When you see the words “Pink Ops” you might think of some covert military operation that has a cute name to distract you from its real mission objectives. However, “Pink Ops” is what the Brenda Rigney, Vice President of Nurse Next Door Inc., a provider of home health care services, calls her department. It is an interesting term that includes people, marketing, operations, care services, and IT.
What is interesting about Brenda Rigney and her Pink Ops department is her philosophy on leadership, training, and employee engagement.
Click here to read about the Nurse Next Door Inc. self-leadership training.
To get a deeper understanding of Brenda Rigney’s philosophy we first have to look into her thoughts about active questions. It is that philosophy that leads into her company goal of self-leadership and employee engagement. Nurse Next Door believes in “intentional conversations”. According to Rigney, that means staff being trained to communicate with customers more effectively, and to listen to and connect with people better, rather than depending on managers to do it for them.
The above is really their core training outcome for their frontline employees’ self-leadership development and it seems to be working.
Rigney expands this concept of intentional conversation from her reading of Marshall Goldsmith’s book, Triggers, which advocates moving from passive questions to active questions. According to Goldsmith, organizations can achieve intentional conversations, which will create better employee engagement.
Click here to read Brenda Rigney’s summary on Marshall Goldsmiths’ active question technique.
Every year organizations spend millions of dollars on employee training — maybe it is time to consider moving from passive conversations to active conversations to get better employee engagement results.
Discussion Questions:
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- In order to deepen your understanding of the power of active questions click on this link, watch the video, and try to answer Marshall Goldsmith’s daily questions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWpUqXFe4Fw
- You have been asked by your VP of HR to create a short presentation about how to improve employee engagement using active questions. Create a five-minute executive summary on this topic.