Motivating Employees
Posted by Craig Langdon
It´s time to step it up a level.....
Last time I talked about how to motiviate employees and how your direction and behaviour affects your employees and more specifically their behaviour. People tend to reflect the attitudes and actions of both their leaders and their peers. Therefore what you do will be accepted as a way to operate within your business.
In this article I would like to cover how you and your employees can now "step up to the plate" and establish a way that you want to work together in the future.
But before we do this I would like to tell you a story that a man I once met told me about how he got his 15 year old son to do what he asked him time and time again without complaint. He achieved this amazing feat; not through threats or bribery but through the simple application of creating expectations.
Creating expectations
The example that he used when he told me this fantastic technique was about how he would get his son to mow the lawn by a specific time on a specific day. Quite an achievement when I think of some of the teenagers that I have me recently. The conversation went as follows:
Dad- Hey Jason can you mow the lawn this weekend?
Jason - Sure no problem. I´ll get on to it later.
Dad - We are having guests over late on Saturday afternoon do you think you could have it done by 5pm?
Jason - ah... yeah I guess.
Dad - What time do you think you need to start if you need to be finished by 5?
Jason - Well it takes about 2 hours so I suppose if I start at 3pm then it should be done on time.
Dad- Fantastic, what do you think you will need to make sure that the mowing goes smoothly?
Jason - I guess you could check there is fuel for the mower and that it starts.
Dad- Sure, no problem, I´ll do that for you, and hey Jason, thanks in advance, I know you are going to do a great job!
What happened here?
Within this story there are some very subtle but powerful, positive, motivating behaviours being demonstrated by the father. Initially he raises a challenge - mowing the lawn. He then creates a time frame without being forceful or too demanding - Saturday by 5pm. But perhaps the most important thing he then does is figures out if there are going to be any challenges to completion of the project. This is where he demonstrates real leadership, understanding the needs of his son and that there may be obstacles to getting this done on time. As the relationship develops, he may even pass the potential obstacles back to his son so that he becomes even more able to get things done successfully on his own.
Is this method completely fool proof, the answer is no. But is this father creating a person that is able to think on his own, create solutions and work to a deadline? The answer is a resounding yes! Any mistakes along the way will be part of the development process, but the end result will be more rounded, forward thinking individual.
So how can this be applied to you and motivating your employees? The answer lies in the creation of expectations with your staff. Take a moment now and think back to when you last sat down and created a specific series of goals and milestones for a project or behavioural change initiative.
Simple goal setting
This type of planning is best achieved in a one page document that quite simply outlines the goals, milestones, potential obstacles and an action list with specific target dates. You should be able to read this in less than a couple of minutes and will give you a great opportunity to discuss and resolve issues before they occur.
The end result will be employees that know exactly what is expected of them and how they can go about achieving the goals. If they have problems, then they will be able to talk with you about them specifically, and allow you to focus on what is important to make sure that the project goes ahead before any catastrophes occur.
I know myself, when I have specific goals with timeliness I am much more focused and able to concentrate on the most important tasks. I am very confidant that your employees will feel the same way too.
