Performance Management Blog

Employee Engagement for Everyone – a book by Kevin Kruse

Until Friday, the 28th of June, 2013 (thus this timely post!), you can download Kevin’s new book on engagement for free off of Amazon. It is a Kindle book and Amazon also offers a free reader for your computer or phones or whatever. I just downloaded it, scanned it, clicked to his links, etc.

Kevin focuses on personal engagement and choices we make. Funny thing, but I spent much of last night working and re-working my “Teaching the Caterpillar to Fly” article and poem, which I will upload to here this week. That is also about personal choices:

1pterourusglaucus

Two caterpillars are rolling along and a beautiful butterfly floats by.

The one caterpillar says to the other,
“You’ll never get ME up in one of those things…”

Well, sometimes change IS inevitable and sometimes we do not understand that we have are involved in that process. Engagement is one of those things that is essential for organizational success and those of us who are working in better working environments are more likely to personally prosper.

Kevin’s focus on choices and personal growth is one component of the overall engagement picture, in my beliefs. You can grab his book at this spot on Amazon.

Kevin also shares a pretty broad base of stats on the issues around engagement and the impacts it has on organizational performance. You can find those statistics on his website here.

My take is that the people at the back of the wagon do not have as many choices and opportunities as they might and that the leadership of the team needs to step back and look for opportunities to involve and engage people. I think that the leaders have a whole lot more influence over the kinds of things that can be changed to make the workplace a better one for people and processes.

Perception of how things work SWs One

We can do things to improve the workplace. And I think that a LOT of it has to do with how leaders involve and engage their people.I think the supervisors can do more to help people implement more of the best practices and fix more of the inefficient processes and systems that impact so much of the workday. I think that it is this leadership team that has the impact on team building and the growth of the people in the workplace. Coaching, mentoring, supporting, encouraging, and allowing people to improve themselves.

I see supervisors and managers improving their involvement and engagement skills and doing more to influence the work environment in positive ways. That is the leverage point for most workplaces; depending on the individuals to choose to be more involved might make sense, but it will not happen on its own. Those self-developing people are already self-developed, in my opinion. The key is generating supervisory change, as I see how things really work.

Butterflies make good wagon pullers

And, like Kevin,  I really do think that there are different choices that can be made.

Caterpillars can fly lighten up round

We use our Square Wheels cartoons and tools and our team building games as simple debriefing frameworks for involving and engaging people. The goal is to help them identify the things they can choose to improve and to build peer support for that continuous improvement.

Choosing to be involved and that working in teams for shared goals in intrinsically motivating and it also what Kevin is discussing.

For the FUN of It!

Discuss what you might do differently

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant. 
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/

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Dr. Scott Simmerman

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of the amazing Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine team building game and the Square Wheels facilitation and engagement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced global presenter. -- You can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com and a detailed profile is here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottsimmerman/ -- Scott is the original designer of The Search for The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine teambuilding game and the Square Wheels® images for organizational development.

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