26 One-liners for Employee Engagement
When David Zinger put out the invitation for an alphabet soup of employee engagement tips, it was too good to pass up. Others felt the same way. So David ended up producing the results as the 300 Free Employee Engagement Keys eBook which you can also dowload here.
David's dedication to professional development generated an entire network devoted to the EE topic. You can look and join here for free.
The idea was to use each letter of the alphabet to offer up thoughts on engagement, so I give you:
Steve's EE, A to Z
Amour: Am I doing what I love to do?
Bingo!: We have work experiences that make us want to yell this every day.
Croon: Our projects make us want to sing about them--at least sometimes.
Destiny: We have a sense of more than just today.
Echo: What we do reverberates across the organization. We listen, so we know whether or not to make adjustments.
Federline: We don't make the same mistakes as Britney and skip the engagement part. Which means we also understand that winning a "trip to Paris" isn't always a good thing.
Glad: We take time to celebrate when good things happen.
Harpoon: When something starts to drag us down, we nip it in the bud.
Isolate: Only problems, not people.
Java: We're skilled at drinking it while the plug-in is downloading.
Killer-apps: We know how to apply our work to real business solutions.
Latitude: What we give to our colleagues.
Mojo: What our competitors think we've got an abundance of.
Nah!: What we say when others try to tell us we're too committed.
Oh yeah!: The kind of thing we say to each other when someone does something really good.
Prada: The stuff we'll never wear because we're too engaged to go shopping.
Quirks: What we admire in each other that the disengaged choose to criticize.
Rigor: We think this is a good thing, since the opposite is rigormortous.
Serious: About our mission, not ourselves.
Telemarketing: What we don't do with good ideas because we know the importance of face time.
Utopia: What we shoot for even though we know it doesn't exist.
Vacuum: We avoid operating in one. Because of our level of engagement, we may avoid using one as well. Life challenge: Learn the difference.
Why Not?: One of the first things we ask after hearing "Why?"
Xenogamy: We practice cross-fertilization of ideas. We also never say this word out loud in meetings.
Yin & Yang: We look for the complementary relationships in opposites.
Zone: What this is all about, as in, "We want to be in the . . ."
What would your alphabet include?












Vacuum - something we might forget to do because we're so engaged! LOL - too engaged. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Xenogamy - my new favourite word!
Great one-liners, Steve. Federline is just inspired, which beats my idea of "Failure - ought to be an option."
Posted by: Robyn | May 09, 2008 at 03:52 PM
Steve, I couldn't put together a better list. I thought your ideas here quite invigorating. Exciting!
Posted by: Robyn | May 11, 2008 at 07:29 PM
These are awesome! I could start with my own 26 one-liners for Employee Dis-engagement.
Analysis: Too much of this, leads to paralysis.
Paralysis: A condition caused by an overdose of analysis, usually starting in the brain... Sr.Mgmt..that is.
Posted by: Connie | May 12, 2008 at 04:15 PM
Aaaah, Connie:
It sounds as if you are speaking from a wellspring of experiences:-)
Posted by: Steve Roesler | May 12, 2008 at 04:18 PM
I have just shared xenogamy with a friend - we love it. I can understand why Robyn does too - describes the blogosphere perfectly doesn't it?
Posted by: Jackie Cameron | May 15, 2008 at 11:39 AM
I think it does, too, Jackie.
Alert: Cheesy semi-self promotion to follow.
Just finished my chapter for the Age of Conversation 2. It's partially about why large corporations seem to resist "all things social media." While cross-fertilization of ideas is said to be important, the kind of conversations to make that happen are often seen as threatening.
So we sometimes get pseudo-xenogamy.
Posted by: Steve Roesler | May 15, 2008 at 01:08 PM