by Diana Southall | Jul 7, 2015 | culture, job fit
Perhaps you are you frustrated by a poor performer, so you avoid her as much as possible (you don’t want to be mean.)
Or you are getting tired of mentioning the same instructions to the new employee, so you have stopped giving him guidance at all.
Or you are “too busy” putting out fires and responding to urgent requests, so you have little contact with your staff other than the hallway.
After all, your employees should know their jobs and should know the company’s goals, so why do you have to keep reminding them?
Ignoring your team members is actually 20x worse than being a critical boss!
In fact, a recent study of employees found that of employees who feel ignored by their direct manager only 2% reported being engaged with their job, compared to 45% of employees who report their boss focused on their weaknesses, and 65% of those with a positive focused manager.
Almost half of these “invisible” team members reported to be “actively disengaged” – meaning that they consciously perform lower – versus 1% of those with positive managers.
Seriously, if you are not coaching your team then they are like a boat without a captain—sailing towards the horizon with no particular place to go. (I just watched Pirates of the Caribbean again- what a fun study in leadership!)
To be effective, team members need to be
Still worried about coming off as mean or critical?
The data is pretty clear—even the negative manager has about half his team pulling in the right direction. This is a huge improvement from 45% pulling in the wrong direction when they are ignored!
So definitely work on your own development to be a positive focused manager, but don’t be afraid to start talking to your team. (See our video training for a simple system to do just that.)
{Graph from Zenger Folkman “Extraordinary Leader” webinar series}
by Diana Southall | Sep 25, 2014 | culture, job fit
Want passionate engaged employees?
Then you need a passionate engaged manager with great leadership and coaching ability. One who focuses on productivity, accountability, and also cares about and builds trust with his or her team.
According to Gallup research, they say only 10% of people have the innate talent to do this, and that about another 20% can be effective if they are provided coaching and development to hone these elusive skills.
Gallup found 5 key behaviors that differentiated great managers from the poor ones (quoted verbatim):
- They motivate every single employee to take action and engage employees with a compelling mission and vision.
- They have the assertiveness to drive outcomes and the ability to overcome adversity and resistance.
- They create a culture of clear accountability.
- They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency you could check here.
- They make decisions based on productivity, not politics.
If the Fortune 500 can’t find good managers, how can your firm?
The good news is that people exist in your organization and in your neighborhood with these talents. The trick is to find them, develop them and give them a good team to work with.
If you have one or more managers, here are your action steps to find out if you have the right person in the right role:
- Evaluate your current team for job fit (those in manager roles and those you see a high potential for that role in the future)- using a combination of personality assessment, performance analysis, and co-worker feedback
- Coach and train you managers to build relationships (focus on the people) while emphasizing productivity and accountability (focus on the task)
- Move those that are not succeeding in the role to another position
If you do not develop great managers, you are guaranteed to disengage everyone and are likely lose your top performers. They will leave to find a better manager somewhere else.
Read full Harvard Business Review blog article
Photo Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
by Diana Southall | Jul 31, 2014 | culture
Hundreds of studies have demonstrated that the most critical factor that impacts employee productivity, performance, retention and engagement is the relationship between an employee and his or her direct manager. As the book title clearly states “people leave managers, not jobs”
What can you do to transform your interaction and dialogue away from being a “manager” to being a coach and leader?
Brendon Burchard created an enthusiastic 11 minute video to outline 6 steps. Here are excerpts from this video below.
After watching the inspiring video- here are 6 things you do to implement this compelling model:
- Envision– Clearly (decide) define your vision for the organization, and outline your core values (I will give you bonus points if you involve your team in this process )
- Enlist– Share this vision in the most visual and engaging way and then ask “will you join me”
- Embody– Create a list of behaviors that embody your core values and then demonstrate them and recognize them <quick recognition template> and ask for feedback when you are not walking the talk
- Empower– Consider the language of your feedback, and modify to do more coaching less managing (nagging, bossing) and have more frequent and open dialogues
- Evaluate– Employees want frequent, honest, appreciative feedback — formalize your management rhythm- with weekly conversations, monthly touch points, quarterly action plan updates
- Encourage– build in storytelling, recognition, celebration into your team updates agendas and process (think about little league)
Practice One: Envision The reason we say envision versus just have a vision is it’s a practice of envisioning – “what should tomorrow look like for my team?”
Practice Two: Enlist A great leader is always enlisting other people to believe in the dream, to shape the dream, to stay dedicated to the dream.
Practice Three: Embody as leaders we have to stand for and demonstrate and show and portray what we are really believing in
Practice Four: Empower Training other people and equipping them with everything they need to succeed has to be a vital practice of every great leader.
Practice Five: Evaluate Ethics and Progress That evaluation also brings up the incredible challenge that we face as leaders, which is to give honest, direct, immediate constructive feedback to those who are trying to influence and lead.
Practice Six: Encourage To encourage, to be the champion. To be the cheerleader. To be the person always motivating, inspiring, uplifting people.
Watch this video
Read the transcipt
Image Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
by thepeopleplan | Jul 24, 2013 | culture
Our prior article “What Drives Engagement?” listed the top 10 engagement drivers.
Two areas impact employee perceptions of their relationship with the supervisor (category 3):
1. Good relationship with supervisor
According to author James Robbins in his book “9 Minutes on Monday,” trust is the key component in a good relationship with your direct reports. He suggests a weekly “walkabout” to spend a few minutes talking informally with one team member to discuss something personal (not about work!) to show that you care.
2. Input into decision-making in my department
You don’t have to abdicate a decision to employees to get their input and improve their perceptions of “having a say.” Read our related post about “Total Reward #5 Autonomy” that shows a graph of the continuum of decision-making involvement
Three steps you can take NOW to improve employee perceptions of their relationship and role with (you) their direct manager:
- Schedule a time each week to do your “walkabout” to chat about the personal life of one employee.
- Find one moderately important decision you need to make soon, hold a meeting where you outline the issue and ask everyone to give input, discuss the ideas without “shooting them down” (you can share your thoughts and why you are considering this approach), and be sure to thank everyone for their contributions.
- After you have made the final decision, communicate this with your reasoning, again with recognition and appreciation for everyone’s input.
Article for more reading:
How to be a Better Boss in 2013 by leadership expert Jack Zenger (great tips here based on study of thousands of managers rated by their employees!)
by thepeopleplan | Apr 16, 2013 | culture, job fit, performance
In a study by the Labor Relations Institute of NY, managers selected what they thought employees valued most, and then asked employees what they valued:
Manager /Employee rank- Job Reward
- 1/ 5- Good wages
- 2/ 4- Job security
- 3/ 8- Promotion and growth
- 4/ 9- Good working conditions
- 5/ 6- Interesting work
- 6/ 7- Personal loyalty to workers
- 7/10- Tactful discipline
- 8/ 1- Appreciation for work done
- 9/ 3- Sympathetic help with personal problems
- 10/2- Feeling “in” on things
You can see that the TOP 3 for employees were listed as the BOTTOM 3 in the eyes of managers. Hmm.. I wonder how much time and effort these managers put into these “bottom” rewards if they consider such each a low priority?
As a specialist in compensation, we regularly visit prospective clients who are convinced that their organization needs to pay more to attract, retain and motivate their team members. (And some of them do indeed have issues with pay below the market or internally inequitable.)
However, if your pay is fair for the work you expect and compared to others in your organization, one of the best investments you can make in building a terrific team is with recognition.
Recognition is practically free and creates an immediate impact such as:
- reinforcing company values
- aligning employee efforts to achieve organizational results
- appreciating specific employee efforts (then they continue to do these)
- modeling what ABC- attitudes, behaviors and contributions are valued (others start doing these)
- creating a positive work environment and culture (as more employees demonstrate the desired ABC’s and are recognized for them)
(Manager Survey Source: Foreman Facts, Labor Relations Institute of NY, 2004)
For a Quick recognition template view our 4/23 blog post
Image courtesy of watcharakun at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
