Daniel Pink offers up some interesting thoughts on why carrots don’t bestow the benefits of employee engagement.

The idea that carrots aren’t the best management approach isn’t new, but he points out something that is often overlooked.

We forget that mastery is something human beings seek because we’re human beings. We like to get better at stuff, because it’s inherently satisfying. That’s why people do recreational sports, why people play musical instruments on the weekend, why people do crafts and things.

However, I do believe that rewards have their purpose, not as the motivation to do something, but as the acknowledgement that it was done well.

If that were not true then all of the various competitions associated with what people do on their own time for pleasure wouldn’t exist.

We humans have a strong tendency to compare what we do with similar things done by others.

We treasure not only the prizes, trophies and ribbons of our more formalized efforts, but also the everyday comments when others recognize how well we do it.

From the outside you may not see much difference between carrots and acknowledgement, but when you are on the receiving end the difference is glaring—and the difference is in the presentation.

Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.”

Managers who cling to carrots instead of acknowledgements are crazy.

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What are your goals in 2011? Hike productivity? Juice creativity? Motivate your people? Strengthen retention?

Whatever they are, the best way to accomplish them is to engage your people.

Uninspired advice, since you hear it all the time, but this is a great time to actually start the wheels of engagement turning.

And you do it through conversation—face-to-face, verbal conversations with your team—whether it’s composed of the company VPs or a small group of staffers.

Notice the emphasis on ‘conversation’ which, in this case, means everyone talks.

First you describe the goals, not a laundry list of everything that needs to be done, but specific goals that you honestly believe can be accomplished in 2011, with a subset for Q1.

Then you shut up and listen to your people.

Not just let them talk, but really listen and hear what they are saying, even when what’s said doesn’t agree with your ideas.

But if you shut up and hear nothing then recognize that for what it is: a great insight into the culture you created, not to mention the fear and distrust in which you are held.

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I really enjoy Dan McCarthy over at Great Leadership; we may not always agree, but he has never wasted my time and I always learn something.

Saturday was no exception and I want to share the survey Dan posted, because I think it’s of major importance whether you are a manager or a worker.

Engagement is high on management’s list of preferred employee attitude, but management seems to have a disconnect when it comes to how to engender it.

Too many managers choose to ignore that the most basic, necessary ingredient in engagement is trust and, for good reason, trust is in short supply these days.

04.14.2010 – A new Maritz® Poll conducted by Maritz Research, a leader in employee satisfaction research, paints a dire outlook of American workforce attitudes toward employers. Employees’ trust toward their workplace has taken a severe hit, with employees across all industry segments citing a lack of trust in not only senior leaders, but direct managers and co-workers as well.
According to the poll, few (11 percent) employees strongly agree their managers show consistency between their words and actions. In addition, only seven percent of employees strongly agree they trust senior leaders to look out for their best interest, and only seven percent strongly agree they trust their co-workers to do so. Approximately one-fifth of respondents disagree that their company’s leader is completely honest and ethical, and one-quarter of respondents disagree that they trust management to make the right decisions in times of uncertainty. While workplace trust has been dwindling since the Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco scandals of the earlier part of the decade, threats of layoffs and downsizing have only exacerbated the problem.
“In times like these, trust is an especially critical issue. Companies need their best people more than ever to be engaged and productive. But, often, this process starts at the top,” says Rick Garlick, Ph.D., senior director of consulting and strategic implementation, Hospitality Research Group, Maritz Research. “You’ve got to maintain credibility with your workforce as a means of getting them to totally buy in to the mission and vision of your company. Anything less fosters a disengaged workforce that puts self-interest at the top of its list of priorities.”
In cases where management trust was strong, the study found that employees were significantly more committed to working for their companies. More than half of respondents (58 percent) with strong trust in their management were completely satisfied with their job, while only four percent of respondents with weak trust in management cited they were completely satisfied with their job.
The study also revealed:
• Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of respondents with strong trust in management would be happy to spend the rest of their career with their present company. This compares to only seven percent of respondents who have weak trust in management.
• More than half of those surveyed (51 percent) with strong management trust would invest money in their company if they could versus only six percent of those surveyed with weak management trust.
• Only three percent of respondents with weak management trust look forward to coming to work everyday. For those with strong management trust, 50 percent responded they look forward to coming to work everyday.
Which Industry Fares Well? Hospitality Employees and Its Customers
While the survey suggests there is room for improvement across all sectors, the hospitality industry seems to have some advantages over others. For example, hospitality employees (14 percent) are more likely than other industry segments (9 percent) to rate their company as a “fun place to work.” Hospitality sector employees also tend to rate their companies better on customer service-related issues and the impact they make:
• More than one-third (34 percent) completely understand how their work impacts customers’ experiences, compared to only 23 percent in other industries.
• Twenty percent believe they have the authority they need to respond promptly to customer problems and requests, versus just 15 percent of respondents in other industries.
Approximately one-fifth (21 percent) of hospitality respondents believe their customers would rate the service they deliver as excellent, compared to only 14 percent of respondents in other segments.
However, there is room for improvement. Only 15 percent of employees agree that their company has the policies, systems and procedures in place to deliver outstanding customer service.
“With the hospitality industry taking one of the biggest hits due to poor economic conditions and negative perceptions, it is promising that employees feel positive about the connection of their daily work to customer service issues. But, it is still not a rosy picture when it comes to engagement. The results show that a lack of trust runs rampant in this sector as well, which impacts employees’ perceived long term career development opportunities, co-worker relationships, and productivity levels,” says Garlick.
Don’t slash that recognition program
The weak economy forced companies to cut costs across the organization. And, unfortunately, formal recognition programs were frequently sacrificed. More than one-third of respondents (33 percent) cited their company scaled back or eliminated their recognition program in the past year. There is some data, at least from the employees’ perspective, to suggest these cuts have had an impact on the quality of service they deliver to customers. Among employees whose companies kept recognition programs intact, 25 percent strongly agreed their customers would rate their service as excellent. Among those whose companies cut back on their recognition programs or never had one, only 14 percent strongly agreed customers would rate their service as excellent.
“Recognition programs are critical to demonstrating to employees that they are valued and appreciated for the work they perform. It’s an important engagement tool, as it helps to reinforce messages about how people are making an impact,” says Garlick. “This is a wake-up call for management teams that consider employee recognition programs as expendable. Not only do recognition programs positively impact employee engagement levels, they ultimately lead to positive customer service perceptions, which impact the bottom line.”
About Maritz® Poll
Maritz® Poll is a copyrighted poll conducted since 1988 by Maritz Research. Maritz Poll comprises regular surveys on topics related to the automotive, financial services, hospitality, retail, technology, and telecommunications sectors as well as workplace issues. This poll was conducted March 1-5, 2010. The 2,004 respondents were people who were employed full time and drawn from a national e-mail panel. Sampling error for the overall poll is +/-3 percent. Results of the poll may be used in print or broadcast media, provided credit is given to the Maritz Poll and/or Maritz Research.
About Maritz Research
As one of the world’s largest marketing research firms, Maritz Research, a unit of Maritz, helps many of today’s most successful companies improve performance through an actionable understanding of their customers, employees, and channel partners. Founded in 1973, Maritz Research offers a range of strategic and tactical solutions concentrating primarily in the automotive, financial services, hospitality, telecommunications and technology and retail industries. Maritz Research projects are carried out in compliance with the International Standard: ISO 20252:2006 Market, Opinion, and Social Research Standard. Maritz Research is a member of CASRO and official sponsor of the American Marketing Association.

If trust is lacking in your organization don’t go looking for a quick fix.

Trust is the opposite of weight; gaining weight is fast and easy, while losing it is slow and difficult. Trust can be lost in the blink of an eye, while regaining it may never happen.

In conjunction with this read Why Are Fewer and Fewer U.S. Employees Satisfied With Their Jobs? (don’t skip the comments), a current discussion from Dr. James Heskett, Harvard Business School.

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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.

Sean Conrad works and blogs for Halogen Software. He writes about performance appraisals and other talent management topics for the Exploring talent management blog. Further resources can be found in Halogen’s Performance Management Center of Excellence.

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Engaging your people is a priority these days, but to do it you must foster an environment of trust, where the messenger is never killed and people feel safe saying what they really think. It also helps if you have the kind of ego that doesn’t stand on its dignity.

Here is one approach.

Start with how many times you have said or heard people say ‘should have’, as in “We should have…” or “My boss should have…?”

What if you could harness the creativity behind those thoughts to improve performance in an organization (whether team, executives or somewhere in-between)—the company’s; the group’s; the individual’s; your own?

The idea is to take that “should have’ attitude and make it a constructive function to foster corporate/personal growth and motivation, since the more comprehensive the view of their job and company the more creative people will become.

Drawing in all your people, no matter their level, encourages them to see a larger picture, juices creativity, surfaces ideas from unlikely sources and enhances their sense of ownership, i.e., engagement.

Improvement happens because how they think is the basis for how they perform.

If your MAP makes you the type of manager to whom this appeals then encourage your people to ask

• “Why did she do that?”
• “What can I learn from his decision?”
• “What would I have done differently?”
• Later ask, “Would it have worked?”

Discuss the responses and implement the insights.

For more great stuff on engagement, click over to Becky Robinson’s LeaderTalk for a roundup of articles on engagement from some terrific bloggers.

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Do you know the 7 most important words a manager at any level should know?

The 7 words that make the difference between engaged, turned on, motivated people and those that spend their time polishing their resumes?

The 7 words that make you a hero to your team?

The 7 words that enhance your reputation and improve your paycheck.

The 7 words that are equally applicable in your personal life?

Did you know that interchanging just 2 of the 7 words can turn you into the boss/parent/friend from hell?

Have you figured out the 7 words?

Hint: the 7 words describe two critical actions that we all do every day in one way or another.

Still don’t know? The 7 words are

PRAISE IN PUBLIC AND CRITICIZE IN PRIVATE

Practice these 7 words faithfully and watch the the positive changes happen!

(My apologies for the lateness of this post, but technology doesn’t always work!)

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Here are 7 words that describe 2 management actions.

Embrace the words; let them guide your actions and watch your team’s productivity skyrocket and turnover plummet.

The actions are painless and they work.

PRAISE IN PUBLIC AND CRITICIZE IN PRIVATE

Isn’t that simple?

Now DO IT!

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Company culture is a hot topic in the business press; CEOs are working to foster “cultures of innovation;” and culture is being lauded or blamed for a variety of happenings.

The bird’s eye view of what’s important in culture is as varied as the executives, academics, pundits, media and other experts who expound on the subject.

But what about the worm’s eye view—what do plain vanilla employees think and want? It’s important, since without them there is no company.

It used to be when I talked with people that it was easier for them to articulate the attitudes and behaviors they didn’t want to encounter in the workplace.

Even today, with a far more savvy and sophisticated workforce, people still tend to focus first on what they don’t want:

• Too much politics: personal, group, or in senior management.
• Unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Poor management practices such as erratic management; intimidation; micro-management; belittling or contemptuous treatment; poor scheduling; no loyalty; the attitude that “we don’t have enough time to do it right but we have enough time to do it over;” workaholism; etc.
• Any form of harassment, whether overt or covert
• A generally negative attitude, i.e., the glass is half empty
• Arrogance or an elitist attitude.
• An unwillingness (at whatever level) to seek and implement the compromises necessary to meet most of the organization’s needs within the required timeframe.

But when you get them to focus on the positives, the sophisticated and savvier mindset of today’s workforce is even more obvious when discussing the factors they desire.

Here are some of the high points that people say they want for themselves and from their managers and company:

• The opportunity to truly “make a difference.”
• To be treated fairly.
• To trust the management and be trusted by them.
• To embrace the idea that work can and should be fun.
• Accurate prioritizing of company, team, and individual goals while keeping them synergistic.
• A positive “can-do” attitude (aggressive, but realistic—the glass is half-full).
• Continuing development and quality improvement in people, products and services, and processes.
• Committing to employees, customers, and investors—and meeting those commitments.
• An open, accurate, company-wide flow of information starting from the top.
• An environment that encourages people to reach their full potential, professionally and personally.
• A conscious effort to stamp out “not invented here” syndrome (in all its varied forms) so as to not waste time reinventing the wheel.

There’s great value in this worm’s eye view. By eliminating what employees don’t like, and giving them what they want, you create a foundation on which to build the kind of innovative, profitable culture—the kind craved by investors, customers, and the rest of the outside world.

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Yesterday I described how managers can use ALUC (Ask / Listen / Use / Credit) to engage their teams, whether or not the approach is supported by the overall company culture.

But think how much better it would be to have ALUC embedded in your culture as a part of its infrastructure.

ALUC isn’t something that can be mandated, even by the CEO.

All the proclamations, recommendations and demands aren’t going to force managers to do it if they don’t see the value or their MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) isn’t synergistic with ALUC.

What you can do is instill its value in those managers who report to you; they, in turn, pass the belief to their direct reports and so on down the ladder.

But how do you embed ALUC up your culture?

As Nike says, ‘just do it’—don’t talk about it—and it will spread by osmosis.

ALUC is a major productivity and retention booster, the results will speak for themselves, the how-to will be questioned, copied and implemented.

ALUC should also be a ‘make or break’ for all new hires in management roles, confirmed not only during the interview, but also through reference checking of previous direct reports, not bosses.

Not rocket science; most of the best cultural practices are simple, ignored, but simple.

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Every manager loves the folks who come to work champing at the bit, raring to go and bust their butt all day long. They love to talk about the high level of engagement their team has and brag about their productivity and innovative ideas.

If you want a group like this then make no mistake, It’s your responsibility to engender that attitude, i.e., engage them.

It’s not going to happen by accident and you can’t order your people be engaged.

Engagement happens because you, and hopefully your company are engaging.

This isn’t doubletalk or smoke, think about it. Think about what engages you.

• The guideline is the same thread that has run through every major philosophy and religion for thousands of years—treat your people s you want to be treated—whether your boss treats you that way or not.

• Authenticity is the current buzz word, but it translates simply to be honest, open and do what you say; never fudge, let alone lie, intentionally or otherwise.

• There are absolutely no circumstances that warrant or excuse the messenger being killed. None. Because if you do, there’s no going back—ever.

• If your company doesn’t have an engaging culture then you must be an umbrella for your people, because you can create one below you, even if you can’t change it above.

While managers may not be able to control overall corporate culture there are many things they can do within their own group’s culture to foster engagement.

The number one approach is to show your appreciation of your people. Study after study confirms employees’ desire to feel valued; to make a difference and be credited for it. But how, with budgets cut below bone level?

Here are four simple actions that you can implement at no financial cost and that don’t require approval from anyone.

• Ask everyone for input, ideas, suggestions and opinions—not just your so-called stars.

• Listen and really hear what is said, discuss it, think about it.

• Use what you get as often as possible, whether in whole or in part, or as the springboard that leads to something totally different.

• Credit the source(s), both up and down, publicly and privately, thank them, compliment them, congratulate them.

If you’re sincere, you can’t lay it on too thick; if you’re faking it, they’ll know.

And if you’re stupid enough to steal the credit for yourself in the mistaken name of job security you’ll have the fun of explaining to your boss the plummeting productivity and soaring turnover that accompanies the thefts.

Think ALUC; pin a note on your wall that says ALUC.

Ask!

Listen!

Use!

Credit!

ALUC will make you a winner.

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