Motivate With Competition
Posted on | May 13, 2009 | No Comments
In a book titled “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, by Dale Carnegie, there is a story regarding a grain processing plant which was not meeting company goals. I don’t have the book in front of me, so I am only telling this story from memory. Please don’t be upset if it’s not 100% accurate. This is a great concept in Motivation Theory.
A consultant, walked in and introduced himself to the workers. When he was finished he asked them how many barrels of wheat they had produced that day. The answer was 27. The consultant then drew a large 27 on the floor of the factory. The next morning, when the workers returned, the night shift had the 27 crossed out and replaced with a 35.
This type of competitive nature can be very affective when motivating others. The trick is to find worthy competition, make sure the competition is fun and fair and to make sure everyone wins regardless of the outcome.
I would recommend pulling one of your employees aside, asking them how their day is going, and then challenge them with a little competitive goal. You may say something like I hear you’re one of the top sales guys in the building here. I have a little challenge for you. The record for sales in one day is “x” amount. If you can get within “x%” of that goal, I’ll pay for you and a friend to go to dinner and a movie.
Anyway, you get the idea. The competition doesn’t have to be for groups of people. Sometimes it’s just fun to challenge an individual. Most people love a good challenge, and it makes their day go by much better when they are striving to achieve a goal.
For more ideas, visit: MotivationTheory.net
Tags: leadership > motivating employees > motivating staff > what motivates employees
Don’t Do This
Posted on | May 11, 2009 | 1 Comment
If there’s one thing I don’t like, it’s when managers try to motivate their employees with the promise of a promotion. I think many of you will agree, manager or not, that not everyone you supervise is going to become the next manager or VP of whatever.
It’s true that many of the people I managed were in fact promoted but it was because I did my best to train my people to be the best at what they did and to be leaders. This made some of the individuals on my team a good choice when we needed new managers in the company. However, I never promised a promotion for good behavior, and I think it is very wrong to do so.
Even if you have had people you manage promoted, that doesn’t mean this will happen to everyone and there’s nothing worse than telling someone if the do “this”, they’ll be promoted and then months later having to look them in the eyes and say “just keep trying, it will happen”.
It is ok in my opinion to let the people on your team know what department heads are looking for when they promote someone and then helping your team members gain the experience necessary. It’s just not a good strategy to promise promotions for meeting or exceeding company goals and objectives.
Tags: leadership > motivating employees > motivating staff > motivation > what motivates employees
Secret Employee Motivation Strategy Cont.
Posted on | May 1, 2009 | No Comments
I recently received a comment with some very good questions, and I wanted to address them.
The comment is: Don’t you also think that some employees are going to act the same no matter what you say to them?
Do you think this would work for an employee who has been working for awhile, receiving the “negative” feedback, such as, “You need to pick up the pace, you’re slacking.” or “You keep making mistakes, don’t you know what you’re doing?”
What if you decide to try and change an employee using this method and you try for awhile using statements like, “You’re a real asset to the team. I can depend on you to keep busy” etc. But they don’t change and you end up having to let them go? Couldn’t this make an already difficult task, even more difficult?
Answers
First question is concerning weather employees will act the same no matter what you say. While it is true there are some employees it seems refuse to change, the reality is in all my years experience, I never met an employee who deep down didn’t want to be the best employee he or she could be. Sometimes employees don’t change because they’ve given up. Sometimes they don’t change because they are trying to undermine the managers authority. In most cases though an employee’s refusal to change is simply due to the fact that they’ve lost their sense of purpose, and don’t understand how they make a difference within the company or don’t know how to change.
I once had a person on my team who continually fell below company goals. When this happens there are three issues to address. 1) doe the employee know what the goals are? 2) does the employee have the skills / training necessary to meet those goals? 3) does the employee have the tools necessary to meet those goals? If all three of these are true, there’s only one reason they’re not meeting the goals, they don’t want to.
What was intrigued me about this employee was that he seemed like a very decent individual who wanted to be a good employee, and yet he was not meeting the goals. When I monitored his performance and worked with him, he did everything right and was able to meet company goals. It was when he was on his own that he didn’t. I pulled him into my office one day and asked him why he wasn’t doing the best he could when I wasn’t watching him and interestingly enough, he didn’t know. He knew he could do it, he just didn’t when I wasn’t there, but he said he wanted to. In his case, I could tell there was simply something in his subconscious that was causing him to self sabotage.
I took him through an exercise in which I essentially linked poor performance with negatives like failing as a father, failing as a grandfather, and not being someone his wife and kids could look up to. I then helped him link good performance with freedom, feelings of accomplishment, feelings of being a good role model, someone his family could be proud of etc. The next day he met the company goals and did so until I left the company some months later.
The secret is to know a person well enough to know what drives them and then to use the right techniques with the right people. There will be more posted in this blog as I get time so that my readers will have an assortment of motivation techniques to chose from.
Second Question
Do you think this would work for an employee who has been working for awhile, receiving the “negative” feedback, such as, “You need to pick up the pace, you’re slacking.” or “You keep making mistakes, don’t you know what you’re doing?”
The answer is an astounding YES! I can’t tell you how many teams I took over where everyone on the team was in danger of losing their jobs they knew it, and the supervisor was very negative toward the team. Within about ten days I was able to turn these teams around to become the number one to number two teams in our offices. Part of what I did to turn the team around was to catch them doing something good, and then tell them how much I appreciated them doing it. I would also add words like and I’m so glad I can always count on you to… You get the idea.
Warning!!! It is very important that if you are taking over a team, you meet with them one on one before anything else and find out what their goals are and what drives them. Misreading someone and trying to motivate a person using the wrong rewards can backfire. I’ll try to write more on this subject down the road.
Third Question
What if you decide to try and change an employee using this method and you try for awhile using statements like, “You’re a real asset to the team. I can depend on you to keep busy” etc. But they don’t change and you end up having to let them go? Couldn’t this make an already difficult task, even more difficult?
This can be a problem if you are lying to them. If someone is consistently late and you walk up to them one day and say it’s so nice to know I can always count you you to be on time, they’ll just think they’ve pulled the wool over your eyes. However, if they are consistently late except for today, and you walk up to them and say “I really appreciate you being here on time today. It really makes everyone on the team look better and I know that from now on I can continue to count on you to be on time.” A statement like this will cause the employee to try much harder to be on time than to say something sarcastically like “Nice to see you made it on time today.” Of course if someone is consistently late, there may be a good reason for this and unless that reason is resolved they will continue to be late.
If you have an employee who consistently fails to meet company standards and you have worked with them and they have worked with you, but they just can’t make it, believe me, they are not enjoying their job because no one likes to fail and they may be looking for a job somewhere else, or hoping you’ll let them go so they can find something they can be successful in. More on this later if when I get time.
I’ll just wrap it up by saying a good manager never has to let anyone go for performance reasons. I had people quit from my team because they knew they would never make it, and I even talked people into quitting so they could find work elsewhere, but I only fired two people in a five year period and it wasn’t for performance, it was for breaking company rules.
In summary, find different motivation theories that work with different people learn what works with what types, and always be positive for best results. Of course if you want to know more about what not to do, check out my post titled Don’t Do This.
Tags: leadership > motivating staff > motivation > problem employees > what motivates employees
Motivation Theory – Motivate With Awards
Posted on | April 27, 2009 | 1 Comment
Obviously, someone figured out along the way that giving rewards to someone for behaving in a particular way will in fact enforce that behavior. However, if there is always some kind of material award offered for good behavior what happens when you take the rewards away?
Although giving awards away for good behavior can enforce good behavior, it’s important to also note that if the reward becomes expected rather than as a perk, you can end up causing that award to no longer be something to motivate with, but more like something that now must be given or the employee will not only stop trying when the reward is taken, but will start to complain about not having it.
The key is to change the type of awards, don’t offer them every time, and keep the rewards fresh. You may also consider the fact that bigger awards can offer more motivation and for a longer period. Just make sure the criteria to achieve the award is possible or you’ll never even get a good burst of energy at the beginning.
Maybe you should even offer a free trip to Aruba, my favorite place. For ideas, check out the Aruba Coupons here.
Tags: motivating employees > motivating staff > motivation > what motivates employees
Secret Employee Motivation Strategy
Posted on | April 25, 2009 | 3 Comments
Here’s a secret that not many people know about motivating people to act the way you want them too. It seems simple enough, and yet managers and team leaders tend not to realize how obvious it is.
The secret to motivating staff and other employees may surprise you and when I tell you the secret you may just stop reading the post because you’ll just say to yourself “well that’s stupid of course that works, now tell me something I don’t know”. So when I tell you the secret, promise me you’ll keep reading because this secret really does work, and it’s very powerful for many reasons.
So what’s the secret you ask? The secret is this: People act the way you tell them they’re acting. Dumb huh? Think about it though. If some one you know, or don’t know walked up to you and said to you, “you are a jerk”, chances are you would tell them where they could go. If not, at lease the next time you see them, you probably would not act kindly toward them. In other words, you would kind of act like a jerk.
On the other hand, if someone walked up to you and said: “You know, I’ve been watching you deal with some of the people around you, and I can’t tell you how nice it is to see someone so friendly.” Chances are, if someone said that to you in a sincere way and you believed they meant it, you would think they were very nice, and you would treat them very nicely. In fact, I would go as far as to say that when you see them, even if you are having a bad day, you would put a smile on your face and act they way they told you you were acting.
This motivation tactic works in many instances. Let’s say for example that you are overly busy at work and there are customers waiting in line to see you. By ignoring those customers, you will find that eventually they seem to grow more and more on edge. If however you yelled out to the those waiting in line, “thank you all for waiting, I really appreciate how patient all of you are”, you will find that you just put them all at ease and now they will all try to be more patient.
This is where it get’s interesting. Let’s say as another example that you turned to the line of waiting people and said instead, “sorry about the wait, I know you all are really frustrated it will just be a little longer”, you will find you get the opposite effect from the first example.
Why, does this happen, becuase it allows the people inline to know you understand if they want to act frustrated and you open the gates to a now bigger problem. Again, this is simply because people will act the way you tell them they’re acting.
Next time you see an employee who looks like they’re slacking off, instead of walking up to them and saying you’re being a slacker you need to get going, try walking up to them and saying wow, of all the people here, it’s nice to know I can depend on you to keep busy, you are a real asset to the team. Say that, and watch what happens.
Remember, people act the way you tell them theyre acting. Try it and see for yourself.
Tags: Add new tag > how to motivate employees > leadership > motivating employees > motivating staff > motivation > what motivates employees
