What spin are you in?

We believe that the path of self-development is upward. We want to go to the next level or rise up to peak performance. I believe self-development can occur by spiralling downward.

Hop into the cockpit as we take off to a new spin on self-development.

Even as a 4 year old I dreamed of being a pilot. I was transfixed as the old propeller Trans Canada Airlines Vanguards and Viking planes would fly into the Regina airport. My dream was defeated because I was colorblind. My father told me that because I was colorblind I could not fly. I loved my dad but we should be cautious of what anyone tells us, even the people we love and who love us.

Dad was wrong.

I could not get a commercial licence but I but I could qualify for a private pilot’s licence. There was nothing so uplifting as flying solo for the first time.

Yet, as in landing and taking off, flying has its ups and downs. In learning to fly we practice incipient spins. The start of a spin that we pull out of before it goes into a full spin.

On a Tuesday afternoon I was practicing this manoeuvre. I flew up to 4000 feet, stalled the aircraft (on purpose) kicked the rudder hard to the left (on purpose) and moved into the incipient spin. Although the plane was moving my brain froze and in two seconds I was into a full spin…spinning out of control towards the ground.

The airplane seemed to be stuck in the air while the ground started to spin up to suck me and the airplane into the earth. The instruments jerked over the red line and I panicked as I tried to correct by pulling back on the wheel, away from the ground, and kicking the rudder hard to the right, away from the spin. This evasive action merely intensified the spin I was already in.

During the next few moments there were a bizarre chain of events. My life was about to end but nothing meaningful was flashing before consciousness. I had hoped for more and then a momentary curiosity flashed across my neurons. Would I see some kind of light just before I died?

Just as I was drifting into a contemplation of the afterlife, I heard someone scream, ”F _ _ K”. That somone was me. What a way to go, an obscenity as my last spoken word on earth. Yet the obscene scream jolted me into action.

The way out is through.

I pushed the control wheel towards the ground.

I kicked the rudder further into the spin.

The cessena shuddered.

The ground paused.

I levelled out with under 100 feet to spare. I had flown the plane through the spin rather than fighting the spin and making it worse.

You can call it a near death experience, you can call it a miracle, but I call it ineptitude with a dash of obscene good luck.

Below are lessons spun from this experience. I offer them to you as invitations so that you can pull out of your own “incipient spin.”

Be careful what you dream for, you never know how it might end up.

Don’t always trust people who tell you that you can’t do something but they might be more helpful than you know at the time.

The key lesson not just in flying but in life from this for me was: The way out of something is through it. We often need to push into what we fear and experience what we dread.

If you are not competent it may be best to stop before you hurt yourself of someone else. I was the best ground school pilot that year at the Winnipeg Flying Club but I sucked as a real pilot. You will be happy to know the sky is safe and that I only fly as a passenger now - but be careful if you sit beside me as I might want to tell you my story.

Sometimes our toughest moments become our best stories. When we transform experience into story we can change the past — not the facts of the past but what we take away from it.

Although I embrace respectful language I discovered that swear words, at the right time and place, can be quite liberating and maybe even put a whole new spin on our life.

Photo Credit: Cessna 172R by http://flickr.com/photos/lonetown/712037662/

If this were your last day, would you die happy today?

David Zinger

BLOGS: A Very Engaging Read

 

Which blogs do I read?… Here’s my list.

A number of people have asked me which blogs I read. I read and follow a very eclectic list of over 200 bloggers. I don’t read every post by every author but I check them all and delve into the ones that capture my attention.

If you ever thought blogs were just some type of diary kept by teenagers then I encourage you to see it very differently by visiting some of the blogs I have included on my list.

Click here to visit the list of blogs I read or you can always find a link to the list on my menu bar at the top of this site under the heading: Blog List.

Employee Engagement Network Reaches 100 Members

Click here to visit the employee engagement network. In just under 4 weeks we reached 100 members. I strongly encourage you to both visit and join this network. It is for people who focus on employee engagement at work, people who want to enhance their own work, or people who are involved in writing, consutlting or doing other work related to engagement.

We have been very active in 4 weeks with over 25,000 views!

Here is just a sample of 12 of the over 100 members you can interact with:

Tim Wright who was the first member to join after I founded the network and who write a marvelous blog on culture to engage.

Terrence Seamon who is a very active and insightful community member from the American Management Association.

Rosa Say who brings a whole lot of Hawaii into her leadership practice.

Michael Lee Stallard who wrote a wonderful book and knows the importance of connection for engagement.

Michelle Malay Cater who writes with style and substance.

Judy McLeish from Toronto who writes another great blog on engagement.

Kathy Lankford who has made some very insightful comments on the network.

Michael Kanazawa who had a cubicle close to Scott Adams the creator of Dilbert and who works on big ideas to big results.

Scott Herrick who writes about careers in Cube Rules.

Guatam Ghosh who offers frequent contributions and adds a perspective from India.

Patricia Ryan Madson who brings the spirit of improvisation to the site.

Andrew Rondeau who jumped right in and got very involved in our conversations.

Obviously this is just a very partial list and it is the combination of EVERYONE who joined to make this a leading resources for anyone interested in employee engagement.

Photo Credit: The worlds network by http://flickr.com/photos/saschaaa/152502539/

David Zinger, Host - Employee Engagement Network.

ZENgagement: Work is Pervasive

Employee Engagement is all about work.

Speaking about the daily activities in which humans engage, everything is work — being alive and in a body is already work. Every day there is eating and sh..ting and cleaning up. There is brushing and bathing and flossing. Every day there is thinking and caring and creating. So there is no escape from work — it’s everywhere. for Zen students there’s no work time and leisure time; there’s just lifetime, daytime and nighttime. Work is something deep and dignified — it’s what we are born to do and what we feel most fulfilled in doing. ~ Norman Fischer, Zen monk abbot, (From Howard Gardner’s Responsibility at Work).

Photo Credit: Blue Sky! by http://flickr.com/photos/foxypar4/1065840918/

Interview on Essential Techniques for Employee Engagement (Part 4)

Message Maps and the Rationale for the 4 Techniques of Employee Engagement

This is the fourth in a five part series interview with Graeme Ginsberg from London. Graeme is the Managing Editor, Research and Reports for Meclrum - the international research and training company focused on internal communication. I requested the interview go get a better understanding of Melcrum’s research and their current publication: The Practitioner’s Guide, Essential Techniques for Employee Engagement.





I think the technique that many readers may be unfamiliar with is message maps. I believe a message map is a visual communication tool to help individuals tell their organization’s story more effectively. Is that correct? Can you tell us a little more about this.

Message maps help managers capture the core messages of a topic. The topic might be something quite broad and abstract in nature – like where the organization, an initiative or an individual is heading. Or it might be something tangible – for example, an announcement about a product launch or annual conference. Message maps act like blueprints that guide all subsequent communication on the topic – ensuring consistency, whether it’s a CEO speech, an employee newsletter, website copy, a press release, marketing collateral, or whatever.

When it comes to creating the message map after the messaging session, less is definitely more – it’s presenting core and supporting messages so they’re really transparent and accessible. But the message map doesn’t necessarily need to be ‘visual’ in the sense of having arrows and boxes. It’ll depend really on the organizational culture and the topic – the message map could equally be a more traditional page of bulleted text. The Guide gives an example of each type of message map.

Can you tell us why you focused on these particular techniques? What was the background to this Guide?

It was becoming clear to us from our conversations with communication and HR professionals that the discussion around engagement had moved on considerably. Organizations weren’t so much debating what employee engagement means and whether it can drive business performance – they were now telling us that they wanted to know how they could actually achieve it. We had already produced our Employee Engagement report in 2005 – a very comprehensive research report covering the strategic issues around engagement – and we realized that one of our Pracitioner’s Guides would be the best way to provide the hard-hitting “how to” information that they needed for implementation.

We talked to practitioners at our annual employee engagement conferences in the UK, US, Australia and Europe and they told us that they really wanted to understand the techniques for engaging employees, rather than simply getting more information about particular channels. Action teams, Appreciative Inquiry, message maps and storytelling quickly emerged as the techniques most widely used by organizations – and also the ones that people wanted to know most about – so we focused on them.

Part 5 (next post): Conclusion

The latest…

This post examines cynicism, fear and disengagement.

Don’t Go There!

I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism,

and what we’re lead to is a life not fully lived.

Cynicism is fear,

and it’s worse than fear -

it’s active disengagement.

~ Ken Burns

Photo Credit: Closed by http://flickr.com/photos/jasoon/10837680/

Monday Morning Percolator (#40)

In today’s post, David Zinger raises the possibility that there are many paths to employee engagement.

Multiple Pathways to Employee Engagement: MMP#40

By David Zinger on Employee Engagement

Employee Engagement: The Monday Morning Percolator #40

There is no way to employee engagement,

employee engagement is the way.

The above statement is a rewrite of Zen monk, Thich Nhat Hahn’s, dictum: There is no way to peace, peace is the way.

The opening statement about employee engagement is a central theme of this website. Three times a week you will encounter an eclectic collection of articles on employee engagement. You will read a plethora of perspectives on engagement, from strength based leadership to ZENgagement.

There are many possible forks in the road on the multiple pathways to engagement - I am not trying to confound or confuse you. I want to acknowledge the complexity of employee engagement and honor the many paths to employee engagement.

Last week the Gallup Management Journal published an article with this exact title by Jennifer Robison, Many Paths to Engagement. I have utmost respect for Gallup’s extensive work on employee engagement and I was very pleased to see the parallel nature of our perspectives.

Jennifer began her article with a reference to Buddhist philosophy:

Some Buddhists believe that there are many paths to enlightenment, as many paths as there are seekers. Business philosophy, however, considers that idea problematic. Business leaders don’t want many paths to enlightenment, or in their case, to business results like employee engagement and the benefits it brings. They want one simple, straight, predictable path. When it comes to employee engagement, though, Buddhist thought is probably closer to the truth. There isn’t a perfect path to engagement, a single route that passes from manager to employee to performance to productivity to profit. There are as many effective ways to manage people to attain high performance as there are great managers…

Click here to read the article on how very different management and leadership styles can achieve high levels of employee engagement at Mars, Inc.

Here is part of the conclusion of the article:

So after all that number crunching, behavioral analysis, systematic examination, and simple questioning, Schulte (from Mars Inc.) found the key to great management — great managers. The path to enlightenment, or rather, engagement, ends where it begins.

What does this mean for employee engagement leaders.

• We need to understand the complexity of employee engagement.

• We need to understand our own strengths and styles.

• We need to fully understand the people we lead.

• We must give up the pursuit of a simple one-size-fits-all answer to employee engagement.

• We must get on the path and be prepared to change paths.

• We must know in our hearts: there is no way to employee engagement, employee engagement is the way.

Photo Credit: Cliché by http://flickr.com/photos/mayr/372933549/

David Zinger writes about the plethora of pathways to employee engagement.

The Employee Engagement Chronicle (#10)

David Zinger explains what the Employee Engagement Chronicle is all about.

Employee Engagement Extra.
David Zinger is a leading expert on employee engagement.

David Zinger’s Employee Engagement Chronicle is your primary source for current news, views, reviews, and research on employee engagement. Each entry includes a link to an article or post with a short verbatim tidbit from the article. If you are intrigued, click on the author or source name at the start of each summary to study the full article.

The Chronicle begins with a key point from each of the sources listed:

Get The Point:

• Servant leadership is a powerful stance to care for both employees and their engagement.
• The pathway to passionate engaged customers is through fully engaged employees.
• Let’s really talk about employee engagement instead or pretending not to hear the fighting.

Performance - Managers must take care of their employees by Philip Mydlach pairs employee engagement with servant leadership:

Servant leaders tend to be very effective in today’s work world because they place a high importance on making sure the needs of their team members are being met. This is not to imply that the servant leader is not entirely focused on meeting the performance goals of the organization. The servant-leader simply understands that a happy team leads to employee engagement, retention and sustainable high performance over time. Simple concept isn’t it? Servant leadership is…More than anything, servant leadership is an attitude that says I am here to serve you, and to assist you in your personal growth and development in support of achieving the organization’s growth goals.

Capturing Hearts and Minds at Human Resources Executive Online outlines some of Gallup’s Human Sigma work.

The answer is employee engagement or the ability to capture the heads, hearts, and souls of your employees to instill an intrinsic desire and passion for excellence. Engaged employees want their organization to succeed because they feel connected emotionally, socially, and even spiritually to its mission, vision, and purpose… More importantly, it’s hard to create passionate, engaged customers without passionate, engaged employees.

Three BC Christmas Wishes by Yvonne Grinam-Nicholson. Yvonne, writing in the Jamaica Observer, wrote about the importance of planned and powerful organizational communications. I loved her statements about communication and employee engagement:

In doing any analysis of ROI, executives should recognise that employees are their company’s chief ambassadors. They spread the word about you, your products or services no matter what your colourful and costly advertisements shout to the public. Furthermore, are your employees engaged? Are they plugged into what it is they are being paid to do or are they just going through the days, longing for Friday to come?, Worse yet, are they waiting for their ‘redundancy money’ so that they can invest it you know where? Have you formed effective alliances with you human resources department to find out where the problem areas in employee communications in your company are? Are your managers trained to communicate effectively with their staff or do you just throw everybody together, pretend not to hear the fighting and hope to God no one gets killed in any ensuing battle? And, sorry the e-mail alone won’t cut it for 2008. Think again.

Way to get them thinking Yvonne.

* * * * *

Contact David Zinger to learn about how you can

leverage employee engagement to produce results that matter

for everyone in your workplace.

Email: dzinger@shaw.ca ~ Phone 204 254 2103 ~ Website: www.davidzinger.com.

Power Point Disengagement

David Zinger investigates “death by PowerPoint” in today’s post.

Employee Engagement Extra.

This weekend feature offers extras and perspectives on employee engagement.

How engaged do you feel when the presenter begins showing the first of what will turn out to be 400 information packed PowerPoint Slides? This is death by PowerPoint.

I encourage you to pay attention to this popular slideshare presentation: Death by PowerPoint (and how to fight it) by Alexei Kapterev.

Leadership and the Brotherhood of the Rope

David Zinger presents a tribute to Sir Edmund Hillary.

Sir Edmund Hillary died yesterday. He was the first to climb Mount Everest with Tenzing Norgay.

On January 1, 2007 I themed the year of this site as The Brotherhood of the Rope. I am offering my post from January 1, 2007 one more time to honor Sir Edmund Hillary’s life - thank you Sir Edmund Hillary for your powerful and caring leadership metaphor.

I encourage you to think about the ropes in your life - your accomplishments, summits, and relationships:

2007: The Brotherhood of the Rope

2007 will be the year of The Brotherhood of the Rope in this blog. This also includes Sisterhood, or simply, The People of the Rope. I will use the term Brotherhood of the Rope to acknowledge Sir Edmund Hillary’s use of the term in 2006.The Brotherhood of the Rope refers to the psychological, social, and spiritual connection that mountain climbers share.

At times, climbers are physically knotted together for safe passage.In 2006 there were 2 powerful incidents during the spring climbs on Mount Everest. One climber after reaching the summit, ran into trouble after his summit. The next day 40 or more climbers trekked by him to summit the peak without stopping to rescue him. A week or so later another climber, in a similar situation, was rescued by 3 climbers (Mazur, Brash and Osborne) who aborted their summit attempt to assist the climber in need.Sir Edmund Hillary was angry that 40 climbers had not lived the brotherhood, instead choosing to achieve their own summit.

Here is a tidbit from a powerful Everest News article: Webster, like Hillary, said mountaineering has always consisted of a “brotherhood of the rope.” That brotherhood, he adds, would see climbers go out of their way to help other climbers, and scuttle summit attempts to mount rescues. It’s because of that tradition that Sharp’s death - and the lack of help from other climbers - has become so controversial.

As leaders we are seldom, if ever, faced with this magnitude of a decision between task and relationship. The decision was also made in thin air as the body, mind, emotions, and spirit are extremely stressed. I think it is important to summit and it is important to help others.

Next Page »