IN THIS EPISODE:

Rich McLaughlin

Employee engagement is always a challenge.

The most recent Gallup survey shows 34% of US workers are engaged, tying the highest results in the survey’s history, while “actively disengaged” is down to 13%, a new low. However, it still means 66% of US workers are not engaged at some level. We know engagement is highly correlated with positive business outcomes so even though the numbers are up, there’s still a lot of work to be done.

To explore the topic of engagement, I invited a professional colleague of mine, Rich McLaughlin, to join us on the podcast.

ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Rich has been an observer and practitioner of innovation and employee engagement processes for over 20 years. He has over 13,000 hours designing and facilitating leadership and interpersonal skills workshops, and innovation explorations with teams to help them jump start their change and innovation efforts. He has helped teams as small as 8 and departments as large as 100 learn how to blend external developments (to understand where customer needs are moving) with internal employee engagement processes (to show how to stimulate internal experiments and capitalize on those opportunities). Rich also enjoys helping leaders grow by focusing more on people skills and less on technical ones. He brings an experiential approach in his work with client teams. His client’s value the engaging way he works with their people whether facilitating a leadership workshop, working with a specific team, or challenging employees to be more accountable for the whole.

Rich spent time learning about instructional design and change management at Accenture, helped Square D Company develop and implement their TQM programs and processes and developed the leadership curriculum and internal consulting practice at Baxter Healthcare during his time as an internal OD practitioner. The last 8 years of his practice he has been following the intersection of Innovation and Design Thinking.

Rich received his M.A. in Training and Development for Business from Ohio State University, and has been consulting faculty for the University of Notre Dame’s College of Business since 2000. He is author of, Rules of Engagement: A Story About How Leaders Can More Effectively Engage Employees. And he co-authored The Experience-Based Learning Guide: Consulting Tools and Exercises that Facilitate team Performance and Learning Through Action. He is also certified in EQi 2.0, Rummler-Brache process mapping methodology, MBTI, TMI, CCL’s 360 Benchmarks, the Hermann Brain Dominance Index, the Matrix Management Institute’s Project Management Methodology, the Experience Innovation simulation and Barrett Values assessment tools.

Presentations:

· Emotional Intelligence: Key to Sustaining Employee Engagement

· The Leadership Challenge: Compliance or Commitment?

· Team Genius: Simple Ways to Enable Team Innovation

· “Oh No, It’s the Millennials!” – Leveraging Generational Differences

SHOW NOTES:

Connect with Rich on: LinkedIn and at www.McLaughlinCommunity.com

Gallup Employee Engagement Survey: click here

INSIGHT AT WORK PODCAST THEME MUSIC:

Our theme music is composed by Chris Lucca, Jr.. You can listen to more of Chris’ work on SoundCloud: SoundCloud.com/fliplucca and find him on Twitter: @FlipLucca.

ABOUT THE HOST:

Ken Blackwell is a speaker, trainer, facilitator and executive coach. His signature practice is "rescuing Accidental Leaders and Dysfunctional Teams". His firm InKlaritas, based in Princeton, NJ, works with teams and leaders in companies in the U.S. around the world. You can find out more about InKlaritas at: www.InKlaritas.com and connect with Ken on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennethjblackwell/.