May 22nd, 2008
Employee Engagement From A to Z
by David Zinger
Are you looking for ideas to create, build, foster, and sustain employee engagement? In conjunction with 11 other authors from the EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT NETWORK we created a 39 page free e-book to enrich your employee engagement knowledge and efforts.
Here are the authors
Tim Wright
Terrence Seamon
Steve Roesler
Lisa Forsyth
Raven Young
Robert Morris
Ken Milloy
David Zinger
Stephen McPherson
George Reavis
Ian Buckingham
Angela Maiers
Here are 7 suggestions on how you can apply the concepts from the book:
- Scan the authors to find ideas.
- Read the book as a primer to create your own alphabet.
- Launch a team or project group exercise on engagement based on the book.
- Choose a letter each day and focus on that letter to enhance your own engagement or the engagement of others.
- Share the alphabets with others at work.
- Offer the book as a free resource during employee engagement workshops.
- Develop your own applications based on your interest and focus on employee engagement.
Click here to download a free PDF copy of the book.
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By David Zinger -- 3 comments
May 21st, 2008
This is a guest-post from Stephen Smith, who is the editor of Productivity in Context, a resource for articles on Productivity and Leadership, New Media Studies, and tools for organizing. Click here to read more about improving your life and work through increased mindfulness, education, and workflow practices.
If you’re going to be a Slacker Manager, you had better have a strategy. Otherwise, you’re going to wind up in the unemployment line.
One of the most frequently-asked questions that I get as a manager and trainer is how to go about making changes. Whether it’s staffing, processes, systems or methods you need to go about it in a disciplined and carefully crafted manner.
Just don’t look like you’re being careful and manipulative. That’s the Slacker key. Here are some tips for making changes without looking like a manipulative bastard:
- Make good use of your time. Come in to the office early, drink your coffee and get your act together. Then when the rest of the team come rolling in, lolly-gagging around the coffee pot and water-cooler, you can walk by, look at your watch and say, “There are going to be some changes around here.” This will set the stage.
- Ask your poorest performers to come up with a solution to a vexing problem, publicly. A problem that your better-performing staff has. Likewise, ask the high-performers to solve a problem for the deadwood. Now each “team” knows that they have to come up with a solution that they would be comfortable implementing for themselves. Use this for the minor things that cause lapses in productivity and efficiency.
- Draw people out of their fortresses. People like to create barriers that protect them from you, from extra work, and from communication. Set up some chips and dip in an office, and do not give them an extra assignment. Instead ask them for a suggestion on how you could do something better. Think it over. The next day, assign it to them.
- Keep it gradual. Making small, incremental changes over a comfortable (for you) period of time is much easier (for them) to accept.
- Keep it steady. Make the changes on a fairly regular schedule. Map out a plan for change in advance, and keep to it. Change something every six or eight days. Not every Tuesday at the staff meeting, even the most disconnected of your staff will catch on.
Being a Slacker Manager is all about controlling perceptions, creating a certain level of anticipation, and making sure that you don’t have to do all of the work.
All images courtesy of Productivity in Context
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By Phil Gerbyshak -- 6 comments
May 20th, 2008
Is Trust a Bust @ Work?
by David Zinger
Are you creating high levels of trust as a manger.
Foundation of trust. Ms. Barabara Bowes, wrote the column Trust Me: It takes more than words to earn trust of staff, customers in The Winnipeg Free Press. She provided a sound rationale why trust is a must:
Trust is the foundation of all relationships. When they feel trusted, employees can enjoy a peace of mind and know that the decisions they make within their authority level will be respected. They feel excited and energized about work, communication opens up and teams collaborate to get the job done. Without trust, employees experience confusion, fear and job insecurity while the organization itself becomes dysfunctional.
Predictable, community, togetherness.Barbara Misztal in Trust in Modern Societies: The Search for the Bases of Social Order outlined 3 basic things that trust does in the lives of people, trust:
- makes social life predictable
- creates a sense of community
- makes it easier for people to work together
Coin a phrase. In the United States all the coins have the statement: IN GOD WE TRUST.
At the local level of a business or organization do you trust the organization, the leaders, and the managers?
Shake the rust off of trust. Take a quick assessment of trust by responding to the following 5 questions:
- Who do you most trust at work? Why?
- Who do you mistrust or distrust at work? Why?
- What conditions create trust for you at work?
- How do you create trusting relationships as a manager?
- (Complete the following sentence) When I feel or experience trust at work I ….
Photo Credit: In God we trust by http://flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/1303402061/
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By David Zinger -- 14 comments
May 19th, 2008
“Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.” - Harold S. Geneen
What do you think? Is this leadership? Can you use this for how you lead your team?
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By Phil Gerbyshak -- 3 comments
May 18th, 2008
Are you a hamster?
by David Zinger
Survey Results…112 people responded to this question: Do you believe it is appropriate to refer to a category of employees from an employee engagement survey as hamsters (working hard but at the wrong things)?
Yes and No. 54 participants said yes and 58 participants said no. It looks like we have a split decision in this cage match.
Click here if you would like to read some of the very interesting comments and my personal thoughts on the label.
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By David Zinger -- 0 comments
May 17th, 2008
This is the long weekend in Canada. Time out or time off for good behavior and in Canada we put the “u” into behaviour - that way it is just not for other people, but for all of us.
If you need a Zinger fix for the weekend, Click hereto listen a Blog Talk Radio interview I had with Zane Safrit this week on employee engagement:
David Zinger, founder of the Employee Engagement community www.employeeengagement.ning.com will talked with Zane about employee engagement and its role in corporate success and its foundation for creating customer evangelists and their word-of-mouth advertising for your company.
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By David Zinger -- 0 comments
May 16th, 2008
This is a guest post from Ade McCormack
How many IT people do you see holding court at parties? How many of us hope to be seated next to a technical architect on our next flight?
Introduce yourself as an IT person at a party (I know, I’ve done this) and they all start telling stories about how IT has let them down. When you try to defend the IT industry by explaining that there are, for example, limitations to IP addressing, or that distributed databases lack mathematical rigor, they just laugh, if they’re even listening at all.
Such encounters create resentment, and drive many IT people deeper into their hardened emotional shell. The move to offshoring has reinforced the perception that IT is a commodity. The value IT delivers would appear not to come from the people who build and support IT systems.
But what if tomorrow’s IT people became the new rock stars, or at least the new business “Masters of the Universe”? What if the IT person became a hybrid-business technologist, with an impressive combination of technology skill and business savvy?
Imagine an IT department made up of these IT rock stars. Business people would love them for their ability to hone technology into business advantage. IT would no longer be a technology rest-home for the business-indifferent.
That day is coming. However, the reality is that the nerds will not one day “inherit the Earth.” Nerds, geeks, propeller heads, call them (us) what you will, are the result of a Darwinian split that came about with the birth of the first IT systems. These people were an “evolutionary” step from the mathematical sciences genus; mainly physicists and mathematicians who were attracted by the potential power of these “super-calculators” (aka mainframes).
The sophistication of the computers coupled with the unsophistication of the tools literally required rocket scientists to use them. But the tools today are much more sophisticated, and increasingly business-oriented.
Still, Darwinism has yet to take effect on the people side. The future of IT, it would appear, rests in the hands of hiring managers and recruitment agencies that need to place a greater focus on the business acumen of IT recruits. Choose these carefully and reward them well. They will determine your share price.
Ade McCormack is the author of The IT Value Stack - A Boardroom Guide to IT Leadership (Wiley, 2008). For more information and to download the first two chapters visit Ade McCormack’s blog.
Other links to more great information from Ade:
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By Phil Gerbyshak -- 4 comments
May 15th, 2008
Can you “tell” time?
by David Zinger
What is your relationships to time at work. Clock in below.
Click here or click on the clocks below to take 5 seconds of your time and select a response that best fits your relationship with time at work.
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By David Zinger -- 0 comments
May 14th, 2008
This is a guest-post from Stephen Smith, who is the editor of Productivity in Context, a resource for articles on Productivity and Leadership, New Media Studies, and tools for organizing. Click here to read more about improving your life and work through increased mindfulness, education, and workflow practices.
If you’re going to be a Slacker Manager, you had better have a plan. Otherwise, you’re going to wind up in the unemployment line. One of the most frequently-asked questions that I get about management and interviewing is, “How do you screen people in the interview process? How can you be sure that you are hiring the right one?”
Interviews are an opportunity for some people to shine. Some are not comfortable in an interview setting, choke, or crash-and-burn. Find out about this before the interview, in a telephone pre-screen. Ask the candidate about their favorite interview memory, or a funny interview story. Based on the answer, be prepared to change your interviewing style or format. Just don’t look like you’re being crafty and manipulative. That’s the Slacker Key. Key interviewing skills include some of these less-well-known tips:
- Use the power of anticipation. Be ready early, but make the candidate wait a little bit. Appear unprepared. Ask them to talk about themselves. This will set the stage.
- Ask open-ended, “sales-like” questions about past experiences. Push for real-life examples. Past behavior is a better indicator of future performance than pie-in-the-sky theorizing about possible solutions to theoretical problems. If they do not have a real-life example of how to handle a situation that this position may encounter, they may not be the best candidate.
- Remove them from their comfort zone (if they are a strong interviewee) You want to re-establish the power arrangement with a strong candidate who may attempt to enhance her own prestige at your expense.
- Make them very comfortable (if they “failed” the pre-screen call)… A “weak” candidate that does not interview well may be a talented and valuable addition to your team. This type of applicant already knows that you are in charge and you can take this time to build rapport.
- Ask specific questions about training needs and flexibility. One of my personal favorites is, “Tell me about a time when you were asked to change your approach or the way you do something at work”.
- Ask a pointed question about Values. The ethics and values of today’s employees are of the utmost importance. I always ask them to, “Describe a time when you were not treated fairly by an employer. What happened and how did you respond?”
Being a Slacker Manager is all about constantly improving your position by building a competent team beneath you, making sure that you don’t have to do all of the work.
All images courtesy of Productivity in Context
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By Phil Gerbyshak -- 6 comments
May 13th, 2008
May’s Golden Slacker: Leo Babauta
Inducted by David Zinger
I am delighted to induct Mr. Leo Babauta of Zen Habits as the May inductee in the Order of the Golden Slacker.
It is an honor to induct Leo Babauta into the Order of the Golden Slacker. Leo’s primary focus is on productivity and his perspective, suggestions, and articles on self-management are guaranteed to create a solid foundation for any manager to manage others by first managing himself or herself well. Leo is an exceptional blog writer who demonstrates an exquisite flair for this medium.
Leo is able to demonstrate solid and sound management by his top-notch award winning blogging fused with a family focus and even training for a triathlon.
If you are not already familiar with Mr. Babauta, here are 3 posts I recommend to get you started. If you already read Zen Habits then I recommend you go back and review these 3 classics:
- Haiku Productivity: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential
- Big Rocks First: Double Your Productivity This Week
- How to Accept Criticism with Grace and Appreciation
I am honored to induct Mr. Leo Babauta into the Order of The Golden Slacker. As with all Golden Slackers, Leo will be receiving his official certificate by email!
The Order of the Golden Slackers:
May 2008: Leo Baubuta
April 2008: Steve Roesler
March 2008: Rocky Noe
February 2008: Harvey Schachter
January 2008: Wayne Tunnel
December 2007: Marshall Goldsmith
November 2007: Rosa Say
October 2007: Lisa Haneberg
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By David Zinger -- 2 comments
May 12th, 2008
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Question: Do you believe this works for managers, or do you think it’s better to treat your team as they are right now?
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By Phil Gerbyshak -- 12 comments
May 10th, 2008
Whack Revisited
by David Zinger
It is only fitting that we have a whacky Management Zinger for our 13th entry into this feature.
Guy Kawasaki had an interview with Roger von Oech about creativity based on the 25th anniversary of Roger’s quintessential classic creativity book: Whack on the Side of the Head. I have used this book off an on for the past 25 years. I just put it away when my head begins to hurt and pull it back out when I need to open my mind.
Here is question 7 from Guy and Roger’s response:
Question: Speaking of “mantras,” do you have one?
Answer: My mantra is “Look for the Second Right Answer.” This has been my guiding principle for over thirty years. Much of our educational system tries to teach us to look for the “one right answer.” I find that looking for the second right answer is an incredibly easy way to open my mind. For example, when I’m looking for information, this mantra tells me to go beyond the right answers that have worked in the past and look for others. When I’m trying to be creative, it playfully advises me to put my ideas in unusual contexts to give them new meanings.When I’m evaluating concepts, it implores me not to get stuck in the negative, and not to fall in love with one particular approach. And, when I’m implementing ideas, it reminds me that if one idea doesn’t work, a different one just might, and to act accordingly.
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By David Zinger -- 0 comments
May 9th, 2008
Water cooler gossip can kill any work environment. Being a manager, I have found that often times this gossip is hurtful and even hateful.So what can you do to combat this axis of office evil? Simply join in yourself.
There is simply no way to get a better finger on the pulse than by joining in. Let’s be honest, there’s no way to stop it, and if you can’t beat it join it. Right? Yes, that’s exactly right.
How else are going to find out which employees have cooties or bacterial funguses? It’s one of the only places your employees throw that whole “boss” thing out the window and are completely honest with you. You need to find out about the scuttlebutt. That way you can fire Claire before she resigns. You can snuff out any office romances, and most of all you can throw Roger under the bus if he ticks you off.
Some would call this trivial, but I beg to differ. If it wasn’t for hiding behind ferns I would have never known that Michelle used to be a Michael, which explained the Adam’s apple and the defined jaw line.
Be right back, I’ve got to get the dish about Joan’s new man.
So…Do you have any ideas on how to stop water cooler gossip?
Hudson is the C.E.O. of Rib Riot.com and spends time managing sub-ordinates, and bossing others around. His hints are offered to you free of charge so that maybe you too will be inspired and motivated to accomplish somewhat great things with your life. If you want to read more about Hudson head over to RibRiot.com
Images courtesy of istockphoto and RibRiot.com
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By Phil Gerbyshak -- 6 comments
May 8th, 2008
Here are the results of an employee engagement poll I conducted on Slacker Manager. From total infatuation to total irritation, 56% of 493 respondents held strong positive views about their work. Scan the statistics and ensure that you read the verbatim comments from each of the 7 categories.
by David Zinger
The poll is in. 493 of you responded! Thank you very much.
The question with 7 possible responses. How is work going? How do you feel about your job?(The percentage number in front indicates how many people out of a total of 493 selected that response.
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By David Zinger -- 24 comments
May 7th, 2008
Over at Leadership Turn, Miki Saxon is nearly completed with a great series going on about whether Warren Bennis’ 13 differences between leaders and managers still hold in light of today’s modern workforce. Bennis is thought of as a pioneer in the field of leadership studies, much as Peter Drucker is considered the father of modern management theory.
Some of the 13 differences discussed include:
- The manager has his or her eye always on the bottom line; the leader has his or her eye on the horizon.
- The manager imitates; the leader originates.
- The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.
- The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.
In this manager’s opinion, these may differ out of necessity and day-to-day responsibility, though in the longer view, it’s imperative that BOTH halves are stressed and kept in mind, and Miki makes a great point about the combination role of the leadager or leader/manager.
A few examples to prove my point:
- If a manager imitates that which is originated with her leader, what happens when there’s something not explicitly discussed? Does the manager wait for the leader to dictate before acting?
- Or if the manager has a very short range view of staffing, and only hires for immediate need, does he need to wait for his manager to say “Hey, you should really hire a senior person so your team can make it to the next level?”
What do you think? Do Bennis’ 13 differences still make sense? Leave your comments below, or head over to Leadership Turn and discuss this with the folks over there.
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By Phil Gerbyshak -- 8 comments
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