Archive for the ‘Motivation’ Category

Weeks Peaks and other great ways to celebrate daily success

Monday, December 28th, 2009

sparklerFriday evenings are wonderful. We’re usually taking a  breather after a hectic week. We’re enjoying a little time with friends and families. And for those of us lucky enough to be associated with Humanergy, we get to read Weeks Peaks!

Weeks Peaks is the creation of Karen, our fabulous business manager. Each Friday before she leaves for the weekend, she sends out an email that contains bullet points of news – rave reviews from a client, personal milestones, funny stories – anything that is significant in the life of our Humanergy “family.”

Weeks Peaks aren’t hard to put together. Because Karen’s the hub of our office, she is privy to the news of each day. When something notable occurs, she types that into her staged Weeks Peaks draft in Outlook. That makes constructing the email easy, since she doesn’t have to remember the highlights from the week. Most Weeks Peaks are about 7 bullet points – so no major creative writing is required.

For many of us, opening our email at 6:00 p.m. on a Friday is the highlight of the week. We look forward to it, even create rituals around it. We leave the family in the other room, sip a comforting beverage of our choice and settle in to revel in the stories of the week. We stay connected, learn more about each other and feel part of something meaningful, even if we’ve spent the whole week with clients away from the office.

How can you find ways to share and celebrate regularly, without making it an onerous task?

Ahhh….can’t wait for Friday!

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Posted in Fun, Motivation, Organizational climate | 5 Comments »

Why praise employees? Isn’t pay enough?

Monday, November 9th, 2009

AX075908Grow up. Do your job. Don’t expect to hear about it when things go well. I pay you to do a good job.

These words may sound a bit harsh. But they reflect the attitudes of some leaders who wonder why they have to nurture (coddle) their people. After all, isn’t their bi-weekly paycheck enough?

Sorry, it’s not. Your people may not tell you this, but they do like to hear when they’ve performed well. In fact, research shows that recognition for good work releases dopamine, a brain chemical connected with positive emotions like satisfaction and enjoyment. Employees who receive regular praise have higher productivity and lower turnover, and they make fewer mistakes.

How can you feed employees by recognizing what’s going well, even if you’re not naturally a warm and fuzzy type?

First identify key drivers of success. What specific thinking and behavior will lead to the desired outcomes? Those are what you should be looking for and applauding.

Keep it real. Don’t invent something or recognize an inconsequential act. Employees know the difference between meaningful commendation and faint praise. Likewise, don’t ease up on standards or lower expectations.

Be specific. While a good job comment might be welcomed, saying the report was detailed and contained exactly what we needed is more instructive. Make sure to recognize not only effort but results.

Track when you do it. Gallup research indicates that each employee should be praised at least every 7 days to maintain optimum levels of engagement. If you have lots of direct reports, you’re probably ready to give up right now. Don’t. A weekly email outlining what’s gone well with the team is better than nothing. Efforts toward a routine acknowledgment of achievement will pay off in the long run.

Combine praise with support to grow. The highest praise may be more responsibility. But don’t just thrust your up-and-comer into a new role. Provide coaching, mentorship, training and other support to ensure that she thrives.

Feeding with praise does not require flowery speeches or candy and flowers. Regular, heartfelt statements work. Catherine the Great once said, I praise loudly, I blame softly. Maybe that’s part of why she was Great.

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Motivating staff during challenging times

Monday, September 28th, 2009

light-in-darknessHow do you keep employees motivated when times are troubled? If your go-to motivation strategy is a bonus or pay raise, you may be in trouble. What are other techniques that are even more powerful than financial rewards?

Give people interesting work. People want to keep them growing and learning. Provide enough autonomy so that people can express their unique contributions while they also address the organization’s needs.

Redouble your efforts to communicate. Give people frequent status updates during a crisis. Allow them to ask questions and then answer them to the best of your ability. Open communication derails rumors, gossip and misinformation.

Share both reality and hope. An earlier blog post featured the Stockdale Paradox – a mixture of 1) faith that you’ll prevail AND 2) discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality. Share both the grim realities and the reasons you’re going to not only survive, but thrive.

Be around and really listen. With so many important ideas to share, it might be easy to stop listening. Get out of your office and find out what’s on people’s minds. Then you’ll know what/how to communicate.

Make light of things. In fact, be a bit silly. Start a “joke of the week” contest. Tell your team it’s “bring a banana to work day.” You surprise them with ice cream and other toppings for banana splits. Levity defuses tension and builds camaraderie, but keep the jokes clean and poke fun at yourself, not others.

Things may seem gloomy now, but you can provide a light in the darkness to calm the people around you. In the process, you may also find that the steps you take to keep people engaged and motivated in crisis are the very things you should have been doing all along.

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