Mar 20 2013

Motivation and Your People’s Needs

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Motivation and Your People’s Needs

One of the most important concepts to understand about motivation is need. Dr. Abraham Maslow’s extensive study of this concept resulted in the famous Hierarchy of Needs. He identified 5 needs that he felt covered the entire population and he felt those needs drove a person’s internal motivation. Two of the five are essential in understanding your people’s internal motivations.

The first is belonging. As humans we all have a need to belong. In these days of texting and on-line everything that may seem counter-intuitive, but it isn’t. Look around. Notice that most people eventually end up in a group of some sort during the day. Whether work teams, social groups, or just family, we all belong to something. More than that though, people want to be an important part of that group. They want to know their contributions are recognized and appreciated.

That leads to the next level of need; self-esteem. Self-esteem isn’t everyone gets a trophy. It’s the feeling of self-worth and success that comes from contributing to something, acquiring new skills, and setting high goals and standards and successfully meeting them.

These two needs are very strong motivators in most people. As a leader, you’ll achieve much greater results when you learn to recognize these motivators in your people and take action to help them realize those motivations.

 

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Mar 18 2013

Leadership Development: What Supervisors and Managers Need to Know

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Leadership Development: What Supervisors and Managers Need to Know

Too often supervisors and managers are thrown into their new position and expected to sink or swim. In fact, sometimes they aren’t even considered worthy of leadership training being “just managers.” Remember supervisors and managers have the most face-to-face, day-to-day contact with the people who actually produce for the organization. They are, by default, leaders of those people.

Here are seven tips to get started right. If you’re already in a leadership role, struggling to figure it out, these tips will help. If you’ve been at it a while, it’s still helpful to review these basics.

1.  Develop Your Own Definition of a Good Leader

You’ll find it very helpful to begin with a definition of a good leader. The best teachers are the leaders you have observed and worked for. Write down a few of the best examples of leadership you’ve experienced. Then, write down a few of the worst examples. Refer to this list regularly and make sure you are striving for the best and avoiding the worst.

2.  Don’t Try to Change Everything The First Day

Things are seldom in such a bad state that you have to take immediate action or make drastic changes. Leaders can come away from training courses thinking they must institute new policies and changes immediately but, major changes instituted immediately by new leaders often fail.

3.  Watch, Learn, Listen, Ask Questions

You must watch, learn, listen, and ask questions, from within your organization to actually learn what is good and bad. The most important step is listening. Give genuine attention to what people tell you. That doesn’t mean take action on every little complaint, but your attentiveness will go a long way towards developing trust between you and subordinates.

4.  Get To Know Your Workers

These are the people who will help you succeed. You’re a team and how you interact with that team is critical. As you meet people you’ll develop a first impression of them. That’s natural, but be careful about acting on that first impression. People don’t always have their best foot forward when they meet the new boss.

5.  Know what you want to accomplish

Know the organization’s strategic plan and what your boss expects. Be able to communicate that to your subordinates and tell them where they fit. Develop your own plan. A good leader will develop an idea of things the organization should do to excel, but pay attention to tips 2, 3, and 4.

6.  Take Care Of Yourself

Don’t let your new job destroy you. Leaders often get deeper and deeper in their responsibilities at the expense of everything else; like families and health, and eventually burn out. Don’t try to do everything yourself. Take care of yourself from the first day on the job. Sufficient sleep, exercise, and nourishment are important for your health. Remember to take care of your brain too. Develop a hobby or interest that can take your mind off the job.

7.  Don’t Lose Sight Of Your Values

Let your values be your guide, not just for making the big decisions, but for your everyday actions. Remember, your leadership position is about helping the organization excel and helping subordinates succeed. It most certainly isn’t about you. Hopefully, your personal values reflect that.
 
 

This post is a synopsis of the “Seven Tips for New Leaders” in the newly released ebook, Don’t Worry, You Can Do This!: What New Supervisors and Managers Need   to Know About Leadership available at Amazon.com

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Mar 13 2013

Motivation and Engagement: What’s the Connection?

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Motivation and Engagement: What’s the Connection?

Employee engagement has become a management buzz phrase lately. What do we really mean by engagement? What’s the connection to motivation?

Engagement simply refers to how much an employee is interested and involved in the mission and goals of the company. Unfortunately many employees just come to work every day, put in their time and go home. They don’t step outside their own specific responsibilities or do anything to make the company better or more profitable. They may be very good at their job, but not interested in much more.

To be engaged is to actively participate in the company. Engaged employees look for ways to make the company better, to improve their area of responsibility, to more effectively meet the company’s goals and objectives.

Since you’re watching this, or reading the blog, you must be a more enlightened leader so you know you can’t motivate your workers, but you do want them to be engaged. You’re in luck because motivation and engagement are connected.

When you help your workers understand their own motivation, and help them realize that motivation, they are much more likely to become engaged in the company’s mission and goals. Remember that two of the strongest needs that motivate your workers are belonging and self-esteem. To realize those needs, they almost have to become engaged!

When you help them realize their needs, they will most certainly help you reach your own motivation. They’re more engaged and you’re more successful. Not a bad combination.

 

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Mar 11 2013

Work at Home’s Interesting and Uncertain Future: Are Yahoo and Best Buy, Making a Difference?

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Work at Home’s Interesting and Uncertain Future: Are Yahoo and Best Buy, Making a Difference?

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost

And what was the difference it made?WorkAtHome

Two major management; no leadership decisions have registered on the Richter scale in the last few weeks.

Marissa Mayer, the new CEO at Yahoo decreed that all work at home employees must return to the office and interact with each other. Hubert Joly, CEO of Best Buy put an end to the Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) whereby employees could work whenever and wherever they wanted to as long as the work got done.

Oh the humanity! Imagine the indignity of actually having to work around other people and adhere to a schedule that isn’t your own.

Of course it isn’t that simple. Snarky sarcasm aside, these directives are a major upset for people who have become accustomed to a schedule that, if not flexible, at least is more conducive to their own personal needs. Most often cited is the stay at home mom. That’s an especially poignant argument when one considers that Mayer installed a nursery near her office for her own newborn; a luxury that those she’s called back to the office can’t afford.

I try to be slow to jump on the critique bandwagon as it’s always embarrassing when your original comments turn out to be wrong when new evidence emerges. But, I also like to start early in evaluating these kinds of leadership tsunamis in order to learn the lessons that appear along the way.

At Yahoo, Mayer decided that working at home did not benefit the company as much as if those employees could interact face-to-face. She might have something there. I run my business from my home office. The best part of the arrangement is that I’m at home. The worst part is that I’m at home. Sure, there are plenty of distractions at the office, but there are just as many at home and it seems much easier to succumb to them.

At Best Buy, the ROWE concept has been much heralded by researchers as the future of employee work-life balance. It seemed like a good concept, and I believe has some merit. The concept has been exported to many other companies, often by Best Buy themselves. The ROWE concept requires a more involved management and leadership structure as it’s harder to pull things together when everyone is working at their own pace and on their own schedule.

So, it would seem these two icons of employee autonomy have suddenly executed an about-face. Is that good or bad? Only time will tell. Unfortunately, time is not a plentiful commodity when trying to save a company. It’s interesting to note that stock prices have increased recently for both companies, though that may be more of a sort of ticker tape Hawthorne effect.

Of course, often masked by anonymity, the usual assortment of comments have appeared all over the web varying questions of Mayer’s and Joly’s parental heritage to accolades for finally getting a handle on this out of control trend. What I find most interesting is that many of the comments indicate a spreading belief that such things as flexible work hours and companies bending over backwards to accommodate employee demands for “work-life” balance are the minimum that workers should expect. I’m a big believer in accommodating workers as much as possible but it appears that many have forgotten that the company does not exist to employ workers but that employees work for the company. Employee success is directly tied to company success. But it’s a trend that leaders cannot ignore.

Mayer and Joly have taken bold action. Now, while they suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous blogger comments, I’ll be watching to see if their bold action is successful. I believe the message that will send goes much deeper than just those two companies.

What will be the difference they make?

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Mar 06 2013

Why All This Talk About Employee Motivation?

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Why All This Talk About Employee Motivation?

When I was young I sometimes would hear someone promise to apply some “size 12 motivation.” Sometimes there was some other thinly veiled threat to take some unpleasant action under the guise of motivation.
These techniques were not really motivation.

But, you say, they worked.

Yes they often did produce a behavior change and while sometimes that change was permanent, usually it was not. When the external influence or threat was removed the behavior change often went with it.

The same is true with your employees. They may respond to those threats or incentives, but if the threats or incentives go away, often the change does as well.
That’s why it’s important to understand motivation. When a leader helps a worker understand their own motivation and take action to realize it, the results are much more likely to be permanent. Leaders who understand what drives their people are more successful. It’s that simple.
 

As a leader, if you aren’t too worried about the future success of the company, or your own success, then by all means, don’t make an effort to understand what motivates your people. Keep throwing money at them or kicking them when they don’t do what you want. But, if you’re a leader who wants to succeed, and who wants to make your company more successful, then take the time to understand what motivates your people and help them take the action necessary to realize that motivation.
 

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Feb 27 2013

Do We Need Team Leaders

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Do We Need Team Leaders

Ever heard of self-led teams? Sometimes they’re called leaderless teams. Are they real? Maybe so; I’ve heard of them, but never actually seen one. What I have seen are poorly led teams and team members that spend most of their time vying for position. Whether by plan or by human nature, your teams will always have team leaders.

When people are put together in a team situation two personality types tend to emerge: the go along type and the take charge type. Notice I didn’t say leaders and followers. In fact, sometimes leaders will go along because they don’t see the benefit of jockeying for control. Often the take charge types don’t really have any leadership experience. They just want to be noticed.

To prevent a deep discussion of personality types, let’s cut to the chase. When forming teams, it’s essential to understand that someone is going to try to take the leadership role. Especially with short-term teams built for a specific task, it’s important to have a team leader who everyone recognizes as such and who understands the accompanying responsibility.

So, where do you find this person? You can assign someone who already is leading and give them more responsibility. Here’s an alternative. Go to the worker who you see has some potential; the one who you are looking at for a leadership role in the future. This is an excellent opportunity to observe them while they learn a little about leading. Make sure the team’s mission and goals are very clear.

The next step is perhaps the most important. Keep an eye on your new team leader. Don’t hover, but stay in touch and offer suggestions and a little coaching from time to time. Yes, this will take a little more of your time, but the payoff is a more effective team and an emerging leader.

Pretty good return on investment I’d say.

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Feb 25 2013

How Not to Use the Pareto Principle

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How Not to Use the Pareto Principle8020

Did you know that 20% of your workers are doing 80% of the work and 80% of your workers are doing only 20% of the work? That’s a pretty shocking statistic.

It’s also most likely wrong.

There are few concepts in management as poorly represented as the Pareto Principle. That’s a bit ironic considering the Pareto Principle isn’t even a management concept.

Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian economist who, in the very early 20th century determined that 80% of the wealth in Italy was distributed among 20% of the population.

So how did this become a management principle?

For the answer we turn to Joseph Juran who admits to being the one who brought Pareto to the management world. If you want to learn about statistical process control, study Juran. In fact, I recommend his book, Juran on Quality by Design in which he takes responsibility for causing the transition of the principle from economics to management: more precisely to quality control.

Juran found that Pareto’s work in economics seemed to have some similarities with his own work in quality control. He called it the “vital few and the trivial many” and graphically displayed curves of quality losses with curves of wealth distribution from Pareto. In a short caption he wrote “Pareto’s principle of unequal distribution applied to distribution of wealth and to distribution of quality losses.” Though the subsequent text made the necessary distinction, the caption did not and lived on. Juran was merely making the point that this distribution seemed to apply to more than just economics.

So, Pareto referred to wealth distribution. Juran referred to quality losses. How did this come to be a management principle applied to people?

Because it sounds good. It’s easy to accept that 20% of your workers do 80% of the work. Unless you really think about that. Then you might ask yourself why you’re paying the 80% who are only doing 20% of the work.

The fact is, the general idea of Juran’s distribution does correlate to your people. A large number of problems probably correlate to a small number of people. Looking at it another way, you no doubt have a few people who produce more than most and some who produce less than they should. In the not very distant past, when good economic times reigned, many companies weren’t too concerned about that. These days you can’t afford to ignore it. Actually, you never could, but now it’s more noticeable.

Investigate, find the truth, then – and only then – take action. But don’t assume that only 20% are really producing.

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Feb 21 2013

Ten Essential Steps for Leaders in a Crisis

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Ten Essential Steps for Leaders in a Crisis

What are the top ten things for a leader to do when faced with a crisis? I saw this question recently and it got me thinking. Good leaders try to anticipate crisis, developing plans and checklists for anything that might happen. But what about when the unthinkable happens? What should a leader do when a real, no-kidding, unanticipated disaster strikes?

1. Have a solid strategic plan but be willing to deviate from your goals, or at least their completion dates. In both cases, the organizations that were impacted had to set aside some goals. That doesn’t mean we just dumped them, but deferred them until the biggest part of the crises passed.

2. Work to develop effective leaders. I was blessed with some of the most outstanding leaders I’ve known. I can’t claim all the credit as many of them were placed in essential positions by others before me, but they were there at the right time and they made the difference.

3. Adopt an effective leadership style that encourages everyone in the organization to be engaged. Make sure they know they’re important and that you know it too. Encourage yoursubordinate leaders to lead and know they have the authority to take action. No matter how good your subordinate leaders are, if you haven’t let them lead, they won’t be there when you need them.

4. Develop good relationships. There are people and organizations that are going to be essential to your recovery. It’s little noticed these days, but I believe for the first time since the revolutionary war, foreign military forces were sent to the United States in response to an attack. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization dispatched Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft to help monitor and control U.S. airspace. When I experienced my second crisis, I did not have the relationships that would have made handling the crisis easier. Lesson learned.

5. When that unexpected and unthinkable crisis happens, stop and take a deep breath. A pilot I used to fly with always said the first step in an emergency is to “hack the clock.” He was referring to the process of resetting the timer on a wind-up clock in the cockpit. It had nothing to do with the emergency but allowed time to let the brain absorb the situation and deal with the initial shock. Without this step, your first reaction will very likely be wrong.

6. Do quick analysis before quick action. Granted there may not be time for a detailed look at all the variables, but at least a cursory review is essential. I got this one right in both cases and was able to respond better. Did I get everything right? Of course not. But in both cases that quick analysis avoided making the situation worse.

7. Take the high road. It’s very tempting to immediately begin the blame game. After all, if heads are going to role, we want to make sure ours isn’t one of them. While it will be necessary to determine what happened and how to prevent it from happening again, now just isn’t the time.

8. Keep a record. This is something I failed to do well in either crisis. Later, I was scratching my head trying to remember some important points. You’re going to make mistakes and you’ll learn a few things. After the smoke has cleared is a good time to review those lessons. It’s a lot easier if you’ve written them down. That also means keeping track of those people who move heaven and earth to save the day.

9. Keep your eye on the future. This is probably one of the hardest steps. It’s common and very easy to get so bogged down in crisis management that you, and more importantly your organization, will completely forget where you were going in the first place. I worked for a leader once who never let us forget that we existed to accomplish the goals we had set. While problems presented set-backs, we still knew what direction we were going.

10. Above all else, be a leader. If you’re depressed, the world is closing in around you, and you feel all is lost, keep it to yourself. You’re people need a leader who stays on an even keel and rises above the muck. Don’t abdicate your responsibilities, hide in a corner, or become a defeatist. After 9/11, President Bush gave the best speeches of his entire presidency. Yes he was upset and his passion showed. But he spoke as a leader, positive of what would be and without a hand-wringing and woe-is-me attitude. In my other example, there was a more senior leader who didn’t get this point with a much less favorable result.

Thank you to Glyn Cave for asking this question on LinkedIn.

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Feb 20 2013

Leading Teams with Star Players

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Leading Teams with Star Players

In just about any team sporting event you’ll hear about the Most Valuable Player, or MVP. It’s easy to conclude that without this particular player, the contest would have would have been lost. Perhaps that’s true but in the teams you’re leading at work, the concept of an MVP can be a sign of problems rather than success.

Let me explain.

Teams are made up of individuals who come together for a common goal. Naturally, some members will be more effective than others but the team is not a supporting cast for a single person. Each member of the team should have a specific contribution based on their own skills and expertise. It’s very easy to just allow one person to make all the decisions and try to force everyone else to their way of thinking. That isn’t really a team though.

So, what should you do if you have a real superstar on the team? First, encourage their work and let them know you appreciate their talents and abilities. Then help them understand they are part of a team and others have valuable contributions as well. They may not work at the same level and speed, but that doesn’t make them less important. Yes, that’s much easier said than done, though it’s easier if you’ve established a culture of inclusion from the beginning.

Remember, no matter how skilled or talented your superstar may be, if he or she alienates the rest of the team they will do more harm than good.

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Feb 13 2013

Leading Teams You Don’t Get to Select

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Leading Teams You Don’t Get to Select

In the military, leaders change jobs frequently and seldom get to select their own teams. Instead, military leaders are sent to an organization to pick up where their predecessor left off and work with the team that is already in place. Though I sometimes felt this was a little unfair, I learned that a leader can make any team effective with a few techniques.

1. Make sure the team understands your commitment to the mission, as well as your commitment to them. Successful team leaders combine a strong passion for the mission with an abiding love for the team.

2. Make sure every member of the team clearly understands their part of the mission and how they contribute to its accomplishment. Chances are you’re not keeping people in the company because they tell good jokes. Today’s economic realities force everyone to keep only those who are vital to the company’s success. As leaders you know that. Have you told them? Knowing they are important, and knowing that you know they are important, is a key to team success.

3. Have fun. Okay, life isn’t always a hoot and not every task is fun, but it doesn’t have to be dull and boring either. I worked for a humorless boss once. I seldom saw so much as a smile; fun was definitely out of the question. This person was replaced with someone who liked to have a little fun and almost instantly the team’s productivity increased.

4. Reward success. When your team reaches a goal, celebrate! Let the team revel in their success. People like to take a moment to relax and bask in the glow of a job well done. When your team gets back to work, they’ll be even better.

5. Finally, let’s be honest. Sometimes you will have someone who is bringing the team down and who will not step up. Do your best with this person but know when to let them go. Don’t jeopardize the whole team trying to save one person who doesn’t want to be saved.

Just because you didn’t pick your team doesn’t mean you can’t make that team a big success.

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