Nancy Fraze posted on September 29, 2011
ENGAGED: Pursuing and Doing Work with Passion (Nedra Bailey)
Nedra had the house pumped up and rocking as she took the stage with a few moments of rap music that shifted into Aretha’s “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” which was such a wonderful way to demonstrate working with passion and being engaged.
Nedra asked the audience: “Are you an engaged administrative professional? How do you know you are engaged?” She told us that the level of commitment and involvement an employee has toward the organization and its values tells the story completely.
She asked us whether we were committed to our company; did we knows its values and exhibit them daily? Nedra said that employee engagement is when you are aware of the business context and you work with colleagues to improve performance within the job for the benefit of the organization.
An engaged employee is fully involved in and enthusiastic about his or her work. Engaged employees show up for work, and are attracted to, and inspired by, their work. She asked us whether we were physically, intellectually and emotionally attached to our work.
What goals have we set for ourselves? Goals show we are open to change. We need to be change agents.
Nedra urged us to be goal setters and goal attainers. Setting goals will make us feel we can hold the world and can handle anything that comes our way; that we are invincible.
Goal setting improves employee performance and is a significant, positive prediction of employee engagement. It also motivates employees. It makes employees more marketable.
So, we have a choice. We can be stagnant or we can grow. And to grow is to choose to grow. It doesn’t happen all by itself.
Employee engagement is an innate human desire to contribute something to the workplace. Our brains were made to produce, to help, to give and create.
She closed by asking: Do you pursue your work with passion? Do you have a heightened passion and personal attachment to work? Are you fully involved in and enthusiastic about your work? She told us, “If yesterday you did not do well, you have today to do better.”
We then used the “ABCs of Employee Engagement” worksheet to find a word that described our engagement. Noteworthy: “have a win-win attitude”, “yielding means accepting things that come your way”, and my favorite: TaTonya Tigue of North Chicago shared, “Be in the ZONE to get into the ZOO and at the end of the day, have your ZEN!”
This session had material presented that was directly applicable to every administrative assistant and executive assistant in the workplace today.