Valerie Wallen's Page
Profile Information
- Who are you?
- My career as and Organization Development practitioner has evolved out of a passion for helping people work better together. I started as a public school teacher and gradually found myself facilitating conversations and learning sessions that were more and more grounded in systems thinking and action research. I graduated from Fielding Graduate University in 2005 and have recently made my way to a small liberal arts college in Richmond, Virginia where I serve as an internal OD consultant.
- What is your interest or involvement in employee engagement?
- I admininister the employee engagement survey initiative for our institution. I call it an initiative because we link the survey process and results to culture change, performance improvement, and leadership accountability.
- Website:
- http://hr.richmond.edu/workplace/
- Where are you located?
- Richmond, VA
About
Latest Activity
The presentation went off really well. The demonstration of the network went really well too. So far 25% of the staff have signed up. Regrettably, there is virtually no activity on the network yet. I feel that there is a lot of hesitation in start...
Understand every member of your teams motivation, align their aspirations to a clearly communicated business direction, give them all the tools to do the job and then empower them to deliver.
Care for people around you and get to know who they are, what strengths they bring and what's important to them.
Every day do a quick maintenance check. Do people know Why?, How?, When? and What? they are doing and are they free to ask these questions of you?.
Check your own engagement regularly. You need support, recognition and inspiration as much as your employees, in order provide an environment that will engage your people fully.
Engagement is a relationship that requires regular maintenance.
Start from where they are at.
Reach out to their hearts and values. Look beyond the Employee ID number and make a genuine effort to see and hear the person.
Open yourself to influence by others and they will open themselves to your influence.
Don't just listen to your people but also act on what they're telling you.
Only hire people with passion for what they do; create a work environment that fosters and facilitates the expression of that passion and use a communication style that makes it safe to stretch, fail and grow.
Assist each employee to understand the deeper purpose of his or her work - who or what cause is it helping - and why.
Be congruent and transparent, say what you mean and do what you say.
Managers or Supervisors can engage employees by demonstrating little acts of kindness for absolutely no reason at all. eg. Can I help you carry that? Is there anything I can get for you? etc. etc.
Engagement should be treated as newborns! Everyone takes place in the growing process and they should never be left unattended.
For great managers, the path toward engaging employees and keeping them engaged begins with asking them what they want and what is important in order to be effective in their roles.
Groups
-
Manager Tools for Empl...
194 members
-
Employee Engagement Wr...
79 members
-
Research on EE
79 members
-
Employee Recognition
74 members
-
Engaging Books
72 members
-
Social media in the wo...
60 members
-
Engaging Quotations
54 members
-
Canada
49 members
-
UK
48 members
-
Personal Engagement
33 members
Engage Today. Join the growing employee engagement network.
© 2009 Created by David Zinger on Ning. Create a Ning Network!
Comment Wall (2 comments)
You need to be a member of The Employee Engagement Network to add comments!
Join this Ning Network
It is such a big topic. I think performance feedback embedded in safety is very important and getting feedback of the improvement is too. Involvement and input from leaders/employees is always so important. I have always loved these lines from Margaret Wheatley:
We never succeed in directing or telling people how they must change. We don’t succeed by handing them a plan, or pestering them with our interpretations, or relentlessly pressing forward with our agenda, believing that volume and intensity will convince them to see it our way. You can scream and holler as much as you want, but if people don’t regard what you’re saying as important, they’ll just ignore you and go on with their own life. (In this way, all people behave like teenagers.)
It is impossible to impose anything on people. We must participate in anything that affects us. We can’t act on behalf of anyone, we can’t figure out what’s best for somebody else. If leaders or task forces refuse to believe this and go ahead and make plans for us, we don’t sit by passively and do what we’re told. We still get involved, but from the sidelines, where we’ve been told to sit and wait. We get involved by ignoring, resisting, or sabotaging all plans and directives that are imposed on us.
Welcome to the employee engagement network. I appreciate how you link your results to culture change, performance improvement, and leadership accountability at University of Richmond.
What do you see as the most powerful links between culture, performance, and leadership accountability?
David