Tag: leadership

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Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em

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Retaining talented employees is a key problem for corporations. Even when there is a slower economy, attracting and holding top talent is a serious concern. The trend is exacerbated by a growing propensity for people to change jobs frequently. After 20 years of down-sizing, it is ironic that corporations are now concerned about losing employees.

The problem is one of getting qualified and talented people into the right jobs and keeping them there. HR professionals, managers and CEO’s are all searching for what they can do to keep their good, talented employees.

Some organizations are turning to retention bonuses to attract and retain talented people, some reported to be as high as $20,000. There are also reports of an amazing array of perks and benefits being offered to make employees’ lives more comfortable. Some organizations offer dry-cleaning services, car-detailing, concierge services to run errands, child-care, pet-sitting, gym programs, and chair massages.

But you can’t buy love. Throwing money or gifts at people isn’t enough to keep them. If they don’t like the company, the people they work with, the boss or the way that they’re treated, they will still leave.

Finding solutions to employee retention means more profitable companies, happier, more productive employees, and more satisfied customers, and ultimately greater stock value.

Losing employees is very expensive. Studies have found that the cost of replacing lost talent is 70 to 200 percent of that person’s annual salary. Expenses include recruiting, orientation and training, lost productivity during that period, even lost customer satisfaction because of the change. Finding and training the best employees is a major investment.

What can a company do, once they have found talented people, given them valuable training and equipped them, to prevent them from walking out the back door and going to competitors?

Why they leave, why they stay

Study after study shows that people leave because of their direct supervisors, more so than any other reason. It is the manager who more than anyone else can do something about retaining workers. The manager can be seen as responsible for creating a satisfactory working environment.

However, studies also show that 9 out of 10 managers think people stay or go because of money (Harvard Management Update, June 1988.) This keeps showing up in research, in spite of the fact that people leaving jobs say otherwise. Money and perks matter, but employees report that what they want most is challenging, meaningful work, a good boss, and an opportunity for learning and development.

In 1999 the Hay Group studied more than 500,000 employees in 300 companies. They found that of 50 retention factors, pay was the least important. Other studies bring up similar lists of the 10 most important reasons people want to stay with a company.

  1. Career growth, learning and development
  2. Exciting, challenging work
  3. Meaningful work, ability to make a difference and a contribution
  4. Great people
  5. Being part of a team
  6. Good boss
  7. Recognition for work well done
  8. Autonomy, a sense of control over one’s work
  9. Flexible hours and dress
  10.  Fair pay and benefits

 

This is contingent upon people having already attained a certain level of material comfort. That is, once people have their basic needs met, they care more about what they do and who they work with, rather than the money.

It’s not about the money

So why do managers still think it’s the money? Do they view people as important capital assets, or as easily replaced? Do they nurture, respect and protect their workers? Or are they looking at them only as performers? Diagnosing the gaps in espoused theory and theory in action is important in putting retention efforts in the hands of managers who are most closely working with the employees and who can make the difference.

One possible explanation why managers still think it’s the money may be that

when employees complain to them, they often bring up the subject of compensation. Workers come to their bosses when they want a raise. They may feel they are not earning enough, or as much as another person. When these concerns are frequently verbalized to managers it gives them the impression that money is what matters the most.

A 1999 study by the Saratoga Institute for the American Management Association cites three reasons people leave their jobs:

  1. Poor supervisor skills
  2. No growth opportunities
  3. Inability to speak freely

 

Some of the most comprehensive research on what makes a great company has been done by the Gallup Organization. In 1999 they published the results of a meta-survey of over 1 million employees. This information is invaluable and is contained in the book, First Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman (Simon & Schuster, 1999).           .

The important relationship with the manager

Based on a wealth of data, the Gallup Organization attempted to define not only what makes a great company, but because so much depends upon it, what makes a great manager.

In today’s labor markets, companies compete to find and keep the best employees, using pay, benefits, promotions, impressive job titles and training. But these well-intentioned efforts miss the mark. The most important element in attracting and retaining key employees is the front-line manager.

The Gallup study found that people weren’t necessarily loyal to the company, but rather to the unit they worked in, and this was because of their feelings toward their immediate supervisor.  In other words, companies aren’t employers-of-choice; it is the supervisors who are the essential determinants in retaining talented people.

No matter how generous its pay, benefits or training, a company that lacks great supervisors and managers will suffer. Great managers, according to the Gallup research, have the following behaviors that set them apart from others:

  1. They select an employee for talent rather than for skills or experience.
  2. They set clear expectations and define the right outcomes rather than the right steps.
  3. They motivate people, by building on their strengths rather than trying to fix their weaknesses.
  4. As each employee grows, they encourage them to find the right fit for their strengths within the organization.

 

Creating loyalty

The following four elements have been proven to be effective in creating employee loyalty: praise and recognition, a sense of contribution to the company, learning and development, and having a best friend at work.

  1. Praise and recognition: It has been said that no news is good news, but for managers interested in keeping the best workers, this is not true. For workers, not getting any feedback is tantamount to being ignored: it leads to complacency. Workplaces that ignore performance will destroy the very human spirit that makes the true difference in quality output and service delivery.

 

Positive recognition is often thought of as coming strictly from supervisors or managers, but studies have found that employees also value praise and recognition from peers. Co-workers know the particulars of a job and when they give good feedback it can be more meaningful.

What can a manager do to help foster this? Model the appropriate way to give frequent praise and recognition. Working with a coach will help develop appropriate and effective feedback skills.

 

2.   A sense of contribution to the company: Excellence only happens when people have a deeply felt sense of purpose in their lives. Human beings want to know they make a difference. Organizations need to let employees know how their job and their performance is important to the overall success of the company. There must be an alignment of the worker’s personal reasons for being there and the purpose of the job. It is more exciting to share a mission rather than to simply accomplish a task.

      What can a manager do to increase this sense of meaning? Involve the workers in other aspects of the company. Take them to meetings, let them know about what’s going on in the company in other departments and teams.

3.   Learning and development: It is important to offer trainings and learning opportunities. Traditional management highlights the need to help employees identify their weaknesses and then creates a plan for them to improve. The emphasis is on what the employee is not, rather than on developing more of who they are. Effective organizations are now hiring coaches to help workers develop their strengths and to become more of who they are.

      Working with a coach involves holding up a mirror to employees and encouraging them to know themselves. As they come to better understand who they are, they can see opportunities for growth in the company, utilizing their strengths and talents. As they move forward in their self-knowledge, they can look for places within the company where their talents are a good fit.

4.  Having a best friend at work: This is a key element in why people choose to stay at a job, even in the face of other dissatisfactions. In the best workplaces, managers recognize that employees want to forge quality relationships with their co-workers and that company loyalty can be built from such relationships. Developing trusting relationships with one’s coworkers provides a significant emotional compensation for employees. While organizations pay close attention to the loyalty workers may feel toward the company, the best employers recognize that loyalty also exists among workers to each other. Great managers allow time and opportunity for these relationships to flourish.

Managers know that they need to attract and retain talented people in order to succeed in the competitive workplace. And they also have to find ways to get workers to improve performance. People usually don’t think of themselves as performers, but as individuals with certain strengths and talents. Workers must know that the manager cares about them on a human level before they are going to be motivated to make extra efforts.

There is no one-size-fits all retention formula. Here are some of the ingredients:

  1. Honest communications in all directions
  2. Supervisors who invite workers into all facets of work and help them to see the big picture, that is, the corporate value of their contributions
  3. Workplaces that encourage experimentation and learning.

 

There are no new tricks. It is the same old story: there is a great need to engage and enable the hearts, minds, and yes, even the soul of people at work. This engagement is far more important than bonuses, perks and even chair massages. It is primordial to retaining talented people.

 

Measuring Strong Retention Factors

The Gallup Organization has released the results of their massive in-depth study of great manager across a wide variety of industries in a book, First Break All The Rules: What Great Managers do Differently, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman (Simon & Schuster, 1999). This research generated thousands of different survey questions on employee opinion.

Finally, using sophisticated statistical analysis, they produced 12 questions which work to distinguish the strongest departments of a company. This essential measuring stick provides the link between employee opinions and productivity, profit, customer satisfaction and the rate of turnover.

They are reprinted here with permission of the Gallup Organization, Copyright 1999. They are copyrighted  and cannot be used without Gallup’s permission.

They can be accessed at www.gallup.com/poll/managing/managing.asp.

  1. I know what is expected of me at work.*
  2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.*
  3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.*
  4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for good work.
  5. My supervisor or the person I report to seems to care about me as a person.*
  6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.
  7. In the last six months, someone at work has talked with me about my progress.*
  8. At work, my opinions seem to count.
  9. The mission/purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.

10. My associates (fellow employees) are committed to doing quality work.

11. I have a best friend at work.

12. The last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

According to the results of years of Gallup Organization research, these 12 questions are the simplest and most accurate way to measure the strength of a workplace.

*Further analysis revealed that five of these questions are linked to retention: numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7. When employees score highest marks for these five questions, the company has a strong retention factor. As a manager, if you want to build high retention, then securing high marks to these five questions is a good place to start.

Resources:

Buckingham, Marcus and Curt Coffman; First Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently; Simon & Schuster, 1999.

Gendron, Marie; “Keys to Retaining Your Best Managers in a Tight Job Market,” Harvard Management Update (June 1998): 1-4.

Hay Group, “1998-1999 Employee Attitudes Study,” 8, HR/OD, (December 1, 1998).

Herman, Roger E.; Keeping Good People: Strategies for Solving the #1 Problem Facing Business Today; Oakhill Press, 1999.

Kaye, Beverly and Sharon Jordan-Evans: Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em: Getting Good People To Stay;  Berrett-Kockler Publishers, 1999.

Klobucar Logan, Jill; “Retention Tangibles and Intangibles” ; ASTD’s Training & Development, April 2000.

Smart, Bradford D., Ph.D; Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching and Keeping the Best People; Prentice Hall Press, 1999.

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Managing For Peak Performance

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 “Put simply, the best managers bring out the best from their people. This is true of football coaches, orchestra conductors, big-company executives, and small-business owners. They are like alchemists who turn lead into gold. Put more accurately, they find and mine the gold that resides in everyone.” ~ Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, Shine: Using Brain Science to Get the Best from Your People (Harvard Business Press, 2011)

Most managers want their people to achieve excellence at work. We really can’t ask for more. In fact, peak performance can be defined as a combination of:

  • Excellence
  • Consistency
  • Ongoing improvement

To achieve peak performance, each person must find the right job, tasks and conditions that match his or her strengths. Facilitating the right fit therefore becomes one of a manager’s most crucial responsibilities. While every employee has the potential to deliver peak performance, it’s up to the manager to find ways to make it happen.

It’s easy to spot peak performance when it happens. It’s what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008). Employees who work at optimum levels experience a state of “flow,” typically losing themselves in a project, meeting or discussion. They may lose track of time or where they are.

Each of us has relished such moments, but it’s hard to purposely replicate “flow” experiences. Many managers struggle to find the right words to rekindle motivation in people who have lost their enthusiasm.

Two Sides of the Disengagement Coin

Disengaged employees often appear to lack commitment. In reality, many of them crave re-engagement. No one enjoys working without passion or joy.

While many factors cause disengagement, the most prevalent is feeling overwhelmed (or, conversely, underwhelmed). Disconnection and overload pose obstacles to performance, yet they often go undetected or ignored because neither qualifies as a disciplinary issue.

Meanwhile, managers try to work around such problems, hoping for a miraculous turnaround or spark that reignites energy and drive. They try incentives, empowerment programs or the management fad du jour.

While it’s impossible to spark flow moments all day long, you can greatly improve your ability to help others achieve peak performance. Until recently, managers tried various motivational methods, with only temporary success.

You can’t sprint to peak performance, the brain needs careful management and rest. Brain science tells us that as knowledge workers, we must manage our thinking minds with care.

In addition to variety and stimulation, we require food, rest, human engagement, physical exercise and challenge. You cannot expect a human being to sit at a desk for hours and produce quality work without providing these essential elements.

We often forget that thinking is hard work. If you work too many hours, your brain’s supply of neurotransmitters will be depleted, and you won’t be able to sustain top performance. Without proper care, the brain will underperform—and brain fatigue mimics disengagement and lack of commitment.

Peak performance also depends on how we feel: hopeful, in control, optimistic and grateful. We need to know that we’re appreciated.

Using Brain Science to Bring Out the Best

While no management guru has found the golden key to unlocking the full panoply of human potential at work, several diverse areas of research shed new light on the possibilities.

Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, author of Shine: Using Brain Science to Get the Best from Your People (Harvard Business Press, 2011), synthesizes such new research into five sequential steps managers can apply to maximize employees’ peak performance. A psychiatrist and ADD expert, he draws on brain science, performance research and his own experience to present a proven process for getting the best from your people:

  1. Select: Put the right people in the right job, and give them responsibilities that “light up” their brains.
  2. Connect: Strengthen interpersonal bonds among team members.
  3. Play: Help people unleash their imaginations at work.
  4. Grapple and Grow: When the pressure’s on, enable employees to achieve mastery of their work.
  5. Shine: Use the right rewards to promote loyalty and stoke your people’s desire to excel.

“Neither the individual nor the job holds the magic,” Hallowell writes. “But the right person doing the right job creates the magical interaction that leads to peak performance.”

Hallowell refers to the five cited essential ingredients as “The Cycle of Excellence,” which works because it exploits the powerful interaction between an individual’s intrinsic capabilities and extrinsic environment.

Step 1: Select

To match the right person to the right job, examine how three key questions intersect:

  1. At what tasks or jobs does this person excel?
  2. What does he/she like to do?
  3. How does he/she add value to the organization?

Set the stage for your employees to do well with responsibilities they enjoy. You can then determine how they will add the greatest possible value to your organization.

According to a 2005 Harris Interactive poll, 33 percent of 7,718 employees surveyed believed they had reached a dead end in their jobs, and 21 percent were eager to change careers. Only 20 percent felt passionate about their work.

When so many skilled and motivated people spend decades moving from one job to the next, something is wrong. They clearly have not landed in the right outlets for their talents and strengths. Their brains never light up.

The better the fit, the better the performance. People require clear roles that allow them to succeed, while also providing room to learn, grow and be challenged.

Step 2: Connect

Managers and employees require a mutual atmosphere of trust, optimism, openness, transparency, creativity and positive energy. Each group can contribute to reducing toxic fear and worry, insecurity, backbiting, gossip and disconnection.

A positive working environment starts with how the boss handles negativity, failure and problems. The boss sets the tone and models preferred behaviors and reactions. Employees take their cues from those who lead them.

To encourage connection:

  • Look for the spark of brilliance within everyone.
  • Encourage a learning mindset.
  • Model and teach optimism, as well as the belief that teamwork can overcome any problem.
  • Use human moments instead of relying on electronic communication.
  • Learn about each person.
  • Treat everyone with respect, especially those you dislike.
  • Meet people where they are, and know that most will do their best with what they have.
  • Encourage reality.
  • Use humor without sarcasm or at others’ expense.
  • Seek out the quiet ones, and try to bring them in.

Step 3: Play

Play isn’t limited to break time. Any activity that involves the imagination lights up our brains and produces creative thoughts and ideas. Play boosts morale, reduces fatigue and brings joy to our workdays.

Encourage imaginative play with these steps:

  • Ask open-ended questions.
  • Encourage everyone to produce three new ideas each month.
  • Allow for irreverence or goofiness (without disrespect), and model this behavior.
  • Brainstorm.
  • Reward new ideas and innovations.
  • Encourage people to question everything.

Step 4: Grapple and Grow

Help people engage imaginatively with tasks they like and at which they excel. You can then encourage them to stretch beyond their usual limits.

If tasks are too easy, people fall into boredom and routine without making any progress or learning anything new. Your job, as a manager, is to be a catalyst when people get stuck, offering suggestions but letting them work out solutions.

Step 5: Shine

Every employee should feel recognized and valued for what he or she does. Recognition should not be reserved solely for a group’s stars.

People learn from mistakes, and they grow even more when their successes are noticed and praised. Letting them know that you appreciate victories large and small will motivate them and secure their loyalty.

When a person is underperforming, consider that lack of recognition may be a cause. An employee usually won’t come right out and tell you that he/she feels undervalued, so you must look for the subtle signs. In addition:

  • Be on the lookout for moments when you can catch someone doing something right. It doesn’t have to be unusual or spectacular. Don’t withhold compliments.
  • Be generous with praise. People will pick up on your use of praise and start to perform for themselves and each other.
  • Recognize attitudes, as well as achievements. Optimism and a growth mindset are two attitudes you can single out and encourage. Look for others.

When you’re in sync with your people, you create positive energy and opportunities for peak performance. Working together can be one of life’s greatest joys—and it’s what we’re wired to do.

Maintaining Excellence in Uncertain Times

Nothing is as difficult as managing in uncertain times. With the rapidly changing competitive environment and new technologies, it’s hard to keep up.

Managing people well is even more challenging when you’re constantly putting out fires. How are you supposed to bring out the best in your people when no one has a clue as to what will happen tomorrow?

Most managers draw upon their core values and lessons learned along the way. To ensure success, embrace a plan like the Cycle of Excellence. It can help you manage people when they’re faltering. Perhaps one of the five steps is going unfulfilled. An employee may not be in the right job or may not be sufficiently challenged.

A plan is a mooring to use during times of crisis and chaos—a strategy for redirecting energies in the right direction. It can be used to correct course. You can’t sacrifice performance in the name of speed, cost cutting, efficiency, and what can be mislabeled as necessity. When you ignore connections, deep thought disappears in favor of decisions based on fear.

These five areas of focus can help you avoid fear-based management practices, which have the potential to disable you. Use it to identify problem areas and decide on a plan of action. In this way you and your employee can creatively manage for growth not just survival.

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Rethinking Motivation

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Most business leaders have lost sight of what motivates people at work. In fact, some companies haven’t updated their management practices in years, which means they’re incapable of creating high-performance teams.

Companies continue to ignore the obvious: Offering incentives and rewards is less effective than tapping into truly meaningful intrinsic motivation. Leaders operate on old assumptions about motivation despite a wealth of well-documented scientific evidence.

The old “carrot-and-stick” mentality may actually inhibit employees from seeking creative solutions, partly because they focus on attaining rewards instead of solving problems.

So, how can you successfully tap into workers’ inherent motivation and creative drive? How can you boost the number of actively engaged employees from the paltry 33 percent reported by the Gallup Organization? And how can you sustain employees’ enthusiasm after their first 30 days on the job?

Seven Deadly Flaws

In Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, former U.S. Department of Labor aide Daniel H. Pink says businesses are out of sync with what scientists have been telling us over the last 50 years.

The hackneyed carrot-and-stick approach, now dubbed “Motivation 2.0,” encourages poor leadership practices, including Pink’s “seven deadly flaws”:

  1. Extinguishing motivation
  2. Diminishing performance
  3. Crushing creativity
  4. Crowding out good behavior
  5. Encouraging cheating, shortcuts and unethical behavior
  6. Becoming addictive or obsessive
  7. Fostering short-term thinking

In fact, Pink holds Motivation 2.0 partly responsible for the economic chaos of 2008. Mortgage brokers, for instance, were so hungry for commissions that they made questionable loans, which helped bring the nation’s banking system to its knees.

The Hawthorne Studies

In the 1920s, Harvard Business School initiated the first studies of human behavior at work, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation. Clinical psychologist Elton Mayo and Harvard Medical School physiologist L.J. Henderson were recruited to study the impact of various working conditions, such as how lighting affects fatigue levels.

Early research was conducted at AT&T’s Western Electric Hawthorne Plant. The results were published by F.J. Roethlisberger and W. Dickson in Management and the Worker.

The researchers found that workers’ and managers’ social needs had a powerful impact on their behavior at work. Workers enthusiastically embraced opportunities to contribute their thoughts, ideas and experiences regarding workplace issues.

Unfortunately, these findings failed to change work conditions for employees.

Scientific Management

At the beginning of the 20th century, American engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor asserted that businesses were being run in inefficient, haphazard ways. He invented the concept of “scientific management,” which assumed workers were little more than machines. To make the machine run smoothly, you rewarded the behaviors you wanted and punished those you discouraged.

“Work,” Taylor stated, “consists of mainly simple, not particularly interesting, tasks. The only way to get people to do them is to incentivize them properly and monitor them carefully.”

Thus began the firmly entrenched practice of motivating people with the proverbial carrots and sticks.

In the 1900s, Taylor had a point. We were, after all, building railroads, highways and major factories. But today, in much of the developed world, this is no longer entirely true. For many people, jobs have become more complex, challenging and self-directed.

Freud, Skinner & Maslow

The 20th century saw the birth of psychology and study of the human psyche. Sigmund Freud proposed that all humans were driven to seek pleasure and avoid pain. In the 1930s, behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner created a large body of experimental research to show the effects of positive reinforcement on augmenting certain behaviors and extinguishing others.

In the 1950s, psychologist Abraham Maslow questioned the idea that human behavior was purely rat- or pigeon-like. He launched the field of humanistic psychology, proposing that once survival needs were met, people sought to achieve self-mastery and actualization.

In the 1960s, MIT management professor Douglas McGregor imported Maslow’s ideas to the business world. He proposed that humans had higher drives that weren’t contingent on rewards and punishments. If managers could tap into these inner motivations and grant employees greater autonomy and respect, workers would unleash greater performance.

While McGregor’s writing influenced some organizations, there were only modest improvements —mostly more flexible dress codes, working conditions and empowerment programs.

Despite these psychological insights, businesses entered the 21st century using outdated and ineffective motivational strategies.

The Third Drive

In 1949, psychologist Harry Harlow placed puzzles in monkeys’ cages and was surprised to find that the primates successfully solved them.

Harlow saw no logical reason for them to do so. Their survival didn’t depend on it, and they didn’t receive any rewards or avoid any punishments. Apparently, the monkeys solved the puzzles simply because they had a desire to do so.

As to their motivation, Harlow offered a novel theory: “The performance of the task provided intrinsic reward.” The monkeys performed because they found it gratifying to solve puzzles. They enjoyed it, and the joy of the task was its own reward.

Further experiments found that offering external rewards to solve these puzzles didn’t improve performance. In fact, rewards disrupted task completion.

This led Harlow to identify a third drive in human motivation:

  1. The first drive for behaviors is survival. We drink, eat and copulate to ensure our survival.
  2. The second drive is to seek rewards and avoid punishment.
  3. The third drive is intrinsic: to achieve internal satisfaction.

But Harlow’s theory was met with disdain from the behavioral scientists who dominated motivational theory at the time. It took almost two decades for scientists to return their attention to intrinsic drives.

Negative Impact of Rewards

In 1969, psychologist Edward Deci ran a series of experiments that showed students lost intrinsic interest in an activity when money was offered as an external reward. The results surprised many behavioral scientists.

Although rewards can deliver a short-term boost, the effect wears off. Even worse, rewards can reduce a person’s longer-term motivation to continue a project.

Deci proposed that human beings have an inherent tendency to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise their capacities, to explore, and to learn.

Open Source Innovations

The third drive has become more important as our society moves from a manufacturing-based economy to one of knowledge and services.

Carrots and sticks continue to provide effective incentive and motivation for work tasks that are routine and repetitive. But for jobs that require complex creativity, intrinsic motivation works best.

As proof, examine the case of two companies that set out to publish online encyclopedias:

  1. Microsoft hired the best people and devoted considerable funds to achieve Encarta.
  2. A global force of volunteers created Wikipedia with no budget or salaries.

Encarta no longer exists, while Wikipedia thrives as a fully functional volunteer project.

Most businesses haven’t caught up to this new understanding of what motivates us. Too many organizations, governments and nonprofits still operate from assumptions about human potential and individual performance — ideas that are clearly outdated and ineffective. They continue to pursue short-term incentive plans and pay-for-performance schemes in the face of evidence against them.

Unleashing Motivation

How do you move yourself — and your company — away from using carrot-and-stick incentives?

Pink describes three critical conditions for an intrinsic motivational environment:

  1. Autonomy: Give people autonomy over what they’re doing and how they do it, including choosing their time, tasks, team and techniques.
  2. Mastery: Give them an opportunity to master their work and make progress through deliberate practice.
  3. Purpose: Make sure people have a sense of purpose in their work — preferably to something higher and beyond their job, salary and company.

Autonomy may seem daunting when it comes to practical implementations. Some companies, however, have already forged new and innovative work environments that are generating huge results — most notably, Best Buy’s ROWE (“results-oriented work environment”) program. With ROWE, employees have no schedules and are measured only by what they get done.

Google is famous for its “20-percent time” program, which allows engineers to spend 20 percent of their time on projects that interest them. Google Mail is one successful project that came out of the program.

The Australian tech company Atlassian implemented a similar program, with engineers given a full day each quarter to work on any software problem they choose — a ritual the company calls “FedEx” days. (Completed projects are delivered overnight.)

Creating Flow

People are most productive and satisfied when their work puts them in a state of “flow” — more commonly recognized as being “in the zone.” In the flow state, one experiences a heightened sense of focus and a generally higher sense of satisfaction.

What we know about flow is primarily based on the work of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whose seminal book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, describes it as the moment in which “a person’s body or mind is stretched to the limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

You can’t give people the opportunity to create “flow” experiences without providing autonomy, time to practice and improve mastery, and a sense of higher purpose.

Rethinking Management

Intrinsic motivation theories aren’t palatable to everyone. Unfortunately, our notions of what constitutes proper motivation in the office are often too entrenched to be flexible. Some companies have given lip service to worker “empowerment,” without actually letting go of control.

At its core, management hasn’t changed all that much since Taylor and his scientific management theory proposed that we need to control the passive nature of workers with extrinsic motivators.

This doesn’t work for motivating non-routine, right-brain activities required of knowledge workers today. Management, in this sense, is deeply out of sync with human nature — in essence, management is the problem, not the solution.

Rethinking Human Nature

Our basic nature is to be curious and self-directed, to seek out and explore solutions to problems. If your employees are inert, disengaged and bored, something has flipped their default setting.

Many leaders will resist giving up their carrots, and many workers will find it hard to imagine a world without incentives. We’re conditioned to like the carrots and avoid the sticks.

But leaders who recognize the value of, and who can implement, intrinsic motivation can expect a whole new workplace — and an entirely new definition of work. We don’t need better management as much as a renaissance of self-direction.

The bigger, unanswered question is whether today’s leaders are ready to rise to the new challenges autonomy will require.

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Leadership For Sustainability

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I was rereading the book “Good to Great” by Jim Collins the other day and it occurred to me that with all the talk about sustainability in business we should revisit some of those basic concepts covered in that book. The chapter on Fifth Level Leaders really hits home with what it takes to create organizations that are excellent and have a prayer to be sustainable. An interesting question came to my mind. “What if our current elected officials adopted the concepts of a Fifth Level Leader?”

What is a Fifth Level Leader? It is a leader who has two major attributes. The first is a will to succeed no matter what is happening. The second is paradoxical to the first. That is to have a great amount of humility and modesty.

The will to succeed is for the organization not for oneself. This is a foreign concept to most leaders since they are usually focused on themselves first and then the organization. Fifth Level leaders work hard at whatever needs to be done and will not settle for anything less than what will meet the long term objectives of the organization.

What would happen if political leaders became so entrenched in making the organizations they serve succeed that they did not even worry about re-elections because the results would be so overwhelmingly successful that re-election would come automatically?  When service is placed above self good things happen.

The humility needed to be a Fifth Level Leader is the ability to give credit to everyone and everything else when things go well. When things go wrong, a mirror is placed in front of the leader and blame is apportioned to him alone. The organization’s Buck stops with the leader.

Fifth Level Leaders leave the place better than they found it and cultivate the next generation of leaders to carry on the organization. As Collins says, “most leaders hope the place implodes after they leave so it makes them only look better”. This short-sighted thinking of a lot of leaders does not create sustainability.

Is your organization led by Fifth Level Leaders? If not, what are you doing about it? Although it is not easy to find or develop this type of leader, a Fifth Level leader will only improve the organization. How will you get from Good to Great?

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Take a Look in The Mirror

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Since at least the time of Plato and Socrates some 2400 years ago, mankind has been implored to “know thyself,” in life and in business. Individually, this is often taken to mean knowing your strengths so you can leverage them and knowing your areas of weakness so you can improve them or compensate for them. But it involves much more than this. While at the business level, many organizations struggle with getting more done with fewer people and less resources. As your employees have changed roles or added responsibilities, you need to have confidence that you have the right people in the right positions to get the best possible results.

In some cases you do have the right team members in the right places and in some cases you probably made some wrong choices, as we all have. Companies forced to reorganize made quick decisions resulting in people landing in the wrong roles. Likewise, companies that have experienced significant growth have ended up with similar staffing outcomes. Diagnostic assessments can help you identify performance gaps and help your company effectively understand and align the talents, behaviors, and motivators of every employee. Having the right employee in the right position is as critical to each individual’s success as it is to the success of the entire company.

The first step in bridging performance gaps is for management to commit to a people development process for employees. It should be based on the skills, attitudes, and behaviors necessary for them to do their jobs successfully. If the size of the organization is large enough, it can be implemented by HR. Regardless, the objectives and strategies of developing employees, and how those employees are going to help drive results, needs to be owned by management.

After commitment has been gained and the objectives have been identified, diagnostic assessments can help determine individual performance gaps, since developmental opportunities will be employee-specific. Assessments can also be utilized as an important tool for creating skill development as well attitudinal and behavioral improvement while eliminating employee and organizational resistance to change.

There are a multitude of individual assessment tools available, but regardless of which we utilize, when working with clients we focus diagnostically on the whole person as defined by these three key areas:

  1. WHAT natural talents do your employees possess? An analysis of TALENTS gets at a person’s ability to do things, how they make decisions and interact with the world around them, as well as how they perceive themselves.
  2. WHY are your employees motivated to use their natural talents, based on their personal motivators and drivers? An analysis of MOTIVATORS gets at why people do things. Everyone has their own unique mix of personal drivers and motivators that help guide them toward success. Understanding what really drives a person is a crucial element of success.
  3. HOW do your employees prefer to use their natural talents, based on their preferred behavioral style? An analysis of BEHAVIORS gets at a person’s manner of doing things; how they do things. Since each individual has their own unique preferences and habits for how they like to behave, this understanding is crucial when working with team members as a leader or a manager, or in an environment that requires conflict resolution.

 

Establishing new behaviors requires that the employee feels able to adopt those behaviors and feels comfortable doing so. A well-designed people-development process focused on objectives leveraging diagnostic assessments drives long-term change. After the completion of a development process, we consistently see high levels of adaptable change with sustainable results. To learn how to achieve these types of sustainable results for your people and your business give us a call or visit www.pb-coach.com.

When you are looking in the mirror, you are looking at the problem. But, remember, you are also looking at the solution.

 

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The “I bought a boat” Theory of Taking Action One Step at a Time

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I once heard a terrific story that illustrates the power of taking action one step at a time.  It came from a general manager of a yacht sales dealer. His typical customer would purchase new yachts and other boats for $1 million dollars or more.

He tells the story this way:

One morning, several of the sales people were standing around, and they were having some fun razzing the newest sales person, a young woman who didn’t really fit the part of a wizened “boater” like most of them did.  Into the showroom walked a couple who also didn’t really fit the part – they weren’t dressed very nicely, and they appeared to be young and probably not quite ready for a $1 million dollar investment in a new yacht.  So, they all “offered” to have the newest sales person talk with the couple – since they didn’t think it would amount to anything.

After quite a while, it became obvious that the couple was serious, and that they planned to purchase a yacht that day.  However, the husband confessed that they hadn’t come prepared to purchase and didn’t have a credit card or much cash to make a down payment.   The new sales person, undaunted, asked them what they did have?  “We only have $100.”  So, the sales person took the cash, and shook their hands.  The couple left the showroom with a huge smile on their faces.

When the new sales person came back to the group of sales people, she was the laughingstock of the group.  The group exclaimed, “You took a $100 deposit on a $1 million dollar boat?  That’s ridiculous!”  But the general manager knew better. He celebrated the sale with the new sales person and responded back to the sales team with this (now famous) conclusion:

“You may think that they didn’t actually buy anything, and you are right that $100 isn’t much of a deposit on a $1 million new yacht.  BUT, what do you think is the first thing that couple did when they left the dealership? When they saw people they knew?  They said, “We bought a boat today.” Now they didn’t really buy a boat – they only put down a $100 deposit on that boat.   But once they told everybody they knew about that new yacht, do you really think they weren’t going to follow through on the rest of the sale?”

Since I first heard that story, I have reflected on the lessons from it many times.  Let’s see if you agree that these are the lessons learned from the “bought a boat” theory.

  • Any action taken towards a goal will get you a step closer to actually achieving the goal itself
  • Just START on your way to the goal – step by step, you’ll get there
  • Once you say your goal out loud to those around you, you are much more likely to follow through
  • Stating your goal as if you are already there, as in, “we bought a boat today” helps you to take action and keep moving toward your goal.  (Note: When was the last time you said your goal out loud as a way to keep yourself motivated?)
  • And, not everyone looks like they can purchase a $1 million dollar yacht, but looks can be deceiving!

What “boat” are you trying to buy? What goals are eluding you this year?  Make the commitment today to take a step – “buy that boat” – and then take another step tomorrow.  Step by step, you WILL get there.

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A Winning Team

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As children and teenagers most of us have played on a sports team. Can you remember what it felt like to be part of a winning team or a losing team? Remember the elation you felt when your team won a big game and the despair of losing the big game or championship? It is something special to experience being part of something bigger then yourself.

In my experience the concept of a “team based culture” is something a lot of entrepreneurs, business owners and executives want but find very difficult to achieve.  The difficulty begins with the definition.  Plato said that wisdom begins with the definition of terms. So what does Webster’s Dictionary have to say about teams: “a number of persons associated together in work or activity”. Webster’s goes on to describe teamwork as: “work done by several associates with each doing a part but all subordinating personal prominence to the efficiency of the whole”.  This is a good start but does not give us enough practical detail and guidance in the business world. Steven Yelen a New York based Business Coach with over 20 years experience in supporting organizations and teams give us some guidance with his ideas on fundamental principles and behaviors that work.

Fundamental Principles of a Successful Team:

-Common Purpose

-Clear and mutually agreed to working approach

-Appropriate balance of task focus and relationship focus

-Agreement on Measurements and Aligned Rewards

Behaviors that support Successful Teams:

-Push for high quality communications

-Help create a climate of trust

-Play your position and bring talent to the team

-Help drive discipline into the team

-Be prepared to sacrifice for the team-be a good sport

-Help new members make the entry

-Strengthen the leader through good followership

-Play down yourself and build up others

Why Teams fail to deliver results?

The biggest root cause of team failures in business can often traced to the lack of establishment of clear purpose, goals, measurements and rewards. Without these foundation pillars in place trust is often the first casualty followed by a lack of energy and sense of helplessness.  Finally, if the leadership is not walking the talk then you can expect cynicism to spread quickly and undermine any opportunity for success.

Final Thought:

There are many examples of organizations that have achieved excellence and delivered exceptional results by creating a team based culture. Some examples include GE, Motorola, McKinsey and Pall Corporation.   Do your research and look at the top players in your industry and you will often find a team based approach separating the leaders from the followers.

A great resource for helping you understand and build high performance teams can be found in the book “The Wisdom of Teams” by Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith. 

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How Many Partners Do You Have?

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“I want to take my business to the next level. We need to grow by 40% this year and 150% over the next 3 years.  But…”

I heard this from a business owner just last week. His “but” was his concern that his staff wasn’t prepared to get it done. They didn’t follow procedures, spent time on unimportant tasks, didn’t think out of the box and looked to him for all of the important answers.  With those issues, taking his business to the next level will be difficult if not impossible.

What he needs are some partners. When I say “partners”, I don’t mean legal partners with a financial investment in the business. I mean people who have an emotional investment in the business. He needs to find ways to make people feel like owners even though they’re not. As the true owner of the business, he may never have a team that’s a passionate as him about growing the business. However, there are things he can do to dramatically increase his team’s level of ownership and passion. By doing this, he can create a team that feels ownership, even if they’re not true owners.

Here are some ways to make that happen:

1.       Conduct Joint Planning & Goal Setting – Typically, goals are set by leaders and passed down to the “rank and file”. Since the team had no hand in setting these goals, there’s never total buy-in. What’s worse, when goals aren’t met, the team blames unrealistic goals, rather than their own performance. Leaders should give their team enough information (company goals, historical performance, strategic objectives, etc.) to set their own goals. Of course, leaders should still be responsible for approving all goals; challenging those goals that are either too aggressive or not aggressive enough.

2.       Help Employees Understand the WIIFM – Most leaders try to motivate by rallying the troops around what’s important to the company. That’s important…but there’s something much more important. People are more motivated by What’s In It For Me (WIIFM). It’s not that they’re selfish, it’s just human nature.  Work with your team members to understand how they’re personally impacted by the business goals that have been set. Notice I didn’t recommend you tell them how they’re impacted. Everyone is different. You (and/or your leadership team) need to work with each team member to find their own unique “why”.

3.       Don’t Have All The Answers – Don’t let your ego get the best of you. Stop dictating decisions to your team and ask your team for advice. This doesn’t mean “management by consensus”. Ultimately, as a leader, you need to make the final decision, but it’s critical to make your team part of the process. Even if you think you know the answer, ask your team what they think first, before dictating a decision.

4.       Encourage Conflict – Does your team get along great? Do you always seem to agree with each other? Do you have trouble remembering your last major team conflict? This may seem strange, but if you answered yes to these questions…you’ve got problems. A team needs conflict to evolve. Think of it as Darwin’s theory of evolution for business. If good ideas don’t crush bad ideas, and great ideas don’t crush good ideas, a business (and its employees) will grow stagnant and die.

Implementing these ideas will certainly allow business owners to do a great deal more than just increase revenues. Having additional “partners” in a business will also increase productivity, improve morale, enhance customer loyalty, increase margins and maybe most important of all, reduce stress.

How are you cultivating partners in your business?

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The Recipe For Mediocre

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I hope you had a great  Thanksgiving!

With the New Year coming up, I bet you’re starting to think about new goals for your business. I would also bet that your goal is not to be mediocre in 2011.

I’ve just made a short video that will change your perpective on what makes us great vs. mediocre.
In this video, you’ll learn:
  • What most of us spend 80% of our time doing and how it keeps us from being great.
  • The real meaning of “well rounded”
  • How to create an extraordinary team
Be sure to watch the video right now. Just click here or on the image below). It’ll only take you about 2 minutes and it will dramatically improve your business and your life.

After you watch the video, be sure to check out the tools (team coaching, individual coaching and products) I have available to help you take the next step.

Break through and make it happen!

Mike
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The Golden Rule Doesn’t Work Part 2

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In our last video, we challenged your long held beliefs about the Golden Rule. We talked about treating people the way THEY wanted to be treated instead of how WE wanted to be treated.

The challenge is in finding out how other people want to be treated. Most of us don’t have a clue.

In this video, you’ll learn  
  • Why asking someone how they want to be treated almost never works
  • How do use behavioral interviewing as a leadership tool
Be sure to watch the video right now. Just click here or on the image below). It’ll only take you about 2 minutes and it will dramatically improve your business and your life.
 
After you watch the video, be sure to check out the tools (coaching and products) I have available to help you take the next step.
 
Break through and make it happen!