04 Jul 09 5 Tips To Motivate Your Team

Increasing productivity means keeping the people you manage motivated to stay positive and accomplish their goals in a timely fashion. The perfect employee team is a cohesive unit with a good morale about wanting to accomplish tasks quickly, and to the best of their abilities. Sometimes, especially during an economic recession like this, it’s hard to keep your people properly motivated, and that’s bad for them and for the work that needs to be done. A team with low morale is unlikely to meet deadlines on target, or is more likely to produce sub-par work. You’ll find motivating your team is a constant battle, but one that you need to win, and in doing so remember these tips:

Communication
Involvement
Setting Goals
Manage Poor Performances
Celebrating Performances

Communication is an essential element to any employee team, as it’s the most important aspect of working together to complete a project. Keep communication channels open through team meetings, email, and conference calls. This way everyone’s voice is heard, and nobody will feel as though they can’t get through if something is frustrating them. Proper support will help that morale stay on the up.

Involve everyone as much as possible with every aspect of the project. Listen to your team, and let them communicate ideas and suggestions into the development of your projects. This way they stay motivated to always strive to be successful, as they know you’ll listen to their ideas for innovations.

Set lofty goals that your team can be proud to shoot for. Don’t set them ridiculously high obviously, but find a comfortable middle ground above the standard, but not impossible to achieve. This way you’re keeping your team motivated to be better and better, but not overworking them to the point they lose the faith.

Manage your poorer performers. Not everyone on your team can excel like you would want them to, and some people will turn in a substandard performance from time to time. But that’s where you take the time to personally manage them. Work with them to help resolve any issues reflected in their performance, this way you can get them going on producing the quality of work you want them too, and their attitude will get better as they receive the help they need to achieve the goals you set.

And finally, celebrating individual and team achievement is crucial. One of the oldest archetypes throughout nature, is doing work for a reward. Yes your team receives a paycheck for their effort, yes technically this is their reward for their hard work, but that’s no reason not to throw in a thank you here and there. Recognize your top performers, and make sure to congratulate your team when they work together the way you would like them to, as this will keep them upbeat, and motivated to keep your compliments true to their ability.

Tags: Cohesive Unit, Communication Channels, Economic Recession, Element, Email, Employee Team, Excel, Faith, Increasing Productivity, Innovations, Lofty Goals, Low Morale, Par, People, Poor Performances, Setting Goals, Substandard Performance, Target, Team Meetings, Timely Fashion

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11 Jun 09 Power of Story

Since the dawn of the human civilization, we have been using stories to convey the meaning and the message to our peers. Story helps you connect with the listener or reader on an equal level. It is this trait of the story that has kept it alive even in this technological advanced society.

A PowerPoint presentation with objective data, three-dimensional colorful graphs, round-cornered table with drop-shadow effect, and picture of an attractive female provides useful information, which if understood well can fetch the desired outcome. This “if understood” have a big “If” which never get resolved because data, graphs, tables, bullet points, and unrelated pictures fail to make a connect with the audience, and these things can be blamed for the failure of countless meetings and numerous PowerPoint presentations.

Various studies in neuroscience, psychology and human cognition has proved many time that human mind is not a machine fuelled by logic and rationality. On the contrary, it is an organic entity overfilled with the emotionally charged synapses and is flooded with various chemicals that get charged up by the things happening in our surrounding. A good story increases the flow of these chemicals by drawing cues from the immediate environment of the audience, and thus getting the response the storyteller seeks.

A good story helps you cut through the clutter and reach your intended audience with the message you want to deliver, whereas, a PowerPoint presentation, with graphs, tables, bullet points, etc. just adds on to the clutter. A well-crafted story helps you connect, and it will elicit the response that even hundreds of PowerPoint presentations, and reams and reams of objective data working together will not get.

Tags: Attractive Female, Bullet Points, Clutter, Colorful Graphs, Countless Meetings, Cues, Desired Outcome, Drop Shadow Effect, Even Hundreds, Human Civilization, Human Cognition, Listener, Objective Data, Peers, Powerpoint Presentation, Powerpoint Presentations, Rationality, Reams, Storyteller, Synapses

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10 May 09 Pay Peanut, Get Monkey

If you pay peanuts, you will get monkeys; if you pay carrots, you will get rabbits. This adage has nothing new to offer but it still amuses, and in this laughter and gag, management misses the point. They keep on paying peanuts and they keep on getting their back itched. This is the reality of the corporate world. Companies have lost the trust of employees and thus the loyalty is waning out. What is the reason behind this depleting loyalty? Well, one of the answers could be, or more precisely the answer could be a lack of a proper recognition and reward system in companies.

It is not uncommon to find people who complain about not getting credit or rewarded for the role they played and the benefits they bring to the company. Hence, the employees’ morale weakens over the period of time, and they hop to another job as quickly as they can. The reason behind this job hopping is the absence of any intangible (read quality) benefit, in the absence of which employees look for the money and money alone. If money becomes the sole criteria for taking up any job then there will be nothing like loyalty and long-term commitment.

A proper reward system is one of the things that can stop quality employees from leaving. A reward should acknowledge the importance of the work the recipient has done for the company. The person should get due credit for the work he or she has done. This will infuse quality at the workplace, and the appreciation they get in return of the work they have done will motivate them not only to stay with your company but also to better their performance. If your company provides better work environment, and promptly return the employees’ dues then the importance of money gets belittled. Money only works wonder if everything else is indistinguishable.

A proper reward system should be responsive and customizable. No one-size-fits-all strategy should be used for rewarding the employees. If your company indulges in this then always expect the same mediocre result from the people on the other side. You pay peanuts and you get monkeys! There will not be even a single star performer if all a best performer of your company gets are peanuts and carrots.

Star performers do not just help satisfy more customers but they also help in securing good investments. We should understand here the triangular relationship between, employees, customers and investors. One better employee will fetch at least 10 loyal customers and 10 loyal customers will bring 100 more like them. This way the customer base of your company will grow and with it will grow sale of your products. The more you will sell the bigger your company will become and the better employees you will attract. These high quality employees will breed more sales that give investors more confidence in your company and the more confident the investor will have the more he or she will invest in your company.

For investors, the size of the customer base of your company is indeed important but the quality of the team that you have assembled to satisfy the needs and wants of your company’s customers are more important. Employees, customers and investors are three sides of a business triangle, weaken one of them and your business will tilt and tip over.

Tags: Absence, Adage, Carrots, Gag, Job, Laughter, Loyalty, Monkey, Monkeys, Peanuts, Period Of Time, Proper Recognition, Quality Benefit, Quality Employees, Rabbits, Recipient, Reward System, Sole Criteria, Term Commitment, Work Environment

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04 Jul 09 5 Tips To Motivate Your Team

11 Jun 09 Power of Story

10 May 09 Pay Peanut, Get Monkey

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