Jason Pankau and I recently did an interview on employee engagement and connection cultures with Alexandra Guadagno of Human Resources IQ. The interview was part of the HR Today Podcast Series. You can hear the podcast and download it on iTunes at this link.
Category Archives: Connection Culture
Employee Engagement Network Webinar and Slides
Employee Engagement and Connection from David Zinger on Vimeo.
Yesterday David Zinger and I held a webinar on Employee Engagement and Connection. You can see a recording of the webinar above and here is a link to the slides used during the webinar.
The webinar was hosted by the Employee Engagement Network, a 3,500 member online community founded by David. It was my good fortune to be the first speaker for the Employee Engagement Network’s inaugural webinar! If you are not a member of the Employee Engagement network already, I want to encourage you to join. David will be the host for future webinars on employee engagement-related topics that you will not want to miss.
New Research: Relationships Make Hospitals Great
The New York Times recently had an article entitled “What Makes a Hospital Great” that described new research concluding a hospital’s culture and the quality of relationships were the most important factors determining patient outcomes. This finding is consistent with our research that concluded leaders must be intentional about developing both “task excellence” and “relationship excellence” in order to achieve sustainable superior performance. If leaders focus on task alone the eventual failure of relationships will sabotage excellence.
Employee Engagement Webinar: The Power of Connection
David Zinger and I will be doing a 45 minute webcast on the power of connection to boost employee engagement. David is host of the Employee Engagement Network. During the webinar, we will include:
- a five minute presentation on connection;
- 3 poll questions for participants;
- dialogue between David and your’s truly;
- invited text questions from the audience; and,
- 3 tips for connection action.
The session has limited enrollment but will be taped for future viewing. Sign up for the webinar at this link. Better move quickly though. Half of the webinar capacity was filled in the first day it was posted on the Employee Engagement Network website!
At Google, Starbucks (and Life Outside of Work), Success = Connection
The New York Times has had a number of great articles related to connection and how it leads to success at work and in life. In an article about what Google discovered from Project Oxygen, a rigorous study of its successful managers, Laszlo Bock, the leader of the study stated:
“In the Google context, we’d always believed that to be a manager, particularly on the engineering side, you need to be as deep or deeper a technical expert than the people who work for you…It turns out that that’s absolutely the least important thing. It’s important, but pales in comparison. Much more important is just making that connection and being accessible.” (italics mine)
Attend (Virtually) HCI’s National Human Capital Summit
This afternoon I’ll be speaking at the National Human Capital Summit in Atlanta. You can attend the event online at no cost by registering at the link below. Online attendees will be able to see my presentation as well as those of consultant and author Gary Hamel, Liane Hornsey of Google, Dr. John Fleming of Gallup, author Dan Pink, Vineet Nayar CEO of HCL Technologies and Suzanne Gordon of SAS Institute.
To sign up for this special complimentary pass into the live streaming conference, click on this link.
- If it’s your first time visiting the HCI conference registration site, click “register” and create a new account by entering your information in the required fields and choosing a password (again, there is no cost to do this).
- Please take the time to click the “Test Your System” icon and install Silverlight if you haven’t previously. If you need any help you may click “Live Chat Now” for instant, live support.
- When you exit the virtual conference, re-enter by following the same link but click “login” instead of “register” when you return and enter your username and password.
And because it is a live streaming event, you then will come back at the time of the talks that you want to see. Click on this link to see the virtual conference agenda. There are MANY great talks to choose from. All times listed are Eastern Time.
Tomorrow night I will attend the awards ceremony for the Management Innovation Exchange’s HCI Human Capital M-Prize. Congratulations to the ten semifinalists, three of whom are friends of mine: Lisa Haneberg, Steve Todd and Drew Williams, my pastor at Trinity Church in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Video Interview: Employee Engagement = Connections
George Washington, Worthy of Praise?
Today is Presidents’ Day in the U.S., a day in which we primarily celebrate our first president, George Washington. After reading the article “George Washington’s Tear Jerker” in The New York Times, one might ask, was Washington really the great leader he has been made out to be? I asked myself that question during the summer of 2002 and began a journey to unpack truth from myth. I went as far as contacting and speaking with Edward Lengel, the foremost historian on Washington’s generalship. After doing my own research I wrote the following which became one of the chapters on 20 leaders in Fired Up or Burned Out.
First in Their Hearts
Richard Neustadt, Presidential Scholar at Harvard University, observed the following about George Washington: “It wasn’t his generalship that made him stand out . . . It was the way he attended to and stuck by his men. His soldiers knew that he respected and cared for them, and that he would share their severe hardships.”
Staying Connected to Your Kids
The writer Jeff Benedict just emailed me some beautifully written and wise words he posted on his blog about staying connected with his son. I hope you’ll take the time to check it out at this link.
Alter+Care: Happiness at Work Podcast
Jason Pankau and I recently recorded a podcast interview on happiness at work for Alter+Care, the healthcare real estate company. You can hear the podcast at this link.