Archive for the ‘Motivating Employees’ Category

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Let’s Get It Started!

Friday, August 20th, 2010

© Gino Santa Maria | Dreamstime.com

There’s a song I love to play over the loudspeakers at my public events. The song is “Let’s Get it Started” by the Black-Eyed Peas, and we use it to call everybody back from break, to pump them up and get them ready to GET IT STARTED again!

We could use just about any high-energy song to get people’s attention, but this one has something special, and its right there in the title––Let’s get it started. It doesn’t say, “Let’s hope somebody else gets it started.” It’s about US, you and me, getting started and making things happen.

Maybe you’re playing a waiting game in your company, waiting for management to get the memo and start making a positive culture change happen. You’ve filled out enough suggestion cards to fill the old card catalog at the New York Public Library. Maybe you’ve even dropped a few heavy hints in person. Nothing. Ever. Happens.

Time to stop waiting. It’s time to get it started.

Culture change is first and foremost about a change in attitudes. It’s about making people feel appreciated, giving them a common goal, and helping them to have fun in the process. NONE of these requires a lot of money or time, and best of all, NONE requires the involvement of the head honchos.

Still, you don’t have to do this all alone. Certainly there are two or three other people who would like to see your workplace transformed. Put together an informal group––a “coalition of the willing”––and brainstorm ways to turn the place around. There is nothing more fun than taking the bull by the horns and watching as you turn around not just a workplace, but the lives of the people who spend half of their waking hours IN that workplace.

Here are three ways to get it started:

1. Create your own contest. If you know your company has an objective to sell 750 widgets a month, create a contest. Split your staff into teams. Have them report daily and put points for sales up on a white board. Hoot and holler, give out prizes for individuals and teams. Prizes don’t have to be expensive—people will knock themselves out for a chocolate kiss.

2. Start a low-key campaign against dysfunctional behaviors. Quietly enlist as many co-workers as possible in a pact to not engage in gossip, backstabbing, whining, or nay-saying, and to gently call others on it when they hear it in action.

3. Connect. It’s easy to crawl into our shells, keep our eyes on the floor, and forget that we’re surrounded by actual no-kidding people all day. Make an effort to meet the eyes of your co-workers. Smile and say hello. Ask about the family. This isn’t rocket science––but these simple connections can do more for transforming a workplace culture than the most elaborate system of incentives.

At the end of the first month, pull the team together to take a reading. Odds are very good that you’ll see evidence everywhere that things will never be the same.

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The Shackleton mindset—a refusal to fail

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010
© Velora | Dreamstime.com

© Velora | Dreamstime.com

For sheer jaw-dropping drama, it’s hard to beat the story of the three-masted sailing ship Endurance, which left England in August 1914 under the command of Ernest Shackleton with twenty-eight men determined to cross Antarctica by sled.

The Endurance ended up trapped and crushed to splinters by ice floes.  The men lived on the Antarctic ice for another two years.

Total survivors out of the original twenty-eight men?  Twenty-eight.

What if you approached every challenge in your life and in your work as if you simply HAD to overcome it?  I’ll tell you what—you would do it.  You would find a way, and you would get it done.

Whenever I hear the expression, “Failure is not an option,” I think of Ernest Shackleton and the men of Endurance.  I picture them confronting these utterly impossible situations and saying, “Well, lads, let’s see what our options are.”

I then picture them reaching into a pocket and pulling out a scrap of paper.  Under the title OPTIONS are two words:  SUCCESS and FAILURE.

Like heck.  Why would failure EVER be an option?  So why not take it off the list entirely?

We’ve all heard the hundred or so reasons such and such a thing simply cannot be done, the many, many reasons failure is the only option.

Tell Shackleton about the insurmountable obstacles you face.  Just let me watch.

Better STILL—why not just take FAILURE off that list of options?

I have a friend who I dearly love but who always used to explain why something couldn’t be done. Excuses came easy to her.  Then one day her boss gave her a priceless saying to remember:  Don’t tell me about the labor pains—show me the baby.

Before a project begins, I don’t want to hear all the reasons it can’t be done.  After the project is done, I don’t care how many hours you worked.  I don’t care how many obstacles you hit.  Save it for your memoirs.  Just show me the baby.

Decide now that whatever project or challenge you currently have before you simply cannot be allowed to fail—that you must use the fortitude of the Endurance crew to make it happen.  It’s a completely different way of thinking.

But be careful—this powerful way of thinking is addicting.  Once you get a taste of achieving the impossible, it’s hard to quit!

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Posted in Culture Transformation, Motivating Employees, Training and Development | No Comments »

Acres of Diamonds: Show Me the Money!

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010
© Virusowy | Dreamstime.com

© Virusowy | Dreamstime.com

Last year I finally read Acres of Diamonds. It’s a century old, yet its truths are timeless.

This pastor, lawyer, speaker, politician, and university president – who collected $11 million from his speech by the same title and donated it to students – spoke of the riches that are available to all of us and how we search for them in all the wrong places.  The acres of diamonds, you see, are in our own backyard.

He tells of struggling merchants who know nothing about the people living near their businesses, nothing about their families or their kids, their joys or sorrows or aspirations.  They just plain don’t care about people – and THAT’s why they’re poor. They don’t see opportunities because they don’t know that people will show you how to help them—IF you just listen.

A metaphor for business? My thoughts exactly.

Here’s a thought. What would happen if you eliminated all the drama from your sales team? Work would no longer look like an adult day care because people would be accountable for their own problems and solutions.

What if instead of having to manage people, a sales manager could focus on improving sales?  No managing the frail egos of people who complain about minutiae; every sales person 100 percent accountable for his or her results; no dealing with “hurt feelings” – because you’re dealing with grownups who know that their feelings are their choice.  Just imagine it.

Stay with me here. In this little dream, the sales manager would spend:

•    a third of his or her time generating leads for the sales team;
•    a third making the sales operation optimally effective;
•    a third coaching the players on positioning, strategies, techniques, and sales skills.

How would that change things?

Are you ready for the change? It’s not that hard. Simply make sure that you instruct people to own their problems and find solutions fast. If anyone comes to you with a gripe or a whine, stick your fingers in our ears and shout, “I’m not listening, I’m not listening.”  Tell them to come back to let you know what they did to create a quick solution.

Do this and sales will accelerate!

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Posted in Employee Engagement, Motivating Employees, Sales Culture | No Comments »

Real leadership in tough times

Thursday, May 20th, 2010
© Smagal | Dreamstime.com

© Smagal | Dreamstime.com

In today’s turbulent economic market, even the strongest and most powerful corporate icons are challenged to find ways to improve their efficiencies. As they require more work from fewer numbers of people, their top priority is having effective leaders and managers who can propel their group to greatness. Unfortunately, many young managers and leaders have never seen a tight economy, or at a minimum, have only a faint memory of what it can be like. It’s during these times that leadership skills are put to the test.

The following three leadership qualities are extremely valuable during robust times, and absolutely essential during challenging times.

1. Lend an empathetic ear. Ignoring the emotions of your team members during tough times only causes greater challenges. Create a forum for people to share their feelings so that they can release them and move on. When people sense that someone doesn’t truly understand their emotions, they tend to stay charged and keep whining. If you don’t want to be listening to the same complaints over and over, then listen with emotion. If someone’s voice is loud and angry, say back in a loud voice, “This is terrible.”

Then continue the conversation by dropping your voice slowly to a normal range. Watch the magic as they defuse by simply knowing you “really got it.”

2. Don’t buy into the “ain’t it awful” story. Everything you hear could be true. Quarterly profits could be down, market share may be shrinking, and turnover could be high. These and other measurements are feedback that an organization isn’t doing what it should be doing.

Lead your team to the understanding that even during the darkest times, many do well, and you intend to be one of them. Your team needs to shift out of its doomsday view and into one with possibilities. When people say, “We can’t because,” the response should always be, “How can we?” With enough repetition, people will soon come to understand that results can be achieved no matter what the circumstances.

3. Acknowledge the steps along the way. Frustration runs high when things aren’t working well. Employees’ confidence is shaken. When confidence is low, performance weakens, thereby feeding into the cycle of lower motivation and performance. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Appreciate the little steps along the way during challenging times. Let your team know that you appreciate not only the things they do, but also who they are and the efforts they make. Build fun into your appreciation. Good organizations, departments and managers thrive during rough times because they learn to hone their skills like never before. They’ve discovered that it’s the bad times that make them so much better during the good times.

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Turning Workplace Clark Kents into Superheroes of Service

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
© Dmitroza | Dreamstime.com

© Dmitroza | Dreamstime.com

Someone’s late for a meeting. Nobody calls the person on it. Next week, three people are late.  You try to convince yourself it’s a coincidence. Eventually, there won’t be a meeting in the entire organization that starts within 15 minutes of the scheduled time. Before you know it, everyone’s repeating the mantra that “starting late is the ABC Company way!”

You create sales reports to make sure the right people are called on and the right process is followed. Then some sales reports aren’t done accurately or aren’t timely. But it’s your top producer so…what can you say?

Then the top achiever stops doing the reports all together.  The rest of your team members follow the leader. Sales take a nosedive. Your sales team blames the economy and the competition.

Yeah, right.  It’s somebody ELSE’S fault.

Everybody knows the rules—but no one is calling others on it when they break the rules.  Your organization descends into lazy anarchy.  How could it not?

Look at any successful organization and you’ll see a group in which EVERY team member cares enough to call every other team member on it whenever a service standard is breached, a deadline missed, a sales process isn’t followed, or an honor code value violated.

Struggling organizations have folks who just want to be “nice.”  Think Clark Kent. When they see standards breached, they let it all slide.  Why?  So others will let THEM slide when THEY mess up. Eventually they’re all scratching each others backs, watching the iceberg pass by, and wondering why their socks are wet.

People need to understand that it isn’t “mean” to challenge each other—it’s uncaring and unloving to NOT challenge each other for falling short of what’s required. It keeps others small.

A leader’s role is to lead people to a level of greatness they thought was reserved for others—to tear the shirts off these Clark Kents, revealing the ‘S’ of the superhero below.  Your role is to help ordinary people get extraordinary results by using the most basic fact of human psychology:  People move away from pain and toward pleasure.

If somebody doesn’t do what they’re supposed to do and there is no immediate pain, that behavior continues. If there is no pleasure, that behavior isn’t reinforced.

Your job is to celebrate the many wins with rituals of pleasure and to let ALL your people know that celebrating those wins is part of their contribution to the team. It is also your job to make sure that when people don’t do what they’re supposed to do, they experience the pain of addressing the slip-up directly.

A balance of pain and pleasure serves as twin guardrails to guide continuous improvement in behaviors and results.

The ultimate job of a leader is to run an organization in which every person calls every other person “tight.” Only then do you know your people have the maturity both to challenge and to be challenged. When in the history of time has there been a profound result without a profound challenge?

Creating an extraordinary organization doesn’t mean finding extraordinary people. It means helping ordinary people discover that they can be extraordinary.

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Culture—The Ultimate Profit Tool

Friday, May 7th, 2010
© Madartists | Dreamstime.com

© Madartists | Dreamstime.com

For three decades, companies across the spectrum have talked about the need to convert to a sales culture.  Talk, talk, talk.  Yet for all the chatter, the number that has successfully converted to a sales culture is still well below five percent! Millions have been spent in an attempt to make the change.  So why have so many repeatedly failed?

Sales and service skills do little to change results UNLESS there is a strong base of people who love what they do.  It’s about the culture! Without the right spirit, no amount of training or hiring will get you headed in the right direction.

A survey by the Corporate Executive Board showed that employees who are “true believers”—who value, enjoy, and believe in what they do—displayed 57 percent more discretionary effort and were 87 percent less likely to leave, while Gallup says that for every $10,000 of payroll, $3,400 of productivity is lost due to “disengaged employees.”

That’s an ugly number.

So what makes people love their jobs, fully engage, and produce greater results? Contrary to what most believe, money has very little to do with it.  What does matter is the three overlooked “must haves” to rejuvenate your people’s passion for extraordinary results.

1.  Kick-butt Rituals of Celebration and Appreciation
Healthy cultures have appreciation as their cultural backbone. They create an environment where everyone, not just the managers, oohs and aahs over each other’s successes and contributions.  They create daily, weekly, and quarterly rituals of celebration and appreciate and coach their people to be positive coaches to each other.

Maybe you have a daily huddle before opening where each person briefly shares an accomplishment while the rest of the team cheers and claps.  Maybe you have a “positive” sharing at the beginning of each weekly strategy meeting and a quarterly awards ceremony filled with many awards and recognitions.  If you create a childlike energy of people high-fiving with joy, you can expect people to thrive under the recognition.

2.  Ironclad Values
Your defined values are your “true north” and a powerhouse of results IF you do them correctly. If your values could be listed as the values of any other company in the country, you haven’t done a good enough job of creating values that will guide you powerfully.  When you say “honesty” or “integrity” or “hard work,” you haven’t really said a thing.  And if people don’t have their quarterly project plans built around the values, guess what? They aren’t really your values.

3.  “We mean it” Behaviors
When an organization defines its behaviors well, then supports and coaches to those behaviors as if they really are to be followed consistently, miraculous transformations begin.

Besides sales and service behaviors, behaviors regarding how to treat and respect coworkers must also be defined, like “no excuses” or “no talking behind peoples’ backs” or “state things in the positive.”  When you are clear in expecting the best in others, people bring their higher selves to work—that part in all of us that knows the right thing to do and the willingness to do it.

Most of all, remember that EVERYTHING is a leadership issue. If you want people to thrive at work and bring their passion for extraordinary results, you must, as a leader, create the environment in which people can thrive.

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Follow through to get the bang for your training buck

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
© Jgroup | Dreamstime.com

© Jgroup | Dreamstime.com

One semester in middle school, we had the option of taking a bowling class for gym. And I remember clearly, as my ball headed into the gutter time after time—the instructor kept harping on one thing: “Be sure to follow through.”

Follow through? Why? It never made a lick of sense to me. Once the ball is out of my hands, what difference does it make what my arm does?

Finally I got sick of scoring in the low peanuts every game and thought I’d try it. I let the ball go and allowed my arm to continue in a perfect arc.

I can still hear the sound of that strike.

According to the American Society for Training & Development’s Benchmarking Forum, the average annual expenditure per employee on training was $1424 in 2005 (the last year of complete data). But the most successful and productive companies invest $1616 per employee.

Coincidence? You wish. Training provides the best ROI of any investment you can make in your business, period. But there’s something else those high-performing companies do—they follow through after the training is complete. The best way to get results from your training dollars is to expect and measure immediate application of what is learned. Measurement and celebration of the results from the training program need to start within 24 hours of a session or the application of the learned material drops like a stone.

When you work with a training consultant, make sure they don’t pull up stakes and head for the hills five minutes after the last session is over. Good training ALWAYS includes a specific, detailed follow-up plan—or it’s not training. It’s flushing.

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Posted in Employee Engagement, Managing Employees, Motivating Employees, Personal Transformation, Self-Growth | No Comments »

The prima donna—and the REAL star

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
Amorimphoto | Dreamstime.com

Amorimphoto | Dreamstime.com

A friend of a friend of mine played varsity basketball in college.  Brian was never a star, but always a good solid team player with good stats.  Most of all, he could be relied upon, on or off the court.

He didn’t get much attention from the press or the fans because he was overshadowed by a hot shot I’ll call Troy.  Troy was the guy who’d make the three-point shot at the buzzer or do the bob-and-weave, dance-and-fake moves that dazzled the other team and put points on the scoreboard.

But as I watched them play, I began to notice a pattern.  If Brian got the ball, he would immediately look around to see who was in the best position to make the shot.  More often than not, he’d pass.  Once Troy had the ball, though, you knew he’d be taking the shot himself.  He saw even his own team members as obstacles to be gotten around on the way to His Big Moment.

When they both reached their senior year, it was time for the team to vote for Senior MVP.  Brian was sure Troy was a lock.  Troy was sure too.  And they were both wrong.  It was Brian.

The Most Valuable Player isn’t the one who puts the most points on the board.  It’s the one who did the most to advance the team’s goals as a whole.

The same is true in business.  Sometimes the last person to get on board in a culture transformation is the big shot, the star—the one who “knows” he or she is indispensible and is far too busy grooming in the mirror for the next close-up to give a thought to what’s good for the team.

Maybe he has twice the sales numbers of the second place salesperson.  Maybe she’s a genius at schmoozing clients.  But if they can’t get on board a positive culture transformation, I have news for you—he or she ain’t your Most Valuable Player.

Culture is everything.  Sales numbers don’t drive culture—culture drives sales.  Allow a prima donna to smirk on the sidelines while everyone else is hard at work building something new and the tail is wagging the dog. 

As your new culture takes root, your “star” will fast be eclipsed by the skyrocketing productivity of those who had been in his shadow—and you’ll have everything to gain and very little to lose by telling your star player, in no uncertain terms, to get on the team bus or hit the showers.

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The Terrible Trio—Vampires, Victims, and Whiners (oh my!)

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
© Rinderart | Dreamstime.com

© Rinderart | Dreamstime.com

Part 3:  The Whiner

Ah, whiners.  Instead of telling you what can be done, whiners spend hours vividly outlining what can’t be done and why. Had whiners ruled the world, we’d still be sitting in our caves, huddled around the fire complaining that we can’t find the remote control.

Whining is an attempt to “one-up” others by dismissing all possibilities before anyone has a chance to make a suggestion. Oddly enough, while a whiner’s statement may sound definite, the bluster is actually born of insecurity. Although they have enough mental sharpness to point out problems, they don’t have enough confidence to work at resolving them.  Many people who grow up to be whiners learned early on in life that they could get more attention and by voicing a complaint than by trying to correct a situation.

There isn’t much room for someone like that in a workplace where team members want to rock or in an office where everyone is willing to carry their weight and then some.

Of course, this is not to say that there will never be any whining again, ever. Sometimes it goes with the human condition.  And if we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we’ve ALL have had our moments of whining.

We all have our occasional pity parties or bouts of attention seeking. Despite our knowing how whining can negatively impact others and render us ineffective, there’s a remote chance we might once again choose to uncork that bottle of whine. We’re only human.

Although the ugly truth is that there’s nothing attractive about whining, there are ways to prevent and avoid the condition in ourselves AND in others.  The key is to name it, to make it public, to give ourselves and others permission to laugh it away.

Forge an agreement in your workplace to drive whining away once and for all by flashing the “W” sign—three fingers extended—whenever anyone starts to whine, moan, or groan.  It’s a humorous, non-threatening reminder to stop whining and start creating a solution.

Whenever someone gets the sign, they must agree to stop IMMEDIATELY.  The usual result is a good-natured laugh.  Make sure you distribute the sign evenly around the office—don’t gang up on a single person—and be sure to handle your own occasional dips into Whine Country with good humor and honesty.

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Posted in Culture Transformation, Employee Engagement, Improving Morale, Motivating Employees, Personal Transformation | No Comments »

The Terrible Trio—Vampires, Victims, and Whiners (oh my!)

Friday, February 26th, 2010
© Lisavan | Dreamstime.com

© Lisavan | Dreamstime.com

Part 2:  The Victim

The second in our three-part series on energy drains in the workplace is the perpetual victim—the person who is always yammering on about the crud hand the world has dealt them.

Their past jobs lost, their failed marriages, their C in Chemistry and their FICO score that looks like a batting average are all on the topic list, and most importantly, all the fault of someone else.

Onlookers have no difficulty in figuring out who really ruined the victim’s life. She did. She did it by not moving on and by choosing to stay miserable.

Victims remain victims because they receive feedback that supports their victimhood.  This support comes from others who are often well-meaning and unconscious of the negative impact.

When perpetual victims complain about how awful their lives are, their supporters support them by buying into it. “Yep,” they’ll say, “Ain’t it just awful.” That’s all the positive reinforcement the victim needs, as off they go seeking the next hit of YPT (You Poor Thing—their drug of choice).

A person who supports a victim in that way is not really a friend but an enabler. Sane and loving people will distance themselves from victims precisely to help them stop being victims.

So what do you do when a victim comes to you and complains yet again about something someone else or some other department did? It’s easy. Place accountability for change back on that person. “Sounds like an opportunity, really. What are YOU going to do to make sure that doesn’t happen again or to make peace with it so you can move on?”

Victims hate that—but it’s the intervention they need. They either have to stop being a victim and draining your energy, or find someone else who is a willing enabler to victimhood. Either way, you win!

Another strategy is to appeal to their inner ego, no matter how deeply buried, to contradict the self-image as a victim. “You’re pretty powerful,” you say, “so I know you don’t view yourself as a victim. I can’t wait to hear what you’re doing to make the situation better!”

The person must either admit to helplessness and weakness or seize on your appraisal of strength.  Ninety-nine out of a hundred will go for the strength.

If you’ve done everything you can to reprogram, empower, and redirect a perpetual victim, the next step is simple avoidance. Steer clear of the person so that you can preserve your own energy.  If they seek you out and begin their monologue, simply raise one hand, silently, and continue on your way.

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