zinger: So, in some ways there’s a little bit of a bigger challenge on the relationship, and yet the upside is you’ve got a little bit more direct control of how you move through the results and what you’re trying to achieve along the way with that. [18:02]

Alexander Kjerulf: Yes, and you have more freedom over how you work, and where you work, and when you work, which is fantastic. I mean a lot of mornings I work out of a café instead of going to our office, which is you know, which I like doing. [18:14]

David Zinger: I guess one final thought. You know sometimes I think we equate happiness with everybody wearing clown noses, and jumping up in joy, and you know wild on airlines or whatever. Any thoughts about, for lack of a better term, and this is my term – quiet happiness – you know that happiness that just kind of resonates inside, and yes it can be shared, but sometimes just that happiness we feel as we’re working, and no one else may almost notice it, any thoughts about that? [18:41]

Alexander Kjerulf: I think yes, and we’ve got to remember that happiness looks different on different people, right, I mean some people when they’re happy you can instantly tell, and they’ll be jumping, and shouting, and singing, and laughing, and that’s fantastic, and other people, you know, when they’re really happy, and engaged, and fulfilled they’ll just be sitting quietly at their desk doing their work feeling fantastic, and this is exactly the way it should be, and you can not equate happiness at work with sort of all of that, you know, let’s say the wild stuff that you mentioned; the clown noses, and the partying, and the dancing, and so on. That’s only one element and some people will derive a lot of happiness from that, whereas other people will derive most of their happiness from just sitting at their desk doing their jobs knowing that they do it really, really well, and we’ve got to remember… I think this is the main point here: everybody’s different, everybody’s different, and if you try to treat everybody the same we’ll make a lot of people unhappy. [19:37]

David Zinger: Yeah, and so one of the last screenshots I have here is your Woohoo site, and I was watching your TEDx Talk, and actually showing you at work; I got a screenshot of you at work and you’re happy as you’re presenting it and you’re even showing some pictures of people coming to the conference who may not be quite so happy with that, and so people… [20:00]

Alexander Kjerulf: Yeah, I just want to correct you here that it’s not woohoo, it’s WOOHOO! [20:02]

David Zinger: Oh, I don’t give enough emphasis. It’s all in the emphasis, right? [20:06]

Alexander Kjerulf: Yeah, exactly. [20:08]

David Zinger: WOOHOO! Did I get it? [20:09]

Alexander Kjerulf: There you go. [20:11]

David Zinger: Got to get that voice lifted up, and you got the audience engaged, so if anybody’s unfamiliar with Alex, I highly recommend going to www.PositiveSharing.com and looking at the blog, and coming to this site and watching the video or if you type his name into YouTube, there’s a number of videos of you presenting or whatever, and probably a much richer experience would be to get Alex or one of the members of his team to come out and spend some time with you. [20:38]

Alexander Kjerulf: I think that’s a fantastic idea. [20:40]

David Zinger: Just as we’re closing, any last thought, say if someone’s listening to this early in the morning of something they should consider, or think about, or do to increase their happiness for the day? [20:52]

Alexander Kjerulf: Yes, absolutely, and I think well, we keep coming back to this one tip, and it’s probably one of the most basic findings of positive psychology, which we use as the foundation of all of our work, is that the best way to become happy yourself is to make somebody else happy. There’s quite consistent finding in these studies is that whenever you do something for yourself, that makes you a little happier, but when you do something for somebody else, it makes you a lot happier. So, my challenge to people listening to this is what could you do today to make somebody else happy at work; a co-worker, a client, a vendor, your boss, an employee, some completely random person at work. Could you do something to make somebody else happy at work, you know, praise people, do a random act of workplace kindness, whatever, but could you do one thing today to make somebody else happy at work, and I can promise you it’ll come right back to you. [21:48]

David Zinger: Oh, well said, and really some people started to say that stress is a Staph infection, and certainly laughter can be contagious, and humor certainly is a pathway out of it. [22:00]

Alexander Kjerulf: Absolutely. [22:02]

David Zinger: Well, thank you very much for taking time with us and joining us today; it’s really been a privilege… [22:07] END

David Zinger is a global employee engagement expert. He developed the Pyramid of Employee Engagement and David is the founder and host of the 4800 member Employee Engagement Network.

I encourage you to listen to this 20 minute conversation with Kevin Sheridan about his views and experiences with employee engagement. There is also a transcript for the recording with time stamps you can use to go to specific sections of the dialogue.

Kevin Sheridan and David Zinger on Magnetic Employee Engagement from David Zinger on Vimeo.

David Zinger: Hi, my name is David Zinger. I want to welcome you to a brief dialogue on engagement with Kevin Sheridan and myself on magnetic employee engagement. It’s really my honor and privilege to bring Kevin to this dialogue. He’s written a fantastic book on magnetic culture, has such a background; he’s not only a mountain climber, he’s a guy who’s into the numbers, but also into lots of practical elements. Welcome to the dialogue, Kevin. [00:41]

Kevin Sheridan: Thanks so much, David, happy to be here. [00:45]

David Zinger: Maybe you can tell us a couple of things about yourself or your background of how you got interested in engagement, and then maybe on a more personal level, what engages you most in your work, Kevin?[00:57]

Kevin Sheridan: Well, I’ve really dedicated the last 30 years of my life to studying how employees are feeling in their jobs in all major industries and watched the measure of that transform more from satisfaction to engagement, and really, really excited about the whole concept of engagement delivering a much higher ROI than the world of satisfaction. Actually there’s a pretty colorful comment in the Building a Magnetic Culture book that quotes the front band for the band REM about you can have a lot of shiny, happy people holding hands, but they’re not productive, and for me my engagement comes from innovation, trying to think of the next new angle on building a magnetic culture or building engagement. [01:49]

David Zinger: OK, and so it’s almost like the difference between looking at a beautiful mountain and climbing a mountain, as you voice satisfaction versus engagement? [01:59]

Kevin Sheridan: Well, it’s interesting you bring that up, because outside of work one of my lifelong passions is high altitude mountaineering, and I’ve been on the journey to climb the seven summits – the highest mountain on every continent, and I’ve been on four of them, summated three of them, and there was a lot of parallels between getting to best in class on engagement and getting to the summit of a high altitude mountain.[02:26]

David Zinger: Yeah, and if people want to skip right to the end of the book if they purchase the book, you’ve got a little bit of a profile of your background in mountaineering. Right now I’m showing the cover of the book. Marshall Goldsmith gave it a ringing endorsement; it was on six best seller lists including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. A book like that obviously takes a lot of work to put together. Do you want to talk just very briefly about the process of putting it together and then what the book is primarily designed to do for managers and organizations? [02:58]

Kevin Sheridan: Absolutely. Well, about a year and a half ago I had one of my rock star millennial employees come into my office from our marketing team and her name is Amelia, and she came and she said Kevin, I just landed you a book deal with McGraw Hill, one of the largest publishers in the world, and Amelia and I shared about seven seconds of euphoria and then we were like oh, now we have to write a book, and it was really a lot of fun because it was almost like expunging all of these case studies and knowledge of over 30 years of experience, and our marketing team helped with the book, and McGraw Hill has been an excellent publisher to work with, and I have to say as a first time author it was quite humbling when the book hit all those best seller lists and you see your name next to the Jim Collins of the world, and it’s just very, very humbling, so, and very rewarding. [03:55]

David Zinger: Well, what stands out in my mind about the book, Kevin, is I mean as you say in the book, you’re a numbers guy, you’ve got the research, you’ve got the background, I mean you went through Harvard, you’ve got the sense of organizations, and you weave together the numbers with very practical perspectives that are more evidence-based than just a perspective on the field. [04:20]

Kevin Sheridan: Well, it’s interesting. I have a little bit of an unusual background. I have been playing in the HR sandbox, if you will, for the last 30 years, yet my background and foundation educationally in the first part of my career is actually in finance, so I’m no stranger to numbers, and what I love about that is often times there’s a natural tension between human resources and finance about, you know, is there a true ROI to some of these people-related expenditures like employee engagement efforts, and employee engagement surveys, and it’s been a lot of fun proving that there is an ROI to that to the finance people. [04:59]

David Zinger: Yeah, and it seems to me that the next generation we’re in already, but it seems for many just they’re starting to understand it as the whole field around predictive analytics and looking at engagement and other variables and being able to predict, you know, sales and all kinds of other factors with that. [05:17]

Kevin Sheridan: Oh, definitely. I mean some of the great outcomes you’re no stranger to, David, the linkage between employee engagement and better customer satisfaction and customer engagement, the effect it has on retaining your best people and lowering your turnover, the effect it has positively on lowering absentees which is significant; I think the average employer in North America it costs them $600 per employee per year on absenteeism, and engaged people are going to show up with their A game everyday – they’re much more likely to show up for work and not leave work early. [05:59]

David Zinger: Yeah. So, the title is Building a Magnetic Culture, and I have the definition of a magnetic culture on the slide here: it draws talented employees to the workplace, empowers them, and sustains an environment. Where did you latch on to the metaphor of the magnet and can you talk about what that says to you? [06:20]

Kevin Sheridan: Sure. It came to us about 10 years ago, we thought about the historical definition of engagement, i.e., the intent to stay, and engaged employees are very loyal to their organization; they don’t want to leave at the drop of a hat, and at the same time they’re ready to exert that extra discretionary effort. So, the magnetism that comes with engagement is not only keeping people employed, but keeping them emotionally and intellectually connected to the overall mission of the organization and they have what I call the two P’s of engagement: they are passionate about what they do and they are very prideful about where they work. So, we actually trademarked the term magnetic culture 10 years ago long before the concept of writing a book on it. [07:09]

David Zinger: And so the real weave there is that passion and pride; I think kind of the two pulls of the magnet really draw people together, and it’s like the magnet works both ways – the organization benefits as does the employee. [07:26]

Kevin Sheridan: Exactly, exactly, and it feeds on itself. There’s a wonderful upward spiral of optimism, and magnetism, and engagement where your engaged population is almost infectious in a wonderful way in terms of their optimism and they’re more apt to be ready to change and be improvement officers, if you will, and be mentors to the people that are in the middle category, which frankly as you know, David, there aren’t enough engaged employees, and the big category of engagement is the one in the middle where people are not engaged and they’re not disengaged, and I’m often reminded of the old Duncan Donuts commercial with the guy that’s 4:30 in the morning and he’s saying to himself time to make the donut. Unfortunately a lot of people approach their job with that level of ambivalence, and it’s not necessarily their fault; I think that leadership and particularly the supervisor really is an opportunity to reengage people and to marry them up with the engaged people, or get them involved, and as you know in the book I talk about the likelihood to volunteer. One great way managers can identify that ambivalent or neutral population is ask for volunteers, and you’ll watch these people not raise their hand, hide under a table or behind a pillar, and sometimes maybe they need to be volun-told where the manager says David, really exciting new initiative we have going here, and you are on the task force, and we’re really excited about your contribution. [09:16]

David Zinger: So, really drawing them in, and the slide I’m looking at now is metrics for magnetism. You have a lot of data in the book, even on page 6 “engaged employees are eight times more likely to feel their supervisor encourages their growth, seven times more likely to feel they receive regular feedback, four times more likely to be satisfied with their job…” On page 85 you talk if you look at 50 people and just have a 10% loss in productivity from those 50 people it’s like you’ve lost five people. What numbers, you know, you’ve been involved in these numbers for such a long time, Kevin, what numbers have really stood out for you around engagement? [09:58]

Kevin Sheridan: Well, the cost of disengagement as it relates to turnover is enormous, and it’s estimated that in North America $350 billion are lost in turnover costs because of disengagement. I mentioned the cost of absenteeism before, that’s significant. The example you just sited has to do with a question that’s pretty ubiquitous in most engagement surveys, which is do you have the resources you need to do your job effectively? A lot of people answer no to that question, and when you look at the loss in productivity of 10% and it’s like losing five people off the payroll in terms of their productivity. One of the great studies that was done a long time ago proving the ROI of engagement was done at the Working School of Business in Pennsylvania, and it proved definitively that the returns, the profitability returns for those organizations that were on the best places to work list were three and a half times higher than an average company in North America, and that’s significant.[11:14]

David Zinger: Oh, that’s just huge, and before we fear… In danger of getting someone fearful that if they open the book it’s just going to be numbers. You’ve given all kinds of examples, personal examples, challenges with an employee, and the best from employees, and one line that really stood out in my mind is one of your employees who said when it’s harvest time it’s harvest time. Can you elaborate on that? [11:42]

Kevin Sheridan: Well, this is a great example of hiring the right people and trying to hire people that have the right attitude that can sustain their level of engagement, and there is a woman on my team that actually started out as my executive assistant. It was really kind of a tough time to start in that job because the previous job incumbent quit working two weeks before her departure, didn’t provide the training that one would have hoped, and meanwhile I was traveling, so as her manager I was not there to consol, and coach, and motivate other than over the phone, and I was frankly very concerned that I was going to lose this special employee that I had just hired. So, when I got back to the office I actually met with her and I started reassuring her, and I said it’s not always going to be like this, and I’m so sorry that you were left with all this mountains of work, and we’ll get through it, and she finally just put her hands in the air, she goes Kevin, I grew up on a farm; when it’s harvest time it’s harvest time, and that was just a beautiful thing to witness, and she has just thrived in her career at HR Solutions and heads up our sales and marketing area, and it’s really a great example of knowing the right people to hire, and I knew that during the interview process as well. [13:04]

David Zinger: Yeah, it’s a great phrase, and then I also put on the lesson of the donuts, and you know your staff were talking about donuts and you weren’t so sure, but in an engaging organization and in a magnetic culture you start to make changes based on what you do experience from your staff. Can you briefly just say the lesson of the donuts? [13:26]

Kevin Sheridan: Yeah, the donuts actually I kind of make fun of myself when I train managers on how to respond to employee survey results, and in particular what might be referred to as quick wins, and a quick win is maybe a plausible suggestion that’s made in the write-in comment section of the survey or maybe made in a focus group session when asking for qualitative feedback about the statistical results. So, years ago, literally 15 years ago one of the first surveys we ever did for my own staff someone wrote in the write-in comment section that, you know, we don’t really have staff meetings as frequently as we should, and by the way, you know, Kevin won’t buy us donuts. Well, part of my work DNA is I come to work to work and I was raised in that baby boomer work ethic, you know, do your share of the work, so that kind of went right over my head, and it took unfortunately three surveys, and by the third survey there were like 15 comments saying he’s still a cheapskate, he won’t buy the donuts, and it’s a classic example of a quick win staring you in the face and you not seeing it, and I can tell you that on the third survey I finally stepped up to the plate – I said not only can we have donuts, you can do whatever you want as it relates to food for our staff meetings. The reaction to that, it was a kin to Moses parting the Red Sea, I mean people were like oh my god we can have donuts at the staff meeting, and… We had one of these quick wins recently as it relates to casual dress. A lot of the younger workers do not want to dress up for work and they want something more casual, and we instituted that about a year ago, and people were screaming when we announced it, we were like wow that’s awesome. So, sometimes a quick win is right there and you just have to be clear enough to see that while it might not be important to you, it is to other people.[15:24]

David Zinger: So, there’s a lot of, you know, in your survey work there’s a lot of key questions, but in your book you also talk about demagnetizers. We don’t have time to get into the depth of that, but I am wondering if you could talk about one demagnetizer at work? [15:39]

Kevin Sheridan: Well, one thing that is in the book as a demagnetizer is when leaders and managers are not genuine and I honestly believe that I think we need to put the human back into human capital management, and part of this is driven by how busy we are, we’re being asked to do more with less, and people forget to just get to know one another, and my advice to leadership and managers is be personal, you know, ask an employee what do you love to do outside of work, or ask them what stokes them towards greater levels of engagement, what do they find passionate about what they do, and get to know them on a personal level, you know, where do their kids go to college, where do they live in town, and I just don’t think there’s enough of that, and people want to know that they’re working for somebody that truly genuinely cares about them, and if they don’t see that it is a demagnetizer. [16:34]

David Zinger: OK, and when you look at taking action you talk about Gandhi’s old quote about be the change expecting the world, and you sent me a slide with a teeter-totter and management on one side, employees on the other. Can you explain that perspective, Kevin? [16:50]

Kevin Sheridan: Well, this is one of the reasons Marshall Goldsmith just wonderfully wrote that jacket cover endorsement you see on the front of the book. Years ago, about four and a half years ago we had a client challenge us that something was missing with the engagement solution, and every vendor in our industry including HR Solutions were delivering results back to management telling management to take them seriously, build meaningful action plans, and implement, and unfortunately a very important constituent was left out of the solution, that being the employee, and as one of our customers said, how can you have employee engagement without the employee; isn’t that the ultimate oxymoron? And the answer is yes. So, we thought how are we going to correct this imbalance, and the urging of this wonderful client that won the Malcolm Baldrige Award just outside of Atlantic City, New Jersey, we actually created a mechanism through which the employee could not only empower themselves to discover which bucket of engagement they fall in based upon how they’re feeling in their job, but we empower them by giving them advice, giving them advice on what they can do to become more engaged. They get a personal employee engagement report. Those of your listeners that are interested in getting one for free can actually order PEER from our website www.HRSolutionsInc.com This is a great way to build engagement from both sides of the fence, and I think what the old model was, it was fairly paternalistic where employees as you see on the teeter-totter are waiting to be engaged, and this corrects that imbalance. [18:40]

David Zinger: Yeah, so you’ve got a lot of practical steps of I put the slide up, on taking action and the personal employee engagement report, and I’m also just putting up the slide on taking action (wwwbuildingamagneticculture.com). Where do you see yourself headed with engagement in the next couple years, Kevin? [19:00]

Kevin Sheridan: Well, there’s much to be done and we will never be complacent in terms of discovering the next new way to look at engagement and build a magnetic culture. One of the things that we’re very proud of and I think it’s missing from a lot of the solutions is most of the vendors out there that are helping companies measure engagement are instilling a one size fits all solution, and as you know David, all the great work you’ve done on this topic, you know, different people have different engagement drivers, so not only should we tailor the measurement tool on those different constituents, whether they be women, or men, or millennial versus traditional, or baby boomers, that’s something that I still think is not being done as frequently as it should. The other big take away that is in the book is if engagement is this important, and you pick up every major HR journal there’s probably a feature article on employee engagement. The sad thing is if it’s that important, why isn’t it being talked about in performance reviews? Only 5% of managers conducting performance reviews have a dialogue with the person about their engagement level asking them what drives your engagement, how can I feed you more of that wonderful stuff, and is there anything that’s detracting from your engagement, and that’s not being done enough, that dialogue between the employee and the manager.[20:24]

David Zinger: Yeah, I think that’s a missing piece, and really we need to get engagement woven into the fabric of work and management as opposed to ever being perceived as something extra that we do, and that certainly could be a step in the right direction. Kevin, you know I want to thank you very much for taking 15-20 minutes of your time to share a little bit of the wonderful book that you did. You’re not the Senior VP of HR Optimization at Avatar, and in regards to HR work that you’re doing, you’ve got Building a Magnetic Culture, a whole bunch of resources. Thanks for taking your time with us today, Kevin. [21:03]

Kevin Sheridan: David, I’ve really admired the work that you’ve done and the network that you’ve created. I always believe in the personal touch and should any of your listeners want to get a discounted version of the book with my personal autograph, they can get it through our website at www.buildingamagneticculture.com, and thank so much for having me. [21:22]

David Zinger: Well, thanks for coming on board, and this recording will be on the Network, it will be in a number of places, there’ll chances to look at it, and I do encourage people to go forward and buy the book. Thank you very much.

—–

David Zinger is a global expert on employee engagement currently working with a Pyramid of Engagement to help managers be more engaged and engaging.

Here are 3 lessons for employee engagement I derived from a recent visit to St. Louis. Thanks to Recognition Professionals International for inviting me to their annual conference and offering me the opportunity to visit St. Louis and derive 3 lessons from the geography and history of this fine city.

Fly with Spirit.  Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis on May 20–21, 1927, on the first non-stop flight from New York to Paris. The plane is famous and Lindbergh literally took the spirit of St. Louis overseas. The middle image of the picture collage above is the signature of the employees from Ryan Air who built the plane. Even when we fly solo we are indebted to others. In the field of engagement and recognition we should be willing to take more risks and pursue distant shores. Lindbergh flew to Paris, perhaps we can help organizations take flight and reach distant shore in results and organizational health when fueled by authentic and robust engagement and recognition.

Be the Gateway. The Gateway arch is the most famous St. Louis landmark and one of the most iconic images to represent a city. It was completed in October of 1965. Robert Duffy wrote about the arch: ”the Gateway Arch packs a significant symbolic wallop just by standing there. But the Arch has a mission greater than being visually affecting. Its shape and monumental size suggest movement through time and space, and invite inquiry into the complex, fascinating story of our national expansion.” We must be pioneers with engagement and recognition to ensure it is not dismissed as an extra or nonessential at work. We must help engagement and recognition arch both individuals and organizations from disengagement and invisibility to full engagement and ongoing recognition and appreciation.

Never Quit. The St. Louis Cardinals World Series victory and amazing 2011 season is a lesson that transcends baseball. It is so easy to get discouraged or defeated when we don’t make the progress we would like to have at work. Yet the 2011 Cardinals were behind 10 and 1/2 games in late Augusts, 8 and 1/2 games in September, needed to win 3 of their last 5 games, and came back twice in game six of the of the World Series being just one strike away from elimination. We must keep taking our swings, never give up, and always know the game is not over until it is over.

Leaving St. Louis with a bit of St. Louis in me. You don’t have to be in St. Louis to take away the lessons of fly with spirit, be the gateway, and never quit. Of course it does not hurt to put on the red St. Louis Cardinal’s baseball cap every so often to keep the spirit alive, enter the gateway, and never quit.

David Zinger is an employee engagement expert who speaks around the globe on engagement and works at deriving history and geography lessons from each place he visits to do employee engagement work. David is an avid Blue Jays fan but he certainly appreciated and loved the engagement and tenacity of the St. Louis Cardinals last year.

The engagement revolution. I believe we are witnessing and participating in the advent of a revolution in work and how we organize for work.  This is not so much a revolution that is started by a few people but rather new movements within work. We don’t so much start this revolution as acknowledge it, support it, participate in it, and move to a stronger way of connecting to each other, work, and our organizations. The revolution is not a Luddite-like uprising against technology rather a personal, social, and organizational revolution of connection, engagement, recognition, community, invitation, and co-creation.

From extra to integration. The way we work, lead, and manage is centered on engagement and recognition and I predict these words must slowly fade from our business vocabulary as the practices of both engagement and recognition achieve full integration. Employee engagement and employee recognition are not something extra we do at work they are embedded in the very fabric and foundation of how we work. They are less of a “what” and more of a “how.”

A call for annihilation. We must annihilate apathy, isolation, invisibility, separation, disconnection, and disengagement at work.

We are all social workers. All workers are now social workers. This does not mean having a social work degree nor does it simply refer to using Twitter or Facebook. We are collaborating with peers across the table and people around the world. One billion of us are now considered to be mobile workers. Let’s mobilize full engagement and recognition even as we become spatially more distant at work. The pithy motivational statement of the past,  If it is to be it is up to me, must be rewritten as, If it is to be it is up to we!

Sowing revolutionary seeds in St. Louis.  I am heading to St. Louis for the Recognition Professionals International conference. I will be presenting there on Sunday evening May 29. I will offer perspective and acknowledgement of the revolution during my session. If you would like to get a feel for what I will be presenting, view the slide presentation below. If you don’t see the slide presentation below go to the original on SlideShare by clicking here.

David Zinger Employee Engagement and Recognition

View more presentations from David Zinger

David Zinger, M.Ed., has been writing about employee engagement for over 7 years and has been interested in employee engagement for 50 years. He has written over 1300 blog posts on the topic and David founded and hosts the 4750 member Employee Engagement Network. Email David at zingerdj@gmail.com.

There is an eclectic and engaging agenda of speakers. I look forward to my half hour on Sunday evening updating the association on the Employee Engagement Network and inviting a revolution in employee engagement and recognition. To attend the conference and join the revolution, click here.

Bella may be disengaged but she is also poetic and perhaps the class was the problem not the solution.

It was my pleasure to share a dialogue with Jasmine Gartner on employee engagement. Here are a few of the snippets that stand out in my mind:

dozens of drivers, which can be really confusing because if every employer has to start thinking about dozens of drivers they’ll never get their work done, let alone engage people. So, I think what anthropology does is say all right, OK, well what are the core values, what are the things that unite this culture?

You have to have a really good structure in place to uphold a big company

We’re sort of like the mediator, or you know I’ll come in and look at the different kinds of cultures and try and figure out first of all, why people aren’t getting along, you know, and then be able to point that out and help them see it from a different side.

Objectively, what could we say that will apply in every situation, and one of the things we said was culture. So, in other words, if what you say are your values, in other words in your mission statement or your vision statement, and what you do are consistent, then people will plug in to it.

What you’re looking for, again, is patterns of behavior that you can systematize, so even though engagement might look slightly different in every workplace – it will look different in many workplaces, there are some patterns that are the same everywhere.

My apologies for the low volume on Jasmine’s voice. I encourage you to read the transcript as you listen.

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

Employee Engagement Conversation Jasmine Gartner from David Zinger on Vimeo.

David Zinger: Hello, this is David Zinger, and we’re about to embark on a brief dialogue on engagement with Jasmine Gartner who’s a cultural anthropologist, or corporate anthropologist I should say. We’re going to spend about 15 minutes looking at her background. I became fascinated about her work as I came across a blog post she wrote on the topic. Jasmine, welcome to the dialogue. [00:32]

Jasmine Gartner: Thank you, hi. [00:33]

David Zinger: Could you tell us a little bit about your background, and anthropology and engagement, how do those two things fit together? [00:42]

Jasmine Gartner: OK, good question. My background is like you said, it’s in cultural anthropology. The way it started to come about was that I was in academia for a long time, but I was really interested in getting out there and actually taking ideas and making them practical, and so a lot of the ideas that I looked at in anthropology I then used when I started teaching at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York where I taught cross-cultural studies for international business majors, and that meant that you really had to make ideas practical, because these were people in business who are going out there and trying to do well in the world and you couldn’t let them down. So, that was sort of where the seed started, and then through teaching as well I was always really interested in getting my students onboard, having them engage with the material, and really be interested in it, and that’s sort of where it stemmed from, because then in the workplace I know it was the same thing; it was really a question of how do you get people to fully engage with the work, with the people around them, and so on? So, that’s kind of where it came from. [01:52]

David Zinger: OK, so that’s the million dollar question or billion dollar question depending on who you talk to – how to get people engaged. Just, you know, before we launch on employees and corporations, what engages you most in your work? [02:07]

Jasmine Gartner: Two things; I would say it’s the subject matter, you know, absolutely if there’s really good meaty ideas and a lot to work through, that will engage me, but I’d say more importantly than that it’s people. You know at this point in my life all the people that I work with, because I have various partners, the relationships are the most important thing, it really is. I think it comes back to, I think it was Marcus Buckingham in First Break All the Rules stated people don’t leave their workplaces, they leave their bosses or the managers, and I would say that’s absolutely true with me; if I’m not working with somebody where not only do we get along, but we can make the work go further than either of us could by ourselves, then that’s what will make me stay. [02:53]

David Zinger: So, then the relationship, and as we’ll get to it in a few minutes, the culture; kind of background of your study is really also what engages you in your own work? [03:04]

Jasmine Gartner: Absolutely, yeah, that’s definitely true; it’s got to have a good culture. [03:09]

David Zinger: And I came across your work with this first blog post, maybe I saw it off a Twitter or somewhere – Employee Engagement – What’s Anthropology Got to do With It? And you got my attention with the question because you know psychologist race into this field, HR races into this field, organizational theorist’s race into this field, and then all of the sudden anthropology. [03:33]

Jasmine Gartner: Yeah, because a lot of people, I think it’s true, will say oh, like I said in my post, do you pick up dinosaurs? You know, but that’s not really what we do; we study culture, and I think if you look at the definition of culture, you know, which I think is the shared and learned values that groups have that then define their roles and the rules that they have, and their behaviors, it makes perfect sense in the workplace that that’s exactly what you’re looking for is that culture, and that if you’ve got a consistent, cohesive culture, people will be able to plug-in to it. If it’s not consistent, if it’s not cohesive, if they can sense hypocrisy in it, then they won’t plug in to it and people will disengage. [04:14]

David Zinger: OK. There was a theorist Count Korzybski in 1933 once said the map is not the territory, and so there’s many maps we can bring over, organizations, and engagement, and what are the things that anthropology offers on a map to look at the workplace; what things start to show up and what kind of things do we see, Jasmine? [04:36]

Jasmine Gartner: I think what you start to see is systems of behavior so that you can… You know a lot of the times if you look at what people say employee engagement is they will throw out, you know, dozens of drivers, which can be really confusing because if every employer has to start thinking about dozens of drivers they’ll never get their work done, let alone engage people. So, I think what anthropology does is say all right, OK, well what are the core values, what are the things that unite this culture? You know, in other words if you were to go into a workplace and they say, you know, openness is really important to us, and then you walk around and the data you’re gathering is oh, there’s lots of closed doors, people are kind of huddling, and acting secretive, then you say OK, you know what, the culture that you’re saying you have is completely different to what the real culture is, because that’s what we’re picking up by reading behaviors, and we’re looking for a consistency. So, it’s not just one person who’s doing it, but how the whole group behaves is what we’re looking for. [05:37]

David Zinger: So, you’re looking at that, and then in the blog post you have a little discussion – when two cultures come together in a banking industry and one group has a pool table in the room and the other signs her emails with her full names…[05:53]

Jasmine Gartner: Yeah. [05:53]

David Zinger: Can you just talk about that example, because it really stood out in my mind. [05:57]

Jasmine Gartner: Yeah, that’s a really interesting example. When I wrote my thesis for my PhD I looked at a sociologist called Ferdinand Tonnies who’s writing in the early 20th century, and he was looking at how groups change, and the smaller the group, or when you have a small group there’s completely different rules to when you have a big group; small groups are absolutely based on relationships, big groups are based on structure. You have to have a really good structure in place to uphold a big company, and so what happened there was you had this big American bank which had taken over this small British company, and the small British company was all about relationships, it really was, and in order to cement those relationships and keep them going there were things like a pool table, or you know, in their recreational room they had plants all over the place, they didn’t have cubicles, it was really easy for people to move around and engage each other. Whereas at the big American bank it was very much, you know, cubicles, and people didn’t talk to each other, and there was no entertainment, you know, you took your 20 minute lunch and that was it, or your lunch at your table, and so each group coming from their different cultures looked at the other one and judged them through their own lens. You know, so if you’re coming from a big bank which says if we don’t have this hierarchy in place then things won’t get done, then when you look at something that looks really ambiguous, you know, when are people doing their work if they’re playing pool, that sort of thing, then to them that just looks like chaos, and so they judge it and they think you’re not doing any work and you’re just, you know, playing around, and the small group as well; they looked at this big culture and thought when do you get a chance to talk to other people, and if you don’t know other people how do you know who you can rely on, how do you know who’s going to back you up? So, they just thought you’re too, you know, you’re arrogant, you’re informal, you’re not paying attention to what’s really happening, and so it was sort of when they were able to look at each other through a different lens that they had that aha moment where they said oh, actually what you’re doing makes perfect sense in your culture. [07:58]

David Zinger: So, that’s part of what you do with corporate anthropology; you’re not just looking at it and analyzing it, but you’re helping people make connections, or come together, engage, or create some understanding of how that culture may be different? [08:12]

Jasmine Gartner: Absolutely. We’re sort of like the mediator, or you know I’ll come in and look at the different kinds of cultures and try and figure out first of all, why people aren’t getting along, you know, and then be able to point that out and help them see it from a different side. But yeah, absolutely, it’s not just about analyzing it; it’s definitely about going and talking to people, again building the relationships and helping them build relationships. [08:36]

David Zinger: So, in the MacLeod Report, culture was really one of the drivers of engagement, and in this slide we have up on the screen right now we have cultural building blocks, and there’s three elements that come forward. First, if you’re looking at the slide, robust and clear. Can you just briefly talk about that? [08:55]

Jasmine Gartner: Yeah, so basically what happened with the MacLeod Report is that all the research that we did, you know, previous to that report coming out showed that, again, if you look at here in the UK; I’ll use that as an example because that’s what I’m familiar with. If you look at the Sunday Times it has a list, it’s the best companies to work for, it comes out once a year, and if you look at various things on the internet, articles and so on, like I said earlier, you’ll see all these drivers, you know, so that people will say oh, well you have to have time for your family, maybe it’s maternity leave, maybe it’s about parking, maybe it’s about, you know, just all of these things that are very individual. And what we thought instead was, you know, actually you have to take a step back and think it’s not all of those drivers – those are too individual, too subjective, too open to interpretation. Objectively, what could we say that will apply in every situation, and one of the things we said was culture. So, in other words, if what you say are your values, in other words in your mission statement or your vision statement, and what you do are consistent, then people will plug in to it. If they see a mismatch, like the example I gave before where you’re saying oh yeah, we’re absolutely open, or we put our people first, but your behaviors say something different, you’ll lose them. So, having a robust culture, in other words where there’s a 1:1 correlation between what you say and what you do has to be the first building block. [10:25]

David Zinger: One of the people, I know Mike Morrison, who used to be the dean of Toyota University, wrote a book called The Other Side of the Business Card, and one element of the book that’s always stuck with me is he said we need to rethink of our values as promises. You know, it seems to me like values are something you put on a wall, promises are something we keep, and it’s always stuck with me that unless we turn those values into promises, they’re just kind of statements on the wall. [10:49]

Jasmine Gartner: Absolutely. I think that’s a good way of putting it, definitely. [10:53]

David Zinger: So, the second building block, Jasmine? [10:56]

Jasmine Gartner: Yeah, so the second one is leadership, and what we thought there was OK, well what follows on from culture, you know, and in terms of leadership it can’t… Again, I think if you were to look around you could find hundreds of articles about what leadership is, and the truth is that it’s got to come out of your culture. So, again you have to build on what you have, and leadership has to come from that, and it has to be, again, consistent with your culture. So, even the example I gave before where you have a small group and a large group, leadership will be different in those two organizations because one is much more hierarchical, so you expect a lot more from leaders. The other one which is smaller, there’s not as much of a hierarchy; leadership becomes a much different kind of term. [11:44]

David Zinger: And as you were talking, I dropped in the final building block. Can you bring the package together? [11:52]

Jasmine Gartner: Yeah, so this is the how-to, if you will, you know it’s one thing to say there should be a 1:1 correlation between what you say and what you do. The million dollar question I think is well how do you do that, and it comes down to effective communication, in other words it’s got to be two-way, and if you want your employees to be onboard with what you’re doing, you also have to involve them in it, and so you have to ask them for, and I know this actually happens probably more here and in Canada than it does in places like the US to some degree, but where you really consult with your staff, you really bring them in on big decisions and little decisions, and listen to what they have to say. You might not necessarily end up taking it onboard, you know, if it doesn’t make sense with your strategy, but you absolutely want to have their voice in there, and so if the other side, you know, on one side you have leadership, and on the other side you’re going to have what the employees are saying, how they’re responding to that, and you have to pay attention to that as well to see if the promises that you’re making, if they’re perceived as being kept. [12:57]

David Zinger: So, engagement really is that connection. It kind of reminds me of a line from the field of positive deviancy that goes never do anything about me without me. [13:06]

Jasmine Gartner: Exactly, yeah, absolutely. I mean the other thing I would say as well is that I think there’s a perception sometimes that employee engagement is something that you do to your employees, you know, and in fact it should be something that you do with them. [13:20]

David Zinger: And with makes all the difference. [13:22]

Jasmine Gartner: It makes all the difference, it really does. [13:24]

David Zinger: So, we have a slightly different diagram of organizational culture. Anything you want to elaborate with this one? [13:32]

Jasmine Gartner: The reason I have this image is usually when we talk about culture in terms of anthropology, it’s unspoken, it’s below that waterline that you see there, and you know when you talk about culture like a national culture, we would say that it’s almost like language; you don’t remember learning your culture, it’s unspoken, it’s passive, and you almost do it without thinking. Whereas in an organization that is turned upside down and the values are on the top, and so it can be a quite precarious situation, because like I said, again if your values don’t match up with your behaviors and the rules that you put out there, people will see it straight away. [14:12]

David Zinger: Yeah. [14:13]

Jasmine Gartner: That’s why I (inaudible). [14:15]

David Zinger: And so anthropology plus engagement equals question mark. People seem to be into making equations out of things. So, if that’s the equation, what’s the answer? [14:28]

Jasmine Gartner: I’d say that it’s anthropology plus engagement is it brings a science to it; it’s going to become more systematic. So, maybe anthropology plus engagement leads to a, you know, a formula that everybody can follow that simplifies it. Maybe you’re looking for a one word answer, I’m not sure I can come up with one, but you’re looking to simplify engagement, or at least that’s what I’m trying to do is make it more accessible to people, as many people as possible. [14:54]

David Zinger: Simplify it, but also with data and a more scientific orientation as opposed to the biases and the things that we might be so prone to? [15:04]

Jasmine Gartner: Exactly. What you’re looking for, again, is patterns of behavior that you can systematize, so even though engagement might look slightly different in every workplace – it will look different in many workplaces, there are some patterns that are the same everywhere. [15:16]

David Zinger: So, I’m not sure we can do this but let’s give it a shot. So, you’re going to teach a manager to be an anthropologist in 30 seconds or so. If I walk into my organization and I had an anthropological viewpoint of what’s going on, what would I be looking for? [15:35]

Jasmine Gartner: I think what you would be looking for is behaviors, because you know you can’t see values. I think that’s what it comes down to; you really cannot see values, it’s there in people’s heads, they’re ideas, they’re, you know, and so you would be reading behaviors. I was just reading an article this morning about, it was a guy saying well, you know as a boss, as a manager you decide well I’m going go into a room and stay the day and go and make contact with people, I’m going to go and chat with them, and you all of the sudden walk through and realize people are laughing as you walk through, often they’re silent. So, it’s behaviors like that that you would want to be watching out for, and then reflects on your leadership, it reflects on the culture that you have there. If they’re still open with you, if they include you, I think that would be one thing that you would look for. So, you analyze behaviors to get at values, and that means in terms of your employees as well, you know, you want to know what they perceive the culture to be. [16:27]

David Zinger: OK, and where you make a difference in corporate anthropology is looking at not just analyzing, not just looking at it, but helping people get onboard and looking at the drivers of robust culture? [16:40]

Jasmine Gartner: Absolutely, I mean that’s the meat of what I do basically. I do a lot of training, I do a lot of work in teaching people how to communicate well, and a lot of that is about looking for those systems of behaviors, those patterns, and then trying to change your own behavior within that to communicate well or to help other people to do so. [17:02]

David Zinger: Well, Jasmine, it’s been just a very short period of time, but what a wonderful, quick snapshot on engagement, and offering us a different lens to look at the workplace. So, if anybody’s watching this, listening to this, I really do encourage them to go to your website and to look at your blog and the areas that you work in. What’s your current work right now; what are you focused on right now these days? [17:27]

Jasmine Gartner: Right now I do a lot of training around information and consultation, which I think you have in Canada as well don’t you? Where you basically go into the workplace and work with staff forums to build up a culture that’s open, that’s robust, where there’s open communication between staff and management about change. [17:47]

David Zinger: Yeah, that seems so vital and so important. I want to really thank you for joining us for the 15-20 minutes that we’ve been together. This is running in conjunction with the Employee Engagement Network, and the recording will be posted up on the network, it will probably be also at my site. Jasmine, you may decide to post the recording at your site, but a number of ways people can have access to the information, and to offer us another lens to look at this vital field of employee engagement and look at how we can make a difference by focusing on the culture. Thank you so much for joining us today. [18:23]

Jasmine Gartner: Thank you for having me. [18:25]

David Zinger: Oh, it’s just been wonderful. Thanks so much. 

—–

Jasmine Gartner. To learn more about Jasmine’s work I encourage you to visit her site: www.jasminegartner.com.

David Zinger is devoted to helping organizations and individuals fully engage in work to build and sustain successful and meaningful results and relationships. Request his speeches, workshop, or consulting today on the pyramid of employee engagement to engage all of your employees. Mr. Zinger founded and hosts the 4700+ member Employee Engagement Network. Contact David today at zingerdj@gmail.com.

21 Signs. Here is a list of 21 signs that work is broken and disengagement rules the day:

• There is a  lack of clarity of results or even a lack of results
• Too many results are attempted without enough capacity
• Results are clear but lack any meaning or significance for employees
• Performance is reduced to a management system rather than the daily lifeblood of work
• There is a failure to hold engaging conversations when performance fails to meet expectations
• The connections between performance and results are weak or nonexistent
• There are too many people and structural barriers to progress
• Setbacks trump progress by a factor greater than 2 to 1
• Collaboration tends to result in many setbacks and disengaging interactions
• Relationships are sacrificed in the name of achieving results
• Relationships are viewed as mushy unimportant stuff or depersonalized as human capital
• Individuals and organizations suffer people-myopia, barely noticing each other, and failing to voice recognition for each other
• Moments for engagement are frittered away as small and insignificant rather than small and significant opportunities for engagement
• The state of flow is squeezed out by anxiety and boredom
• Employees are unaware or fail to leverage the power of small, smart, and significant steps
• Strengths are dismissed as a short assessment tool completed at a half day workshop that gives you your top 5 strengths
• 80% of attention is focused on weakness, problems, gaps, failures, and inadequacies
• There is no compelling why to work
• The return to individuals for work contribution is reduced to an hourly rate or salary
• The organization and individuals fail to create and find well being within work
• Mental, emotional, and organizational energy is frittered away and work is experienced as an energy drain not an energy gain.

Flip. Let’s turn the pyramid of employee engagement around to it original position so that we can: achieve results, maximize performance, path progress, build relationships, foster recognition, master moments, leverage strengths, make meaning, enhance well being, and enliven energy.

David Zinger is devoted to helping organizations and individuals fully engage in work to build and sustain successful and meaningful results and relationships. Request his speeches, workshop, or consulting today on the pyramid of employee engagement to engage all of your employees. Mr. Zinger founded and hosts the 4700+ member Employee Engagement Network. Contact David today at zingerdj@gmail.com.

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

David Zinger is devoted to helping organizations and individuals fully engage in work to build and sustain successful and meaningful results and relationships. Request his speeches, workshop, or consulting today on the pyramid of employee engagement to engage all of your employees. Mr. Zinger founded and hosts the 4700+ member Employee Engagement Network. Contact David today at zingerdj@gmail.com.

Recording. We had a slight glitch recording my session so after the conference I summarized some keys to mining for engagement with the understanding and application of the employee engagement pyramid. Here is that 20 minute summary. If the recording fails to open in this window, click here.

A short review of David Zinger’s Mining for Engagement presentation at the OPEX mining conference in South Africa. David outlines employee engagement and offers the pyramid of engagement as 10 building blocks for engagement.

David Zinger is a global expert on employee engagement including founding and hosting the 4700+ member Employee Engagement Network. He is devoted to helping organizations and individuals fully engage in work to build and sustain successful and meaningful results and relationships. If you would like more information about his services or to book him for your employee engagement needs contact him at zingerdj@gmail.com.

This is a dialogue with Denise Bissonnette and David Zinger as they talk about Denise’s views on wholehearted engagement. You can watch the entire recording or scan the time stamped transcript to go to a section that interest you. Here are a few tidbits from Denise during the conversation:

“Pursue a path, however narrow or crooked, that you can walk with love and with reverence.” 

perhaps the antidote to burnout is not rest; perhaps the antidote to burnout is wholeheartedness

I think what revives our spirits is pouring it into something meaningful – to engaging with people, with our work, with our world, with our purposes, and our gifts, and through that we get the kind of energy that we want, and you know as fundamental as this is, that wholeheartedness can’t be forced or coerced, it can’t be mandated

 how would our work be enlivened with the new narrative, and what would have to change in order to change your story if in fact your story is not working for you

You know, David, we like to use the word teacher for things we like to learn. We don’t like to use the word teacher for things that are not so fun to learn, but if you think about it we learn tolerance sometimes from bigots, racists, and chauvinists; they show us exactly how we do not want to be. We certainly learn humility from our children.

[00:04] David Zinger: Hello, my name is David Zinger and I really want to welcome you to Employee Engagement & Wholehearted Engagement. This is a conversation that I’m going to be holding with Denise Bissonnette over the next 45 minutes to an hour. I want to welcome you all who joined in on the webinar and look forward to things unfolding. The webinar is brought to you in conjunction with the Employee Engagement Network, and I’m so pleased so many of you who joined the webinar who really know Denise from other areas and that’s what attracted you to the webinar that you’ve also joined the network; it’s my intention that that would be a great place for all of us to look at work, and engagement in work, and people who are engaged in looking for work. And without any further ado, I want to welcome someone I much admire, someone who is also a friend, Denise Bissonnette, welcome to the webinar.

[00:55] Denise Bissonnette: Thank you, David. I’m so excited to be here.

[00:59] David: So, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, and then what engages you most in your work, Denise?

[01:06] Denise: Well, David, I promise to get to your question, but if you don’t mind I’d like to begin with an acknowledgement. A piece of advice that I received from a wonderful mentor many years ago, and this is advice that I have passed on to many since, is to associate with people who grow you, and I just want to thank you for being one of those people who through our friendship and our professional affiliation has continued to grow me whether I like it or not. You know, I’ve been pretty reticent about this whole webinar idea until I attended a few of yours through the Employee Engagement Network, and I just really loved your style, and the tone that you set, and I thought man I want to get on that train. So, I just want to say how happy I am to be doing this with you, and while this isn’t the first time and it’s probably not the last, thank you, David, for coaxing me out of my comfort zone.

[02:09] David: Oh, Denise, this will never be your last time; the response of people to listen to you and the people who really learn so much from you is this is a platform they’ll probably be asking for.

[02:23] Denise: Well, on that note I also really want to welcome our listeners, and I understand they’re joining us not only from all over the US and Canada, but from other parts of the world, so thank you for being here and lending an ear.

So, David I’ll go to your question; what engages me in my work? I’d like to share a favorite quote from Thoreau who said: “Pursue a path, however narrow or crooked, that you can walk with love and with reverence.” And like I know life is full of paths, but I think few of them hold as much potential for our growth or possibility for our self-expression as the path of work, and I have been deeply absorbed as a writer, and a trainer, and a curriculum developer in things relating to that pursuit. You know, how do we travel the every day path of work however narrow, or crooked, convoluted, complex, with love and reverence, or to use my favorite term – with wholeheartedness. So, I’ve been on a mission really through my writing and my teaching to inform, and inspire, and hopefully nourish people in that pursuit of bringing their whole heart to their everyday journey. So, you know, that’s my short answer, but really the message I’m here to convey to this webinar is the longer answer to that question.

[03:57] David: And the longer answer is some questions we can really begin to ask ourselves, and you’ve formed the webinar around seven essential questions; there’s kind of five what’s, and a who, and a where. Why questions, Denise?

[04:16] Denise: Well, David, I want to talk about questions, but I’d like to talk first about why questions with regard to wholeheartedness, because I have chosen that term very purposely. David Whyte, one of my favorite writers, once suggested that perhaps the antidote to burnout is not rest; perhaps the antidote to burnout is wholeheartedness, you know, bringing your whole heart, again, to the work that we’re doing, and you know, I hold as kind of a constant reminder the fact that we’re really here for such a brief time on earth, you know, none of us know how much time we have, and that makes every moment rather precious, and given the status as mere visitors in the world, you know, temporary guests, I’m wondering who care to be involved in anything that they wouldn’t want to give their whole hearts to?

[05:15] David: OK.

[05:16] Denise: We know… We know what it looks like for people who kind of live for Friday night and dread Monday morning, but just because we witness it from other people doesn’t give us an excuse to accept that kind of dead end existence for ourselves. I don’t think we want to live it Lois Lane, I think we want to live full tilt. I love this little saying I read on a magnet on my friend’s refrigerator the other day: “Live to the point of tears”, and I think from wholeheartedness I think it’s the seed bed for everything else we would want to cultivate at work: enthusiasm, passion, creativity, purpose, you know, those qualities that turn ordinary work into extraordinary work.

[06:05] David: And so I’m not going to try and force you to speak for David Whyte, he speaks quite eloquently for himself, but you’re kind of suggesting that the antidote to burnout may be putting our whole heart into it? It seems counter intuitive to most people.

[06:21] Denise: Right, because we think that to rest will revive our spirits, but I think what revives our spirits is pouring it into something meaningful – to engaging with people, with our work, with our world, with our purposes, and our gifts, and through that we get the kind of energy that we want, and you know as fundamental as this is, that wholeheartedness can’t be forced or coerced, it can’t be mandated, you know, we can’t manipulate people into bringing their whole heart; I think it’s kind of a gate within each of us that only opens from the inside, like there’s no outside latch.

[07:04] David: OK, maybe there’s a connection here when we’re looking at wholeheartedness, and Martin Luther King certainly lived his life with a very wholehearted passion for what he was trying to achieve, and you’ve woven that together with questions.

[07:20] Denise: Well, I begin many of my workshops with this quote from Martin Luther King, who suggested that our questions are everything, so “The questions we ask on a daily basis will shape our destiny as clearly as the skeleton shapes your body.” Our questions are everything; they will shape our livelihoods, our relationships, and our very realities, and if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense; there’s so much to see and experience in the world, and perceive in the world, that the questions we ask serve like the lens of the camera of the mind telling us what to shoot for and what to focus on, and I think we’re all natural questioners, but rarely do we have the presence of mind to really consider the questions that are animating our journey.

I like the idea that at the heart of the word question is the word quest. So, if you don’t like where your question is leading you, you change the question. I mean and listen to the difference between man what’s wrong in this place, to what’s passable in this situation, what needs changing, where do I start? And so you see in front of you the quote “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.” I think a good question is like the turn of a kaleidoscope; when we pay attention differently, we see things differently, our perspectives change, and then our perceptions. So, with one turn of the kaleidoscope we’re looking at fear, with a slight turn, hope, with one turn scarcity, with another its abundance, and that therein lies the poetic power of a new question, and that’s what I want to present in this webinar – seven questions that will serve as ships in our perspective with regard to our wholeheartedness.

[09:16] David: So, Neil Postman, a critic of education back in the 70s and 80s, once stated that children enter school as question marks and leave as periods, and it sounds to me one of your quests around work is to reinstall questions for people?

[09:33] Denise: Yes, and to not treat the world as if it’s already finished, I mean that’s one of the things that education does I think is it makes us think more in terms of facts rather than curiosity, and I think keeping questions alive is our mission if we are willing to accept it; to keep questions alive that get us out of our normal way of seeing things. You know, when we pay attention differently it’s like we’re in a different country, we come alive differently in our world, we see different things, and I would hope that that’s what education would most want to inspire in us, but I think Neil Postman is absolutely right on; we’d rather settle for answers. And you know, on that note, David, I want to suggest to our listeners that as we pose these questions that we not approach them as if we have the answers, but to approach them, you know, with kind of an openness and a vulnerability so we’re not always stepping in tomorrow with yesterday’s answers.

[10:41] David: So, Denise, everybody loves a good story, but it’s another matter to look at your own story. So, your first question is what’s your story? What do you mean?

[10:55] Denise: Well, I think we’re all storytellers; we’re always weaving and reweaving tales that help us kind of make sense of our experience. So, there’s the reality of the situation we’re in, and then there’s what we’re telling ourselves about it. So, we look out in the world and then applying our opinions, values, needs, you know, add in a few expectations, you know, we have our homespun version of what’s going on. So, I know you know this, David, as a consultant you go into any workplace and throw the question so what’s it like working here? And we’re bound to hear everything from hey this is the bomb, you know…?

[11:34] David: Yeah.

[11:34] Denise: Or I’m pretty much a cog in the wheel just hanging in until retirement, or you know I finally hit the big leagues, I’m in my A game, or hey this is a dead end job, and you know, so at the same workplace all working in similar circumstances, the stories that people have going on about their experience are going to include everything from a mystery, a dark comedy, a Greek tragedy, you know, an inspirational hallmark special, and so going back to the question for our listeners, the question is what is the story you have going on with regard to your career, your workplace, your position, and the point of course is to recognize that it’s just that; it’s a story, and to own your own spin. You know, is your story nourishing you or is it depleting your energy? Is it dulling your senses or is it like really awakening your imagination? Is it making you act out of compliance or commitment, cynicism or optimism? I guess to borrow Dr. Phil’s question, you know, how is the story working for you, and…

[12:48] David: I’ve been thinking… Sorry to interrupt you, you really captured me with story, and do you think people have a signature story, Denise?

[12:58] Denise: You know what, I think we have lots and lots of stories going on throughout our lives, and you know maybe once we’ve been in a story long enough it becomes our signature story, but and I’m not really talking about people’s life story here, David, I’m really talking about what the spin we’re putting on the experience that we’re having, because I think our experience of work has a lot to do with the expectation that we bring to it every day. You know, it can be a tool that refines us, or this very small box, a tight frame that defines us – depending on our spin where it can feel like a burden or a blessing. So, like my question is how would our work be enlivened with the new narrative, and what would have to change in order to change your story if in fact your story’s not working for you? You get where I’m going?

[13:53] David: So, in some way you talk about the spin and the story, and it’s like in some ways if we have an effective story it stops the world from spinning, because that’s not a good experience at work sometimes when it’s spinning.

[14:08] Denise: You know that’s a really nice way to put it, like how do you have a spin that provides a little solid ground?

[14:17] David: So, the sub-question here is are you the puppet or the puppeteer?

[14:25] Denise: Yeah, you know I think that sometimes we can feel like a puppet in the workplace, but the truth is we’re all puppeteers by the mere fact of our existence we’re part of the great drama; none of us are witnesses, we’re all participants, you know, whether you’re getting in the game or you’re sitting in the stands, we’re the only ones holding our own strengths, and you know some people find this fact frightening, some find it freeing, but we have to accept that the most influential factor in the situation we’re experiencing is us. David, what I’m saying is that to a very great degree we need to be responsible for our own level of engagement, and I think we need to get real about work, like I love when people go oh I’m out of my dream job… My favorite response is dream job is appropriately named; it’s in your dreams. There’s just like real work, and at every real job there’s stuff we like, and there’s stuff we don’t, and hey our job is to just deal, to get on with it. As my colleague Richard Pimentel used to say, hey work is tough; that’s why they have to pay us to do it.

[15:37] David: Yeah.

[15:38] Denise: You know, Buckminster Fuller said we have a right hand, and we have a left hand; we don’t have a right hand and a wrong hand. People are always asking am I in the right job, I think this is the wrong job… I don’t think there’s a right job or a wrong job; there’s just the job we’re in and what we’re bringing to it.

[15:55] David: You know I think people struggle, many people struggle for authenticity in the workplace, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if like Pinocchio, our nose would grow as we started to lose our authenticity so that we could see how far it’s getting away from us?

[16:11] Denise: Yes, and you know we are going to be talking about authenticity; it’s part of the very next question. It’s a crucial matter, but there’s one thing I want to say before we leave this first question and go into the second one, and that’s for people to consider what is it I most want out of my work day; what do I want out of my career, what am I expecting from my work life, and then to change the question and ask whether it’s creativity, purpose, a sense of identity or pride… What if that’s not something you get from work, what if that’s something that you bring to work? The truth is I think that our dreams are waiting for us to come true to them.

[16:59] David: Yeah, so we need to head out to there, and that kind of leads us I think in a great way to your second question. What are your truest colors?

[17:11] Denise: Well, I became very enamored with the term true livelihood several years ago, and it’s the word I use as an alternative to career, employment, a job, because what I love about it is the idea of being true to who you are, what you love, what you care about, but as Marion Woodman says: “Don’t worry about being true to yourself until you know what voice you’re being true to.” Meaning, you know, wholehearted engagement requires that somebody’s home and that we know who that somebody is, and I think we’ve all experienced how we come to define ourselves with labels, you know, I’m a tourist, I’m an E and a P, he’s a type-A personality, a leader, she’s management, he’s frontline, he’s union, she’s temp… Like how do we free other people and ourselves from these very small kinds of identities?

You know, I could tell you I’m a white, middle age, woman, American, French heritage, living in Canada. Does this really describe me? Well, not really; it gives me a sense of location in the world, but these kinds of descriptions aren’t big enough to carry who we are, and David would you agree that in the workplace we kind of settle for identities that are bound by very limiting categories, and in the end I think they stifle our uniqueness, and it’s what we claim to value is everybody’s different, you know, there’s no two people alike. Don’t you think work gives us a really awesome opportunity in fact to learn who we are, to discover ourselves in relationship to other people, and when we create space for our real self-expression, we invite everyone else’s, and to me this is the heart of diversity; it’s diversity is really about inclusion, and inclusion isn’t about noticing what’s different about each other, but noticing what’s unique, you know, what are each of our truest colors?

[19:22] David: Yeah, and I think, you know, what was happening with the industrial age and modernization is we tried to cookie cut our work and make it all just fit into a certain structure, and now with knowledge work, and almost all of us are knowledge workers, it does provide that opportunity to bring more uniqueness and more of who we are to what we do.

[19:48] Denise: Which brings us to what you referenced earlier, that whole authenticity factor. I think people know what we’re talking about when we use the term, that feeling of being comfortable in your own skin, feeling like you can express your views without having to water them down, or dummy them up, or hide them, and I mean truly is there anything more exhausting than walking around trying to be someone you’re not? But in the same way you mentioned that education has turned us from question marks into periods, I believe that the culture has taught us to value conformity over authenticity. You know, rather than being taught to be true to ourselves, we’re told don’t rock the boat, play your cards close to the vest, don’t wear your hearts on your sleeve. Like where I went to school we were taught it was more important to be accepted and acceptable to everyone around us than to be accepted and acceptable to ourselves, and you know, gee, surrendering a little authenticity seemed like a small price to pay for the larger reward of just belonging, but I think the rub is that this really isn’t a win for anybody. Gandhi says if you don’t live to tell your true story, you have betrayed it. None of us want to be frauds, and I think the price we pay when we stay in a role or a situation where we’re not really bringing our true self is paid not just by us but by everyone around us.

[21:29] David: Yeah, so it’s not… You’re not just talking about the verbal story; you’re really in essence talking about the live story and the story that’s lived through work.

[21:40] Denise: Yes, I am, and you know I think when we live behind a mask or with armor to try to fit in that it affects not only our own sense of livelihood and wholeheartedness, but it also does damage to the people we’re trying to help. So, you know, the counselor who has lost her vision is going to fail to inspire people about their futures, like I think we really need to own our authenticity, and part of that is to own our personal culture. You put a slide up and I’ve included here some of those parts of our personal culture that it would behoove us to be aware of, like you know we love taking a look at our talents, our passions, our communication style, but I also believe that we all bring our own set of blind spots, and biases, and beliefs, and I think that if we had a greater sense of what those are and how we came to hold these beliefs, we would be more responsive to people who have a culture different than our own. I think we all bring a unique way of viewing and celebrating life, our own personal culture, but we’re also working within a larger culture of the organization. So, some sub-questions here are, you know, what am I bringing to the table that’s unique, what do I have to give up or change for the sake of the larger whole, what are the values or patterns that I have to acquire to assimilate to the culture? Because, like David would you agree that in large part we’re paid not only to wear our own face, but the face of the company? So, if I have like a great interaction with Judy from United Airlines, or a terrible interaction with Judy from United Airlines, when I leave I don’t leave with a lasting impression of Judy; it’s a lasting impression of United Airlines. So, I think we have to have real integrity. Is there a natural blending of our personal culture with that larger culture whose face we also have to wear?

[23:56] David: Yeah, and that’s a struggle sometimes to make sure the two faces fit together without losing our face.

[24:04] Denise: Right, and you know for people who are looking for work and like making the difficult choice of where they’ll work, that’s always a question that I would raise; like do you feel a natural belonging, do you feel at home in that world, that larger world of the workplace?

[24:25] David: Well, we’ve kind of looked at two questions. We’re on our way to our third question, and already I think I could use a liquid Advil or whatever, because it’s asking a lot, but I don’t think that’s what you mean by what’s your medicine.

[24:39] Denise: David, you know what I mean. I believe what Native Americans believe; that everyone born to the earth is born with a gift, there’s no exceptions, that no ones birth was a mistake, and that it is in the expression and the giving of these gifts that they become medicine for the tribe, the family, the community, the workplace. They would also say that the health and the vitality of any community requires 100% participation of every member’s gift; that’s their medicine. Now, I want you to notice the difference between the questions what’s your medicine, from are you fulfilling the functions as written in your job description? I mean it’s not that doing the job you are hired to do, producing the results, that’s important, don’t get me wrong. What I’m saying though is that if in the process of doing that work we’re not bringing what feels like our truest gifts, our medicine; even if we’re pleasing the boss we are not inspiring ourselves. I believe that all of us have talents that will eventually surface as a need, not just as a hobby or a passion, but with a necessity like eating, drinking, breathing, and a really important question is what are we here to give? I love this shift in consciousness when we make the shift from what am I here to get to what am I here to give? It’s that shift from reaping to sewing, and my favorite question… Go ahead, David.

[26:23] David: And so it really comes back to putting your heart into your work and being very hearty with your work then, that the giving versus the getting.

[26:33] Denise: Absolutely, and when you’re giving of your natural gifts it’s not work, you know, it feels like play. One of my favorite questions to help people discover their medicine is to just ask them what do you love? I love when people go how do you unlock the key to motivation, and it’s oh, just ask them what they love, hello. You know, because what we love is what we’re here to give. In my workshops I ask people to write a quick list of 10 things they love, and I would encourage our listeners to do this at some point, and once they’ve written what they love, you know, whether it’s gardening, fishing, cooking, writing, reading, you know, speaking, I have them look at that and know that those are your gifts from the world and those are meant to be your gifts right back to the world. It’s what we’re disciplined in, which shares the same root word as disciple; it’s what we’re disciples of, and I think when we bring more what we love to our work everyday in and outside of the workplace, everyone benefits from it, because it kind of brings a natural wholeheartedness.

[27:45] David: I so much appreciate you saying that. You know Erich Fromm once wrote a book called The Art of Love, and he said that the art of love consists of discipline, concentration, and patience, and I think so often when we hear the word love banding around work it leads people to believe it’s some sort of mushy expedition and it’s just if my heart infuses with love everything will be wonderful, and yet there’s the discipline, there’s the concentration, there’s the patience in there.

[28:14] Denise: Oh my gosh, absolutely, and you know I would say that for all the pragmatists listening who think that this whole idea of love or wholeheartedness is like some philosophical or fanciful notion. The truth is it has huge implications for our everyday practical concerns. It’s that je ne sais quoi, really good customer service, or of a brilliant lecture, or… It’s what we expect of leaders. I mean who wants to follow a leader who’s not willing to follow his or her own heart?

[28:52] David: Yeah, and you know it’s interesting you read many of the generals in military, and that’s not a profession that you equate a lot with love. What the effective generals will talk about is how much they love the people that they work with.

[29:08] Denise: Nice.

[29:08] David: And yet there are people, who can go into terrible and awful situations and have to make decisions that affect people’s lives or whatever, and yet they talk about their leadership based on love, and I don’t think they’re being mushy.

[29:26] Denise: No. Well, I mean I think we’re here to give ourselves away, and to actually connect with the world, and to respond to the world with what really calls to us, bringing us to the question you put on the screen: what’s your why? I think what we do in life really matters very little, but why we do it is everything. I love the story of the priest who meets a soldier on the road in pre-revolutionary Russia. The soldier walks up, aims his gun at the priest and says who are you, where do you go, why do you go there, and the priest smiles and he says son, put your gun down, tell me how much do they pay you to meet people on the road and ask those three questions? He says 50 kopecks a month. The priest says son, I will gladly triple your income if you promise to meet me on the road every day for the rest of my life and pose those three questions: who are you, where do you go, why do you go there? And I think our listeners relate, you know, knowing that our time is precious, we don’t want to just spend it; we want to invest it, you know, whether in our profession, or a cause, you know, something that touches us deeply.

[30:51] David: So, your questions are much less about interrogation and much more about invitation?

[30:58] Denise: Oh man, well you’ve got that right. We’re not asking here for the, you know, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. You know, what we’re asking for is for people to kind of ponder, to like take the questions and, well I like the metaphor like let it be like a lantern illuminating darkened corners, or like a teabag that has to steep for a while. You know, what’s your why? It’s a rather large question. Actually, if you would put on the next slide… People say you know Denise, you know, what’s my why, what’s my purpose, and so many people are walking around not knowing what their purpose is, and I just want to share that having grown up Catholic there’s this really strong leaning on the idea of calling of vocation, and I’ll tell you what I really would of appreciated burning bush, or you know, angels speaking from the heavens. But my ace in the hole was if I don’t get the call any other way, I’m just going to be a nun, and David I wanted to be a nun from when I was like six until I was 16. I even had my name picked out, you ready? Sister Mary Katherine. OK, what I wish someone had said to that six year old, eight year old, 10 year old, 16 year old, you know Denise, maybe life isn’t about getting the big call, but you will be called every day if you know how to listen. You will be called in every part of your life to do, or be, or become something which you weren’t the day before. So, you know I would put that out to our listeners to think about how are you being called in the work you’re in, what small sense of purpose or big sense of purpose can you bring to the daily work, even the mundane work?

[32:52] David: So, you could have been a nun dressed in pink, because you would have been Sister Mary K. Sorry, that’s just one of my guesses, because I think the world would have been a little differently, and I know Rob would have been a little disappointed, Sister Mary Katherine, had you taken that route.

[33:09] Denise: Yeah, I had an aunt who I love very much who was in the convent when she was young, and when I was about 16 she came and visited, she goes honey I know you’ve been telling us since you were a little girl you wanted to be a nun, I just have one larger question for you: why? And you know, it really took me back, but I said, you know, I want to teach, and my vision of teaching was that you would wear a little funny hat and a black habit, you know, and she’s like no, no, no, you know, you can teach and live in a regular house, and wear regular clothes, and get married, and have babies. Anyway, as you can imagine, David, I’m very happy we had this conversation.

[33:49] David: Yeah, one of my aunts was a Mother Superior and back in the 50s and 60s they always wore habits, and she stayed with us one time and frightened me when all of the sudden I saw her pass from one room to the other and realized that she had hair, and sometimes its hard at that spiritual realm to recognize the humanness embedded in it.

[34:10] Denise: Yes.

[34:11] David: So, she became a little bit of a teacher there, which comes to the fifth question: who are your teachers?

[34:18] Denise: This is one of my very favorite questions. I’d like everyone listening to think about someone who is absolutely driving them crazy. By the way, if they’re in the room with you, don’t look at them. Think of someone who is like a thorn in your side in or outside of work. Some of you have a whole cast of characters. So, my question to you is this: how could that person possibly have that much of your attention without something really important to teach you? You know, David, we like to use the word teacher for things we like to learn. We don’t like to use the word teacher for things that are not so fun to learn, but if you think about it we learn tolerance sometimes from bigots, racists, and chauvinists; they show us exactly how we do not want to be. We certainly learn humility from our children. So, I think we just need to be more comfortable with our problems, our challenges, knowing that they’re kind of a sign that there’s still life in us, we’re not dead yet, there’s still something to learn, but as the next slide shows, it’s kind of important to get the lesson. You know, have you ever met the person who’s gone from job to job, workplace to workplace, miserable in every one, and you kind of want to say, you know, there’s a common denominator there, you know?

[35:48] David: Yeah.

[35:49] Denise: The problem in the workplace, are you bringing it with you? And I would love to just give an example of my own, I don’t know, stubbornness, blindness to the lesson was really, really early in my career, and I worked for a two person consulting firm who were required to hire me in order to get this contract from the Office of Refugee Services in California. It was a contract to train job developers, and they were told they had to hire me, and they didn’t like that, and they didn’t like me, and they had no problem letting me know on a daily basis they were not glad I was there.

So, for like six months I’m in this incredibly hostile work environment and I kept thinking oh, this is to teach me patience, resilience, you know, to hold my own, you know, against all this disdain. Well, about six months into it, it occurs to me huh, what if I’m supposed to be learning how to speak up for myself? What if this is like a hardcore curriculum in assertiveness? So, anyway I’m happy to tell you that I quit and oh my God I had such a great time doing it, and my point is if we’re going to fall let’s fall forward, you know? I moved from there to developing, you know, a great partnership with two colleagues, I think wrote some of my best work, became a national trainer, you know, to this day I would bow to those nasty colleagues. The thing is I think we put on the face of everything around us that which affirms who we already are, you know, can we be more teachable?

Rilkie phrases a great question; he says: “Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows: by being defeated decisively by constantly greater things.” I think the challenge is to look at what we consider to be a problem and ask yourself am I totally overqualified for this problem or does this really qualify as a constantly greater thing? I had a participant after a training say Denise, can I just have a few minutes to talk about a challenge? David, you’re a trainer, you know at the end of a training day we’re just like exhausted, right, totally wasted, and I’m thinking, you know, come on Denise, you can give her a few minutes. So, she’s like 10 minutes into how she’s challenged with this boss who makes them sit in a two hour meeting every Friday, and it’s boring, and he has a corny sense of humor, and it’s a waste of time. So, I don’t know if it was my pure exhaustion or what, but I’m like OK, let me get this picture here; you’re in a county with some of the highest unemployment rate, you know, in the country, you’re in a job that you say you’ve been trained for that you love, doing what you love, and you’re fretting because of the two hour meeting every Friday for a guy who tells bad jokes? Like if this really is your big challenge, you ought to kneel and kiss the ground. You know, do you get my point here? It’s I think we really need to look at what we are calling our problems and our challenges and like step up, you know, and say I’m going to give my attention to that which really is deserving of my energies.

[39:16] David: Yeah, and you know there’s been estimates of how much people complain in the workplace, and some estimates are over half the workplace complains on average 10 hours a month, and they’re either complaining or they’re listening to someone else complain, and 30% of those people are 20 hours a month, and you’re just fertilizing and feeding the very things that you’re complaining about, and not… And I think what you’d say is you may have legitimate complains and beefs, but are you going to do something about that, are you going to take some action with that?

[39:50] Denise: Right, and again…

[39:51] David: So, this brings us to question six on where do you lead?

[39:57] Denise: Well, you know I think one of the things that’s been communicated through the first five questions is that really our lives are our ultimate creations, you know, we have the privilege of choosing who we’re going to be, what kind of life we’re going to lead, what gifts, values, purposes we bring, but like all privileges, I think this comes with a really great responsibility, because in the same way that we’re all influenced and we decide who, when, what we’re going to follow, the truth is we influence other people. I think we become ad hoc leaders and we never really know who’s watching, who is following us, or who for better or worse is following our example. So, I chose this slide because I think that no one escapes leaving a trail; our footprints are traced wherever we’ve been, and our actions and our inactions are felt in more ways than we can possibly imagine.

[41:00] David: Yeah, so we…

[41:01] Denise: I think it’s interesting that… Yeah, go ahead.

[41:03] David: So, we leave our mark and that washes away, but it’s always had an impact.

[41:09] Denise: Absolutely. I think it’s interesting that we’ve come to understand that the fluttering of a very butterfly’s wing can affect climate changes on the other side of the planet, and yet we fail to really comprehend the influence of our own actions, and I think our participation is never inconsequential, and in particular I think every day we are announcing to the world who we are, and what we care about, and what we value by the choices we make; like our values are like fingerprints that we leave over everything we do, and you know, people don’t know us by our intentions, they know us by our actions.

If you wouldn’t mind going to the next slide. We all know this beautiful phrase “My life is my message.” I came upon that years ago while reading the biography of Mahatma Gandhi, and I remember thinking oh my God, that is so incredibly cool. You know, he’s saying that he wants to live his life as a testament to the message he’s here to share with the world. But what occurred to me recently, and I wrote one of my newsletters about it, is the notion that maybe this just wasn’t a declaration of Gandhi’s intention, but what if he was speaking a truth that we all share as human beings; that how we live our lives is the fundamental medium for expressing our truth for everyone whether we like it or not? So, by default or by design our lives are our message, and this is as true for us as it is for Gandhi, and I think most of us would rather do that by design rather than by default, and it begs two questions – are you sending a message of credibility? You know, people wonder are they buying into my vision, they need to be asking are they buying into me, you know, are you leading by example? Is the way you’re living a message of integrity, which really means that there’s a congruence between who we are and what we do.

You’ve got the little inukshuk up there. You know, I use this image because I just believe these little rock figures show us a way in being in the world, like what if we didn’t base our identity in things like job title, marital status, our financial profile, but what if we based our sense of belonging to something we can really stand on that doesn’t shift; like our values, our principles, our convictions? You know, among other things we would have a difference sense of security because we would not be blown away by a layoff, a divorce, a bankruptcy, you know, I’m not saying that these aren’t terrible experiences, but the truth is if we could stand on things like our convictions and our principles, they only get stronger in turmoil, you know, not weaker. So, this is all part of that self-responsibility, right, like how can I… Knowing I can’t always control the outer world, how do I cultivate a stronger sense of self internally? What are the convictions that I can stand on, that I can show through my life, through the message that is my life?

[44:32] David: So, for many of us values, principles, convictions, and beliefs seem almost ephemeral or conceptual, but you’re really seeing them kind of as the bedrock of a wholehearted approach to work?

[44:48] Denise: Of course, because for example, if you decided I am going to base my life on a sense of fairness, it totally changes then the arguments or your experience of discrimination and how you’re going to respond to it. If you have a commitment to your joy, and your happiness, even in stranger, dire situations in the workplace you’re going to respond differently, so I don’t think it’s ephemeral at all. I think it really colors all of our reactions and our choices in the world.

[45:25] David: OK. I want to just pause for a second here. We’re going to the seventh question; where’s your yes? When we scheduled this webinar it was advertised as 45 minutes, this is the seventh question. So, if you do need to go now if you’re one of the listeners, we respect that, but we also don’t want you to feel that you’re missing something, so this webinar is recorded and will be up at the Employee Engagement Network and in the newsletters we’ll let people know how to get access to it. It probably will be on even later today with that, but there was such a response to Denise’s webinar that kind of between us in conversation we decided that we would maybe take an extra 10 minutes. So, please consider the next 10 minutes as bonus time, and we’d love you to stay, but if you do need to go, don’t feel that you’re going to be missing something because we will have that available to you. So, question seven is where is your yes?

[46:22] Denise: Well, this question was inspired by something that Joseph Campbell said: “The only question life asks is this: can you give your journey a wholehearted yes?” I think that yes is the vocabulary of the heart. We’re always saying yes whether it’s to our boredom or our curiosity, whether it’s to our resistance to change or our impatience with the status quo. I love that Mother Theresa’s advice, she once said that she would not probably show up for a revolution against war, but she would gladly attend a rally for peace. In other words, I think we need to be in the world with what we’re for, what we’re here to promote, what we affirm, rather than what we resist, and you know, applying it to the workplace its brave and a radical act to kind of sit back and really ask ourselves where are we putting our yes, and an equally important question is what does that mean about where we’re putting the implicit no? I once read those who cannot say no are not capable of a wholehearted yes. That aunt that I was talking about earlier who used to be a nun, my aunt Anna, she’s a real mover and a shaker, man, she’s an amazing woman, like she has made amazing strides in providing shelter for Boston’s elderly homeless. But she’s also a workaholic, and she once complained to me that her problem is that she can’t say no to anyone, and I tenderly suggested to her, Anna, you say no all the time. Every time you say yes to being on another committee, to volunteering for another fundraiser, you’re saying no to your spouse, you’re saying no to time for yourself, or for writing your memoir. So, I think where we’re putting our yes it’s a question that can help eliminate not only what we’re affirming, but what we’re avoiding.

[48:31] David: So, there’s that old statement if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything, so that but it’s a focus on affirmation rather than negation?

[48:41] Denise: That’s it, that’s it.

[48:44] David: So, the sub-question there…

[48:45] Denise: Yeah, yeah, and how can I not on a webinar on wholeheartedness not pose the question does the path have heart? Many of you are familiar with this passage, but for those of you who are not, I’d like to read it. It’s from Carlos Castaneda who writes: “All paths are the same; they lead nowhere. There are paths going through the bush or into the bush. In my own life I could have traversed long, long paths, but I am not anywhere. My benefactors question has meaning now; does this path have heart? If it does, the… If it doesn’t, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere, but one has heart and the other doesn’t. One makes for a joyful journey as long as you follow it you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. Choose always the path of heart.” Some of you may be wondering why is he saying, you know, they all lead nowhere? Well, as I’ve recently heard someone say, no path goes all the way. You know, the question is does your path have heart? I saw a greeting card the other day that goes you know you’re on the right road when you’re happy even when you’re lost. There’s a nice card right?

[50:08] David: And it’s a path, not a highway, most of it you’re looking at, and it’s interesting that the path to me seems so much more infused with our humanness, and who we are, and that we’re not quite sure; it’s not like 1,000 signs on a path all telling you next exit in two miles or whatever, and all guiding you. You have to take a lot of initiative when you’re on a path.

[50:30] Denise: Yeah, and we only make the road by walking it. You know they say if you see your career path perfectly laid out in front of you, you can know it’s probably not yours. So, and I think you’re right, I think, you know, we’ve all taken so many paths we could call ourselves pathological, but that is what part of the vocational journey is; it’s getting lost, picking yourself up, brushing yourself off, and moving on.

[50:56] David: Wow, I’ve never heard that little cute phrase pathological. That gives new meaning to path; I’ll have to mull that over, but…

[51:03] Denise: You know you are, but…

[51:06] David: I’m pathological, I know that for sure.

[51:08] Denise: But only in totally delightful ways, David. So, you know what’s on the screen now is just kind of a summary of the questions, and to me by exploring these it presents like sort of a recipe, not like the recipe, but a recipe of how we can bring more heart to our work, you know, what’s your story, what’s your spin, is it giving you power or taking it, are you the puppet or the puppeteer, you know, what are your truest colors? Are you behind the mask, do you know who you are, do you have self-awareness, are you willing to come out from behind the mask, what’s your medicine, what are your true gifts, what do you love, what is it that you’re here to give, what can you not give without doing terrible damage to your own humanity, what’s your why, you know, how are you being called, what are your little purposes, not just your big ones, but how can you pour meaning into the chalice of everyday work, who are your teachers, you know, what are your challenges, what course, what curriculum are you in, and can you show up and get the lesson, where do you lead, people are following you, they’re watching, what is the message you are sending by how you’re living your life, and finally where are you putting your yes, does your path have heart? So, I’ve loved sharing these with you and I encourage people to share them with their colleagues and coworkers in wanting to invite more wholeheartedness in the people around them, you know, to really just pose the questions and take time to listen to the answers.

[52:53] David: So, Sister Mary K, if I could be so bold as to call you that, you talked…

[52:58] Denise: Oh my God, I am never going to live this down.

[53:00] David: I know, I know, but it’s a term of affection. We talked before we started this that you like to finish off with masquerade, and I wonder if you’d like to do that and then I’ll just make a couple of closing comments.

[53:14] Denise: Great, thank you, David. So, before I do that, I just want to thank you, David, for this opportunity, and more importantly the amazing gift you’ve given our field through the Employment Engagement Network. Talk about a generous labor of love, and I’m telling you that network is a goldmine of information, and articles, and blogs, and e-Books, and webinars, and I bow to you, my friend, and to all of you listening, my parting gift to you is this poem called The Masquerade, which I wrote in the book The Wholehearted Journey, and it goes like this:

If only we could meet in the early hours when the lines around our eyes cut a deep horizon, before we paint the rosy face, before when we could meet in the insecure hours before we dawned the coat of confidence we like to wear out in the world. If only we could meet in our sorrow, and our sadness, as well as our celebration, we would not longer have use of the words rival, competitor, enemy, that we would find thousands of new variations on the words brother, comrade, friend. If only we could see each other as we see ourselves caught in the cross light between utter despair and true innocence. If only we thought this lovable and our tiredness as we do our joy, we would find hundreds of ways to use our hands in shaping the beauty of the world, because we would no longer need them for holding up the masks. If only we could release the armor that lay so heavy upon our hearts, we could for the first time know what it is to love and work in true community. Fear led us in to this masquerade, may faith in ourselves and each other lead us out.

[55:18] David: Thank you so much, Denise. I appreciate your comments about the Employee Engagement Network, and maybe it’s partly your influence, but I know recently in talking to people about that, I have tried to explain it because I’ve sunk many hours in, that it’s been a labor of love so that hopefully others labor with love.

[55:37] Denise: Nice.

[55:38] David: And if people want to reach you after, www.DiversityWorld.com. You have one of the most enriching monthly newsletters of anyone I know, full of content that you’re just giving away to people, and I really encourage people to signup for Denise’s newsletter. She has the book The Wholehearted Journey and there are other resources with that. So, it’s just been a real pleasure to have an hour to be able to have a conversation about the wholehearted journey towards work. As I said, this has been in conjunction with the Employee Engagement Network, and my intention will be that as long as everything works fine technically, probably by the end of today a recording of this webinar will be up usually on the homepage and then on the video page, and people are very much welcome to come and view it, you can take the code and embed it so that others can view it, and pass it on, and have everyone get the maximum from this. So, Denise, thank you very much for spending time with us today.

[56:44] Denise: Thank you so much, David.

[56:46] David: And thanks to everyone who took time out of their day to spend time with us. This has been David Zinger and this is on the Employee Engagement Network, thank you very much.

Honeybees offer us more than honey and pollination, they offer us models of engagement and behavior at work. We have received so much from honeybees, it would be wonderful to give something back to them and celebrate a social day together.

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

To learn more about the project which includes a live social inside the hive with honeybees and social media on Summer Solstice visit www.zinghive.com or visit the bees’ Facebook page.

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

The Pyramid of Engagement is a new model for employee engagement. At the end of 2011 and the start of 2012 a new model for employee engagement was developed through 10 years of study in the field and connections with over 4600 people involved in employee engagement. The pyramid of engagement is built on 10 blocks that offer the structure for great engagement. The blocks starting at the top and going down the pyramid from left to right are: achieve results, maximize performance, path progress, build relationships, foster recognition, master moments, leverage strengths, make meaning, enhance well being, and enliven energy.

Here are 9 advantages and benefits of using this unique model of employee engagement.

Simple.  The model can be grasped in seconds and with 10 blocks and bold images it is intuitive for many people. The images and the pyramidal structure make it easy to visualize and easy to recall. Yet, embedded within this simplicity are 10 powerful keys to create, sustain, and enhance employee engagement.

Unique. Each element of the model has a bold image to represent the foundation of that block. There is a target for results, an arrow for progress, a compass for meaning, and a clock for moments. The 10 icons add a strong and compelling visual dimension to the model.

Inspire. The model was inspired by the work of the Egyptian pyramids and John Wooden’s pyramid of success. The pyramids in Egypt demonstrate that the structure will stand the test of time and remain for many years. We all know the pyramids were not built in one day much as this pyramid took time to build based on leading thinkers and practices in employee engagement. John Wooden’s pyramid outlined 15 building blocks for success and was the structure behind Wooden’s phenomenal coaching success with U.C.L.A.’s basketball program and the legacy of his teachings for his players. The Wooden pyramid is still inspiring many players and coaches today.

Flexible. The blocks are placed in a specific order yet the pyramid is open to individuals or organizations moving the blocks around. For example someone may want to put relationships at the top of the pyramid and results at the heart of the pyramid. Someone else may have their own block they would like to switch with one of the blocks in the original pyramid. Although the model is solid, it is not static.

Building blocks.  The pyramid offers the big picture of what can be done for engagement while offering the ability and structure to tackle one block at a time. Many people are overwhelmed by work and perceive engagement as yet another task. With this model you can focus on just one block at a time for a day, a week, a month, or even a year. The blocks of the pyramid remind my of the alphabet building blocks many of us had as children helping us to build familiarity and comfortableness with our letters and language as we manipulated the blocks during play.

Self and other. The pyramid was originally designed for managers to use as a tool to increase engagement with employees who report to them. It quickly became apparent that the model can be used by managers to enhance their own engagement or be offered to employees as a tool to take charge of their engagement. We can only engage others when we are engaged.

Topple the people organizational pyramid. Many organizations are organized around a pyramid. The CEO or President is at the top and people are on levels below the CEO. We should stop putting people into pyramids (remember what they were used for in Egypt) rather this pyramid is based on elements and everyone can work towards results, performance, relationships, etc. We build the blocks of engagement together, not alone and the apex of the pyramid is a place for all.

One, two, three. It is easy to make mini pyramids out of the 10 blocks. I believe when we try to focus on more than 3 items at a time we end up getting confused and diffusing our efforts. For example, you could take the top 3 blocks and focus on results, performance, and progress. You can do an assessment of your strengths and weaknesses and build a mini pyramid to overcome weaknesses or build a mini pyramid to get the absolute most from your engagement strengths.

Evidence based building blocks. The blocks are based on research and evidence based practice. A few examples of the research embedded within the pyramid are studies by by Teresa Amabile from Harvard on progress and setbacks,  research by Jane Dutton from Positive Organizational Scholarship out of the Ross School of business on organizational energy, and research by Gallup on strength based approaches to work.

Around the blocks. In case you missed the 11 part series on the pyramid of engagement here are the previous posts:

• Introduction: The Employee Engagement Pyramid
• 12 Keys to Achieve Results with Employee Engagement
• 6 Ways Managers Can Maximize Performance through Employee Engagement
• 7 Significant Steps to Employee Engagement Progress
• 4 Ways Managers Can Build Relationship BACKbone into Employee Engagement
• Don’t Blink: How to Foster Recognition for Employee Engagement
• 6 Powerful moments of employee engagement
• How to leverage 5 pathways for strengths based employee engagement
• 8 powerful approaches to create meaningful employee engagement
• Employee engagement: Five prescriptions for well being
• Fives ways to enliven energy for employee engagement

David Zinger has built the model of the Employee Engagement Pyramid as an enduring structure and tool to sustain his work on engagement for the next 18 years. David is the founder and host of the 4600 member global Employee Engagement Network. This network is part of David’s labor of  love so that others will more in love with their labors. To request information and book David for a keynote, workshop, or course on the Pyramid of Employee Engagement contact him at zingerdj@gmail.com.

Energy. The raw material of engagement is energy. It takes energy to engage and authentic engagement contributes to our energy. Energy comes in a variety of forms: mental, emotional, physical, organizational, and spiritual. We must strive towards mastery of physical, mental, and emotional energy.

Here are five ways to be instill energy for employee engagement

1. Power up your engagement through energy
2. Energize through high-quality connections
3. Mobilize energy and avoid traps
4. Walk ten
5. Ask the number one energy question of yourself and others

Power up your engagement through energy. In the past 10 years business and the workplace has had a strong focus on mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual energy. Although this is a relatively new focus for the workplace these 4 energies have been a strong part of the traditional medicine wheel used by First Nations People for hundreds of years.  Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz wrote about the 4 energies in The Power of Full Engagement in 2003.  This was one of my favorite earlier books on the topic of engagement. I appreciated their declarative statements ranging from energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance to performance health and happiness are grounded in the skillful management of energy. They argued that to be fully engaged we must be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interest.  They stated that physical capacity is the quantity of energy, emotional capacity is the quality of energy, mental capacity is the focus of energy, and spiritual capacity is the force of energy.  We need lots of high quality energy to provide us with focus and force to achieve results. Loaded with suggestions, research and practical practices this book can help you transform and leverage your energy for full engagement.

Energize through high-quality connections. Jane Dutton from the Ross School of Business and a leader in positive organizational scholarship has done a lot of research and writing on energy in organizations.  Energy is the sense of “being eager to act and cpable of action.” Dutton offers an evidenced based pathway to foster and enhance organizational energy through the strength of high-quality connections at work. Energy is a limited but renewable resource and managers can contribute immensely to energy creation. High-quality connections not only energize others and ourselves, they have a significant impact on well-being and lessen or eliminate corrosive connections. Everyday interactions build upon respectful engagement, task enabling, and trusting can bring dynamic vitality to engagement and organizational results.

Mobilize energy and avoid traps. Heike Bruch and Bernd Vogel outlined how leaders can boost their organization’s energy and ignite strong performance. Organizational energy is the force behind an organization  or team works. The organizations must mobilize its emotional, cognitive, and behavioral potential. There are four states of energy based on intensity and quality: corrosive energy, resigned energy, comfortable energy, and productive energy. In productive energy, we see high levels of passion, mental agility, and effort aligned with organizational goals. Energy states are predictive of numerous gains in performance, productivity, efficiency, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty. To maximize organizational energy, organizations must guard against three energy draining traps: over complacency, eroding corrosion, and never ending acceleration.

A charged conversation. Here is a recording of a conversation with the two authors on how to enhance organizational energy:

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

Walk ten. Robert E. Thayer wrote an insightful and well-researched book on energy and mood: Calm Energy: How People Regulate Mood with Food and Exercise. He conducted in-depth research on how we control mood and how often we control mood through food. Thayer demonstrated in a number of studies that a more powerful way to control mood and energy was by short periods of brisk walking — after just 10 minutes of brisk walking energy was significant increased for one hour. We much replenish our energy during the day and short periods of brisk walking or short periods of napping offer quick pathways to rejuvenating work.

Ask the number one energy question of yourself and others. Ask the primary energy question. Donald H. Graves spent a year studying the relationship between energy and teaching. He worte a great book on the energy to teach. In essence, he travelled around America asking teachers one basic question. I think this is the best question you can ask yourself and others to provide an open ended pathway to an energizing conversation. What gives you energy, what takes it away, and what for you is a waste of time? Of course, we must bring our responses to life by making changes and taking action.

Read these 5 sources to instill and create energy:

1. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, The Power of Full Engagement
2. Jane Dutton, Energize Your Workplace: How to Create and Sustain High-Quality Connections at Work
3. Robert Thayer, Calm Energy
4. Heike Bruch and Bernd Vogel, Fully Charged
5. Donald H. Graves, The Energy to Teach

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.

(Part 10 of an 11 part series on how managers can improve employee engagement)

Enhance Well-being. We need to create wellbeing inside of work. There are things we can do outside of work but how we promote and enhance well-being within work is becoming increasingly important as mobile devices makes work portable and 24/7. We must eliminate toxic workplaces poisoned with a lack of respect or mutuality. We must create a profound wellbeing where people leave work enlivened and enriched rather than depleted and deadened.

Here are 5  prescriptions for well being at work

1. Enliven the five elements of well being.
2. Establish PERMAnent well being.
3. Mind your work
4. Establish and maintain psychological and social safety
5. Be a well being heretic

Enliven the five elements of well being. Rath and Harder in Well Being state that well being is a combination of  ”our love for what we do each day, the quality of our relationships, the security of our finances, the vibrancy of our physical health, and the pride we take in what we have contributed to our communities. Most importanty, it’s about how these five elements interact” (p. 4).  About 66% of us are doing well with at least one of these elements but only 7% of us are thriving in all five areas. This leaves much room to improve well being at work by working on our career  well being, social well being, financial well being, physical well being, and community well being. By the way, I don’t think we try for the infamous work/life balance with these elements, rather we try and have healthy flow that benefits us and others.

Establish PERMAnent Well Being. Martin Seligman approaches well-being with the caution of a scientist and the optimism of someone who developed the approach of learned optimism. In Flourish, Seligman went beyond happiness work to examine flourishing and offering practical suggestions on instilling well being. His perspective of well being also has a foundation of 5 elements, different than Gallup, and structured around the mnemonic PERMA. PERMA stands for: positive emotions, engagement, relationship, meaning, and achievement. Positive emotions and the pleasant life contribute to our well being and happiness. Engagement creates well being with powerful connections to work, belonging and serving.  Relationships, one of the 10 blocks of the pyramid of engagement, in study after study is found to be one of the most salient contributors to well being.  Meaning, the most recent block we examined in this series on the pyramid of engagement is vital for health.  Achievement has been a more recent insertion in Seligman’s approach to authentic happiness and well being. Seligman examined his own love of playing bridge and realized how much achievement plays a role in well being. Achievement fits well with the top three blocks of the employee engagement pyramid: results, performance, and progress.

Mind your work. Mindfulness can be a powerful yet subtle pathway to well being. Jon Kabat-Zinn defined mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentaly.” How well do you show up to the moment? We may reduce high levels of stress attached to the past and the future by being where we are. As Stephan Rechtschaffen declared in Time Shifting, “there is no stress in the present moment.”

Mindful leadership.  A recent Harvard Business review blog post by Holly Labarre quoted Pamela Weiss: ”If you want to transform an organization it’s not about changing systems and processes so much as it’s about changing the hearts and minds of people. Mindfulness is one of the all-time most brilliant approaches for helping to alleviate human suffering and for bringing out our extraordinary potential as human beings.” Mindfulness seems so subtle, almost anemic for well being, but for a world that has gone crazy busy it can keep us well, centered, aware, connected, and present. We often seem to be searching for dramatic data-driven tools when this subtle and powerful tool is always available to us, embedded in us, and always only a moment away.

Watch the talk. I encourage you to mindfully watch this Google talk by Jon Kabat-Zinn:

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

Establish and maintain psychological and social safety. We have focused and improved our work on physical safety at work. We need to keep all employees safe. In addition we need to ensure that our work and workplaces are infused with psychological and social safety. Safety is created through mutual purpose and mutual respect. It means we care about each other and we care about what each other is interested in. This must be genuine and is more than a fuzzy warm feeling. People read a lack of safety in seconds and this thwarts are ability to achieve results, build relationships and be well at work. A lack of safety saps away well being at work and creates ineffective conflicts and confrontations. We seem to have a bigger safety issue than engagement issue at work. It feels unsafe for most workers to be honest, direct, and respectful about engagement. An unintended consequence of the infamous anonymous survey in engagement is that we are telling employees we don’t want to know who they are, thereby making employees invisible. Robust engagement needs a name and a face. Management also justifies anonymous surveys because they don’t believe workers will be honest unless they are anonymous. We need to stop thinking of disengagement as a punishable offence and instead use it as a trigger for meaningful listening and talking about work.

Be a well being heretic.  I believe we have too much fluff and far too many mistaken notions about specific wellness approaches at work. I have believed this for 30 years but just recently has it coalesced together into the  Heretic’s Manifesto of Well Being. I do not write about this frivolously having been an employee assistance counselor for almost 20  years and a university educator in educational and counseling psychology for 25 years.

A wellbeing epiphany and dodging a bullet. Late last year, I was teaching a short course for blue collar workers on overcoming stress and engaged well being. They were a skeptical group who did not want to be there and approached the topic with a high degree of defensiveness and disdain. This was no time for fluffy soft skills yet I wanted to fully contribute to their well being and knew they could benefit from a focus on well being that was real, robust and respectful. I deviated from my plan, connected with the group and realized their rapt attention and interest was bringing out my personal weave of wellness in a way that even I had never fully heard before. When the session was over one of the guys came up at the end. He told me he hated motivational speakers and that he got nothing from them. Before the workshop he borrowed some change from a friend for Tim Horton’s coffee and his friend had a small caliber bullet in his pocket (gives you an idea of the audience).  He picked up the change from his friend plus the bullet saying he may need it as he had to listen to some speaker (me). After everyone else had left at the end of the session, he handed me the bullet, the most creative expression of gratitude I have every received as a speaker, voiced a big thank you, and really did make my day! And this was in…Beasejour, Manitoba! The impromptu and honest rant with the group during that session resulted in the articulation of the following 33 point well being manifesto:

A Heretic’s Manifesto and Guide to Better Well Being at Work:

1. We must find wellbeing inside of work and not wait until we are outside of work at the end of our day or in retirement.
2. Hope is a misguided future perspective taking us away from where we can really make a difference, right here – right now.
3. There is no stress in the present moment so strive to be where you are.
4. Self-esteem is an evaluative trap that snares you like cheese snares a mouse with the snap of the trap. Accept yourself don’t evaluate yourself.
5. Life comes before work and work/life balance and any balance is dynamic like a teeter totter.
6. Well being is only a concept until we engage in well doing.
7. Ignorance is more important than knowledge in fostering and enhancing well being. We being by not knowing.
8. People don’t actually hear most interpersonal feedback unless they feel safe and safety is the only way to overcome most of our problems.
9. Genuine caring trumps professional competence in almost every relationship.
10. Achieving  happiness is a shallow and insignificant approach to living.
11. Structure trumps willpower in promoting and fostering well being.
12. Powerful questions we ask ourself are the ideal WD40 for a brain clogged by an amygdala seizure.
13. Wellbeing is strong stuff. We must know, live and leverage our strengths in the service of others.
14. It take energy directed towards well being to get energy and when you are depleted this is a real hindrance to experiencing well being
15. Relaxation is the anemic aspirin of stress management and can actually cause stress.
16. What lessens your stress today could be a major contributor of stress tomorrow.
17. There are no algorithmic certainties of well being only heuristic probabilities of success.
18. In life and work you are going to fart, fumble, and fall. You are human. It is not about avoiding falling down it is about how you pick yourself back up again. Everyone is screwed up: I am not okay, you are not okay and that is okay.
19. Placebos are examples of caring made tangible.
20. Employee wellbeing is not a soft skill just as accounting is not a hard skill.  Wellbeing embraces fluid skills when the fixed parts of our life are in need of repair.
21. Reality is overrated, living through positive illusion, not delusion,  is powerful and practical.
22. Wellbeing is more than a personal endeavor it  is a social phenomenon.
23. Only you are responsible for your own well being but others are accountable for your well being just as you are accountable for their well being.
24. No one can upset you after 90 seconds.
25. Compliance is the anemic byproduct of power.
26. We do not resist change we resist coercion and the gravity of the familiar is what holds us in place.
27. If life throws you a lemon — duck, determine where it came from, think about what you can do about it and only then contemplate making lemonade.
28. Positive thinking must be changed into a more authentic constructive thinking. Lots of  bad things do happen and positive thinking may be a disrespectful glossing offer the richness, albeit ruggedness, of human experience.
29. Bad is at least twice as salient as good in most situations so we must tip the scales of good for good.
30. Most of what we know really isn’t so.
31. Wellness tips like this without personal evaluation and experimentation can create a  misguided tyranny of tips leading towards more stress. The Buddha said, “we must be a lamp unto ourselves.”
32. Contradiction is only troublesome if you are locked into rigid thinking and a fixed mindset.
33. Take a long shot, Charlie Chaplin once said, “life is a tragedy in close up and a comedy in long shot.” How long does it take you to get a long shot on things?

Read these 5 sources to be well on your way:

• Tom Rath and Jim Harter, Well Being: The Five Essential Elements.
• Martin E. P. Seligman, Flourish: A visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being.
• Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go There You Are
• Stephan Rechtschaffen,  Time Shifting: Creating More time to Enjoy Your Life
• Polly Labarre, Developing Mindful Leaders, Harvard Business Review Blog, December 2011.

Next post in this series: How to enliven energy for employee engagement.

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.

(Part 8 of an 11 part series on how managers can improve employee engagement)

Finding direction through meaning

Meaning. For work to sustain and enrich people it must be meaningful. Those who have a why to work can bear almost any how and a sense of meaningful work instills a strong and rich intrinsic motivation. Progress, when it is meaningful, can be one of the best events of our day.

Finding and Defining Meaning. Paul Fairlie recently published an article on meaningful work and engagement in Advances in Developing Human Resources. He listed the common dimensions of meaning: having a purpose or goal, 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. Fairlie conducted research on meaningful work with 574 respondents.  He offered six implications for human resource development practice including deeper discussion and social connections, changing mindsets, and management education on models of human meaning. He concluded that meaninful work was a unique predictor of engagement, “meaningful work characteristics are an overlooked sources of employee motivation and engagement within organizations.”

Here are 8 ways to create meaningful work:

1. Trump how with why
2. Build abundant leadership whys
3. Stretch meaning, shrink money
4. Get Pink with autonomy, mastery, purpose
5. Master your Mojo
6. Reframe your values as promises
7. Lead on purpose
8. Double your WAMI at work

Trump how with why. Viktor Frankl concluded that the meaning of life is found in every moment of living and that life never ceases to have meaning. To move this to the workplace, if you have a why to work you can bear almost any how. Not everyone is engaged in meaningful work, but maybe everyone can be.  Part of making this happen is helping organizations, leaders, managers, and employees learn how to co-create meaningful workplaces. Part of making this happen is helping workers to perceive and experience the greater purpose in their work. In the workplace, meaning is co-created between the organization and individual. It is not something we give to another person — meaning must be built through authentic conversations about the why of work.

Build  abundant leadership whys. David and Wendy Ulrich wrote They Why of Work: How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations that Win. The authors frame the book around some down-to-earth and meaningful questions around identity, prupose, motivation, relationships, teams, work culture, contribution, growth, learning, resilience, civility and happiness. They encourage us to ask ourselves:

• What am I known for?
• Where am I going?
• Whom do I travel with?
• How do I build a positive work environment?
• What challenges and interest me?
• How do I respond to disposability and change?
• What delights me?

The Why of Work is a practical book for leaders who are looking to instill meaning. As the authors  state in their preface: “Leaders are meaning makers: they set direction that others aspire to; they help others participate in doing good work and good works; they communicate ideas and invest in practices that shape how people think, act, and feel. As organizations become an increasing part of the individual’s sense of identity and purpose, leaders play an increasing role in helping people shape the meaning of their lives.”

Stretch meaning, shrink money. Money matters but so does meaning, completion, competition and motivation to instill caring at work. Dan Ariely offered an insightful 4 minute video on work and meaning at Big Think. He outlines how motivation and engagement are created through meaning. I encourage you to watch this video. Here is a short snippet from the transcript:

Sure, we care about money and it’s nice to get paid, but there’s also a whole range of other things that we get–a need for achievement and completion, competition with other people, and a sense of progress and a sense of meaning.  And all of those things really, really matter.  But as we move to a knowledge economy that depends more on people’s good intention and willing, and as the nature of work becomes more amorphic and work kind of interweaves with life in all kinds of interesting ways, as we move more and more to that kind of workplace, I think the relative importance of money is getting smaller and the relative importance of those other things could get… could get much larger…The first lesson is that we need to recognize how important meaning, completion, competition, motivations are in getting people to care and to work hard, and we need to try to encourage those…we need to do things that don’t undercut those human motivations.

Get Pink with autonomy, mastery and purpose. Daniel Pink wrote the popular book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.  Meaning and motivation according to the research Pink gathered is created through autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Pink stated that purpose maximization is taking its place alongside profit maximization as an aspiration and a guiding principle.  We need to use profit to reach purpose, lessen the emphasis on self-interest, and help people pursue purpose on their own terms. Pink believe this may not only rejuvenate our businesses and organizations but also remake our world.

Master your Mojo. Marshall Goldsmith offers MOJO to find meaning. Mojo means working with 3 elements:

1. Identity (Who do you think you are?)
2. Achievement (What have you done lately?)
3. Reputation (Who do other people think you are? What do other people think you’ve done lately?) .

Reframe your values as promises. I appreciated Mike Morrison’s slim book on The Other Side of the Card: Where Your Authentic Leadership Begins. Mike was the Dean of the University of Toyota. He stated that one side of our business card has writing and the other has meaning. The meaning is created on the blank side of the card. The book offers a number of short exercises to fill the white space of our work with meaning. One element of the book that really stood out for me was to reframe values as promises. Values are often nice sounding statements that frozen in a framed wall statement while promises are something we keep. Ensure that your values don’t stagnate on the wall, think of them as promises, and then do all you can to keep the promises you make.

Lead on purpose.  Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer have done some great research and writing demonstrating how important minimizing setbacks and maximizing progress is for engaged work. In the January 2012 McKinsey Quarterly they outline how leaders kill meaning at work. This occurs by “dismissing the importance of subordinates’ work or ideas, destroying a sense of ownership by switching people off projects teams before work is finalized, shifting goals so frequently that people despair that their work will ever see the light of day, and neglecting to keep subordinates up to date on changing priorities for customers. The article includes a plea for executives to instill meaning in other and find meaning for themselves at the same time:

 you are in a better position than anyone to identify and articulate the higher purpose of what people do within your organization. Make that purpose real, support its achievement through consistent everyday actions, and you will create the meaning that motivates people toward greatness. Along the way, you may find greater meaining your own work as a leader.

Double your WAMI at  work. Michael F. Stager encourage us to fine our WAMI through a work and meaning inventory. People work for many reasons – some are obvious (I am paid to work), some are not as obvious (work is where my friends are). Research evidence and case studies testify to the reality that understanding how people approach work and what they get from it is vital to learning how to achieve the best possible outcomes for individuals and organizations. Meaningful work is a good predictor of desirable work attitudes like job satisfaction. In addition, meaningful work is a better predictor of absenteeism from work than job satisfaction.  The Work and Meaning Inventory (WAMI) assesses three core components of meaningful work: the degree to which people find their work to have significance and purpose, the contribution work makes to finding broader meaning in life, and the desire and means for one’s work to make a positive contribution to the greater good. To download the 10-item WAMI assessment and scoring key click here.

Five meaningful considerations.

1. Create meaning rather than searching for it. Making meaning is a creative and co-creative process.
2. Work with meaning while achieving meaningful results.
3. Actively engage with some of the sources listed here to enhance your own meaning and help others create their meaning.
4. Have wide eyes about your work so that you can see and experience the greater purpsse in what you do.
5. Remind yourself that meaning is a process not an event. You don’t simply find meaning one day, you engage in meaningful work every day.

Read these 7 meaningful sources:

• Paul Fairlie, Meaningful work, employee engagement, and other key employee outcomes: Implication for Human Resource Development. Advances in Developing Human Resouces. December 2011.
• Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning.
• Dave Ullrich and Wendy Ulrich, The Why of Work: how Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win
• Dan Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
• Marshall Goldsmith, MOJO: How to get it, how to keep it, how to get it back if you lose it.
• Mike Morrison, The Other side of the Card: Where Your Authentic leadership Begins.
• Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, How leaders kill meaning at work. McKinsey Quarterly, January 2012.

Next post in this series: Experience Well Being.

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.