A few weeks ago I wrote that money isn’t the best motivator, lots of people have written posts with a similar theme and the idea is backed up by solid research.
But I saw a great video on the subject at Feld Thoughts and thought I’d share it with you.
(I’m not sure which I like more, the presentation or the technology that animates the whiteboard:)
Do you use stories automatically in discussions and conversations? I do and have for years.
Brain research has proven that stories get your point across better and it is remembered longer.
Many cognitive scientists believe stories are so accessible because they’re the way we make sense of the human world. … Stories grab our attention because there is nothing of more interest to us than the actions of other people.
While people are often the bane of managers, their growth, triumphs and ah-ha! moments, small and large, provide much of the joy found in performing a management role well and stories are one way to increase the joy.
Stories increase the joy because they boost management success; simple enough.
How do you know which story to tell?
By taking the time to know your audience and choosing a story that will resonate with them—even if you have to take a little creative license.
For example, if your audience is comprised of mostly twenty-somethings and the main character in your story is sixty-something they may focus on the age and dismiss the important part. So update the story with slight changes that makes it feel more relevant.
Of course, if their eyes glaze over during the telling you can be pretty sure you chose the wrong story. Rather than continue to the bitter end, break it off and come back to the subject from a different point and at a different time.
How do you know if the story worked?
The same way you know if any of your efforts work—watch the results.
Do you run a small or medium business (SMB)? If so, do you have a senior staff?
“Senior staff” doesn’t necessarily mean a bunch of vice presidents (for convenience I’m using that title), but it does mean the top people in your company who manage different functions (with or without staff). They are the people you rely on
as a sounding board;
for both tactical and strategic intelligence;
to tell it like it is—even when you don’t want to hear it
to see and understand the big picture;
to lead the effort in employee acquisition, motivation, and retention;
to support and strengthen the culture she envisioned;
to not sabotage another group or start a turf war, and
to help stamp out politics whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head.
And more, but you get the idea.
How to build your senior staff
The first item on your agenda is to determine what parts of your business/company beyond the standard finance, development, marketing, sales should report directly to you for peak performance. You don’t want a function that is absolutely critical to your success reporting through or responsible to someone else (agendas do get in the way).
It may be customer service (or whatever it’s called); it could be IT; if you are large enough to have someone handling HR it should definitely report directly to you.
Support functions, such as HR, are often left to report to someone else, which can prevent you from knowing what is really going on.
Where does one find talented VPs? Now and then you’ll be lucky enough to actually hire someone complete with all the bells and whistles that you want, but it’s more likely that you will find someone with the right potential.
Be aware that the main thing that separates good senior staff apart from other managers is a strong strategic ability, which means they see the entire team and understand how their department or area fits into the whole.
I’ve known many C-level executives who never grasp this, as well as director level and lower managers who get it.
All your staff needs a real understanding of business, including financials, and it’s your responsibility to make sure that they get whatever training and information is needed to do their job as a member of your senior staff.
Further, if you want the most powerful senior staff possible cross train them in each other’s functions and challenges.
Think of the phenomenal value of a finance person who understands the intricacies of manufacturing as more than a set of numbers; a head of product development who understands financials, customer service and inventory turns; an HR head who understands what actually happens in the different departments, etc.
Think of the power inherent in a senior staff that understands what it takes to turn an idea into a product and a product into revenue.
Think of what a difference it will make to your ability to do your own job, not to mention the overall success of your company.
Sunday I quoted Colin Powell on this subject and it reminded me of this article. I don’t remember where it was originally used, but it dates back to the dot-bomb recession.
It’s “And” Not “Because”
Last week I attended a quasi-social business function and found myself in conversation with a very knowledgeable and polished executive. When I asked him what he did he said, “I’m not working, I’m looking for my next opportunity.” His answer floored me and I asked again. His initial reaction was to repeat himself, assuming that I hadn’t heard him (it was noisy), but my continued look of inquiry finally brought a second answer, “I’m a CFO.”
It’s sad enough that people choose to define themselves based upon how they earn a living, and very bad when, as in the conversation mentioned above, employment becomes the career validation without which the career ceases to exist. However it’s much worse when people take another step and subconsciously merge their identity with that of their company—I call it ego-merge.
I coined the term in the eighties to describe a state of mind that is not only unhealthy for individuals, but also damaging to the companies for which they work.
Ego-merge is the result of melding “me” and “my company” in the mind of the employee, whether worker or manager. It’s most obvious in tough times and most noticeable in conversation when people use “because” instead of “and,” thereby crediting the company or manager for their skills: “I’m great because my company/manager is great.” instead of, “I’m great and my company/manager is great.”
At first glance ego-merge might actually seem to be a positive for companies, but it’s not. When employees’ egos merge with their company’s, they often blame themselves for the company’s problems even when they have little power and may not have any line responsibility. Worse, it can be a major productivity sapper when times are tough—employees with ego-merge have a difficult time believing that they are good enough to help turn the company around, since in their minds their skills are good because of the company.
Ego-merge is often the by-product of the best companies/managers, where people are very involved, have high esprit de corps, and are passionate about their mission and success. It also happens with more Machiavellian managers who try and foster this attitude within their organization as a retention tool. Ego-merge does, in fact, encourage people to stay, but it also cripples them and reduces their long term value to the company.
It’s every company’s/manager’s responsibility to help their people grow and become stronger, not to subtly cripple them in the hopes that they won’t leave. Better, it’s in both the manager’s and the company’s best interest to become people-builders.
Why? Because reputation, both the manager’s and the company’s, is everything when hiring, and being known for your great G&S (grow and strengthen) policies will help you attract, develop and keep the best and brightest. Sure, you’ll lose them now and then when they’re ready for the next challenge and you can’t provide it, but the benefits resulting from their ultra-high productivity and creativeness during the time they’re with you will far outweigh the loss when they do leave.
How? Through some simple actions. G&S isn’t rocket science, nor does it have to be costly.
Treat everyone on your team and in your company with the same level of respect you want.
Listen to your people. Encourage and assist them as much as possible in developing the skills they need to take their next step—even when it makes your life a bit more difficult.
Always remind them that for all their successes, challenges, and failures it’s “and” not “because.”
But what if you’re a manager pushing G&S down while your own manager is either blind to it or the type who sees ego-merge as a plus? What can you do as just a worker with no control or leverage?
Awareness is the best protection against ego-merge. Recognize that it exists, understand what it is, know its symptoms and whether you’re prone to it, then monitor yourself, always remembering that the opposite of ego-merge is not arrogance.
Post a watch for the first symptom of ego-merge: when your glow of accomplishment for an exemplary project you did is quickly quenched by negative internal news or media coverage. The greater the offset the greater the ego-merge.
Listen to yourself. When describing a project (successful or not) or coup (large or small), listen to how you describe it and where and how you attribute its success or failure. Adjust accordingly.
Offset and reduce ego-merge in others by publicly giving full credit to those around you at all levels up and down for their contributions.
I’ve worked with startups for many years, first as a headhunter and later as a coach. My company is in the process of launching Option Sanity™, an incentive stock allocation system based on founder/company values.
People join startups for many reasons and one is the possibility of substantial financial rewards; they take a sizable risk that only pays off if the company is acquired or goes public.
But what of the gigantic payouts public companies are giving execs who took no real risk and whose actions aren’t actualy responsible for the stock price.
Stock granted when the market is down, as it is in any recession, goes up no matter what management does or does not do. Yes, management skill can drive it higher, but, as the old saying goes, a rising market lifts all boats and that is whether the skipper has a clue or not.
This recession is no different; in fact the payouts are going to dwarf anything seen previously. They may not equal the obscene bonuses paid by Wall Street, but they are pretty obscene in their own right.
An Associated Press analysis of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index shows that 85 percent of the stock options given to CEOs last year are now worth more than they were on the day they were granted. For some the value jumped by a factor of 10 or more. An Associated Press analysis of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index shows that 85 percent of the stock options given to CEOs last year are now worth more than they were on the day they were granted. For some the value jumped by a factor of 10 or more.
I’ve never met workers who thought they should earn what their bosses earned, but they do what they hear in the news to make sense when measured against the company’s success.
I doubt anyone inside or outside of Apple has ever questioned Steve Jobs’ value when they hear about his compensation.
Carol Bartz received $47.2 million in 2009, 90% from stock options that went up primarily because the market did.
I wonder how motivated Yahoo employees are knowing that.
Companies are pushing managers to do more with fewer resources than ever before.
Managers are searching for ways to motivate their people in a world where bonus money has dried up.
But for many employees it isn’t about money. Today’s workforce is far savvier and as long as they see that management, especially executive management is taking a similar hit, relatively speaking, they are willing to push through if their primary desires are satisfied.
In my 20+ years as a recruiter I found that people want to
make a difference;
be treated fairly; and
matter [to boss and colleagues].
There are other things you can do to show your appreciation and motivate your people without killing the budget, but they are worthless if you don’t supply the three on the list.
Assuming they are functional in your organization, what else can you do to tangibly show your appreciation, reward effort, lighten deadline-induced stress and just have fun?
Here’s a starter list to get you thinking
Chocolate—in any form.
Beyond chocolate use any/all kinds of food, fruit, cheese, etc.
Coupons for iTunes.
Buy stuff that can be taken apart so that each part becomes a prize. People can trade and swap parts with each other to complete their thing faster. (Small fountains, gadgets, etc.)
Buy annual family memberships to various museums, zoos, etc. (several to each). Most offer special visitation nights to member-only exhibits and holiday showings. (The memberships may even be tax deductible.) Use the specials as rewards along with loaning out the regular memberships.
Create company money worth $X that can be added together and redeemed for cash to use as they choose. You can have different denominations that add up over time with a max of ten bucks. Remember, it’s not about money it’s about fun.
Take the team to lunch for hitting deadlines.
Have one or more daily hero awards with a special trophy or cap to wear the following day.
Give annual Hero Awards (like the Oscars) at an awards dinner (maybe combine with your Holiday party). Projects and sales worked on could be like movies with various categories. Employees do the voting. This balances the instant gratification with longer term rewards.
Whatever you do, don’t forget your admin and support staff. They usually get left out of rewards/motivation programs, but they shouldn’t—they are the oil that keeps that machinery humming and things won’t run smoothly without them!
What do you do, or would like your manager to do in the line of motivation? Please take a moment and share your ideas with other readers.
A reader called me to get some help with a problem she was having with her team. After dealing with the specific problem (too specific and too sensitive to address here) we talked generally about building and managing teams. She said she had searched ‘team’ on my blog before calling and found the information useful and asked it I could recommend some additional reading. Searching Google returned way too many results, so I promised to send her some links.
Now, it’s always nice when someone else does your work for you and I knew that in this case Becky at LeaderTalk would do mine for me.
I knew because her theme this month was about teams and so I thought I’d share that list with all of you.
First up is a post by Mike Henry, Sr. about the Lead Change group and their efforts to create a team of like-minded people who make a difference through leadership. The post includes a link to the team’s new free e-book. If you are not familiar with this group, check them out; you can join the group on LinkedIn.
Tom Glover has written some fantastic content about teams at his Reflection Leadership blog. I couldn’t choose only one post to include here, soreadthemall.
Here’s a post from last summer at the LeaderTalk blog about how to create alignment on your team.
This post from Steve Roesler is hot off the press, published last night. Be sure to read “What to Look For in Teams” for advice from Steve that is spot-on, as usual.
It’s always nice to have your opinion reinforced by experts, which is how I feel about this guest post from Sean Conrad. Follow the advice and watch your people soar.
Performance management and performance appraisals are often dreaded by managers and employees alike. They can be perceived as an administrative burden that provides little benefit, and can even be destructive to morale and productivity. But done right, performance appraisals can be a powerful management tool that drives employee performance and engagement.
To make them effective, managers and employees need to view performance management as an ongoing, collaborative process and not a once a year, top down activity where the manager rates the employee’s performance over the previous period and sets goals for the next.
Managers and employees should be encouraged to keep a “performance journal” all year long that captures details on performance highlights and challenges. This makes it easier to write the annual appraisal because it captures details as they happen, not as we recall them later. But more importantly, it helps managers and employees to flag and deal with any issues or challenges early on, before they become big.
Employees should also be invited to complete a self-appraisal to share with their manager before their formal appraisal meeting. The form they use should include all the same sections as their formal appraisal form and even allow them to suggest development activities and goals for the coming period. This helps increase employee engagement in the process and gives them a voice. But it also minimizes “surprises” at review time; it’s a great way to identify differences in perception in advance so they can be dealt with effectively.
Another way we can foster this ongoing dialogue is by scheduling regular “mini review” meetings, where managers and employees touch base, review progress and performance, and make any adjustments necessary. Some companies formalize this with quarterly reviews.
Managers and employees also need to adopt a partnership mindset when it comes to performance management that says: “This is not a test. This is how you and I (manager and employee) work together to ensure your success, and the success of the organization.” Performance, goals and development activities need to be discussed collaboratively. Both parties need to be engaged and committed to each other’s success.
If we change the way we think about and approach performance appraisals and performance management in general, we can reap the significant rewards offered by these valuable activities.
If you were the boss and 40% of your employees said they were more interested in non-monetary rewards and felt that evaluating them on a single factor for jobs that required multiple skills were unfair would you proceed anyway with merit pay based on a single factor and expect it to be a good motivator?
That is the basic question in the drive for merit performance for teachers.
Teachers don’t want to see their students judged on the results of one test and they also want their own performances graded on multiple measures.
Most value non-monetary rewards, such as time to collaborate with other teachers and a supportive school leadership, over higher salaries. Only 28 percent felt performance pay would have a strong impact and 30 percent felt performance pay would have no impact at all.
The biggest problems with merit pay is defining and applying valid measurement of success.
For example, only 6 percent of teachers surveyed said graduating all students with a high school diploma was one of the most important goals of schools and teaching, while 71 percent said one of the most important goals was to prepare all students for careers in the 21st century.
Whereas standardized test are the holy grail of school administrators.
Merit pay has a checkered background whether you are looking for proof that it works or proof that it doesn’t.
The problem isn’t the money, it’s the structure put together to award it.
Keeping it fair means keeping it free from political pull and other forms of favoritism. It means acknowledging that teachers can’t control what is happening to the kids in their classes and finding a way to account for that.
“Your mother and father just got a divorce, your grandfather died, your boyfriend broke up with you: those kinds of life-altering events have an effect on how you do in class that day, through no fault of the teacher whatsoever.” –Debra Gunter, middle school math teacher in Cobb County, Ga.
One survey result was surprising because it actually creates more work for teachers, but it was held by the majority.
A majority of teachers surveyed said they would like to see tougher academic standards and have them be the same in every state, despite the extra work common academic standards could create for them.
This definitely makes sense, especially given the mobility of the US population, but it’s unlikely to ever pass muster with state and local school administrators. It would also be interesting to see how it flies helicopter parents, considering it’s their complaining that has fostered termination of “tough” teachers.
Money has always been the quick fix, used by managers and parents alike, to achieve their desired ends, even though there is no proof that it is effective or sustainable. And there is no reason to think that teachers are any different.
I think that if the structure and standards aren’t improved along with embracing merit pay then success is unlikely.
Office politics has many definitions, but one characteristic remains constant—your ‘voice’ is positional. In other words, your ability to be heard is based on your position in the pecking order. Ideas below X level are ignored, between X and Y are acknowledged, Y to Z are heard and sometimes implemented.
But to have a full voice you either need to be part of the C suite or a “star” (stars below the Y level are scarce as hen’s teeth). Some argue that star systems are merit-based, but that argument falls flat if only those at a certain level are heard.
Few people like office politics and its presence has always been responsible for a large percentage of turnover.
One way to substantially reduce office politics in your organization by making sure that everyone has a voice.
Even in highly political corporations individual managers can improve their team’s performance and retention by making sure ideas receive a fair hearing no matter who thinks of them.
It’s easier when you are a first line manager, because you have only yourself to blame if a pecking order establishes itself in your group. If it does happen have a candid talk with the mirror and decide what’s important to you and what you want your ‘management brand’ to be known for.
As you move up, with one or more layers of management below you, it becomes more difficult because you are working to propagate an attitude that may not be wholly shared by those who report to you.
Your success depends partly on how consistent your own actions are and partly on what procedures you create to reinforce the desired behavior.
One of the most successful approaches is to tie bonus compensation to measurable results for soliciting suggestions from all levels and let VSI do the rest.
Of course, as with health, it is better route to prevent office politics than it is to cure it once it gets a toe-hold.
Simply put, that means not hiring managers at any level whose past behavior reflects the wrong attitude. You have two methods to accomplishing this. Obviously, it is something to discuss when doing reference checks.
But more importantly, if you make it clear during interviews that part of the candidate’s compensation depends upon it. It’s amazing how quickly a candidate will withdraw when her pay depends on a behavior with which she doesn’t agree.
Do you use stories automatically in discussions and conversations? I do and have for years.
Do you run a small or medium business (SMB)? If so, do you have a senior staff?
Here’s a starter list to get you thinking
Performance management and performance appraisals are often dreaded by managers and employees alike. They can be perceived as an administrative burden that provides little benefit, and can even be destructive to morale and productivity. But done right, performance appraisals can be a powerful management tool that drives employee performance and engagement.
That is the basic question in the drive for merit performance for teachers.
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