Monday, April 29, 2013

The Top 9 Things That Ultimately Motivate Employees to Achieve

The Top 9 Things That Ultimately Motivate Employees to Achieve



When you wake up in the morning, what is the passion that fuels you to start your day?  Are you living this in your work?   If others asked you what drives you to achieve, would the answer be obvious?   The triggers that motivate people to achieve are unique for everyone.  Many would say its money; more people are starting to claim that they are driven to make a difference.  Regardless of what motivates you and drives you to reach peak performance – it must be managed and balanced.  Too much motivation in one area will weaken other parts of your game.

Motivation has been studied for decades and leaders in the workplace have used assessments like DISC and Myers-Briggs to determine their employee’s personality types to better anticipate behaviors and tendencies.   Additionally, motivational books are used as tools to get employees to increase their performance and / or get them back on track.    While assessments, books and other tools can help project and inspire short and long performance, the factors that motivate employees to achieve evolve as they mature and begin to truly understand what matters most to them.  Therefore, as leaders we must hold ourselves accountable to build meaningful and purposeful relationships that matter with our employees.  This allows us to better understand those we are serving, just as much as ourselves.

To help you get the most from your employee relationships, here are the nine (9) things that ultimately motivate employees to achieve.  As you read this, think of how you associate with each of them.  Share your story and perspectives – and comment about it.  This is a hot topic and the more we can discuss it, we can help one another become better leaders.

1.       Trustworthy Leadership

Leaders that have your back and that are looking out for your best interests – will win the trust of their employees who in turn will be more motivated to achieve.    I once had a department manager that always looked out for me.  He was upfront in communicating his performance expectations and his feedback was direct.   He never treated me like a subordinate and looked for ways to include me in senior management meetings.  This opened my eyes to what lied ahead in my career and thus motivated me to reach the next level and in the process exceed the expectations of my boss.

Trust is a powerful motivational tool and those leaders that are more transparent with their employees will find surprising results and new types of opportunities to develop talent.

2.       Being Relevant
In today’s world where everyone wants to be noticed and recognized for their work – employees are motivated to achieve to remain relevant.   As such, employees are in search of new ways to learn, improve their skills and invest in themselves.   This is an opportunity for leaders to get involved and understand how to build the depth and breadth of their employee’s skill sets and aptitudes.  For example, find ways to elevate your employees’ high-potential status.
Helping employees increase their relevancy is important and those leaders that participate in this process will help cultivate increased performance levels and loyalty.  Helping your employees get discovered will elevate their motivation to achieve.
3.       Proving Others Wrong

This particular motivation to achieve has been heighten as of late from younger professionals that seek to prove themselves faster amongst older generations in the workplace.   Employees never want to be stereotyped or marginalized, but for many younger professionals this serves as the trigger to awaken them from within.  This certainly is not a generational issue as many of us have been questioned about our ability to achieve at a high-level.  I learned this the hard way throughout my career.   For example, as a former C-level executive (in my early 30’s) and later as a successful entrepreneur – people begin to envy and / or doubt me thus igniting my hunger and drive to over achieve.
As a leader, don’t just read the assessment scores, get to know those whom you are leading and be specific about how you help each of them achieve their goals, desires and aspirations.   The objective should be to help one another and to accomplish this each of you must identify those things that motivate you both to work together.
As a leader, encourage your employees to exceed expectations by taking responsible risks.  Embrace diverse thinking and measure one’s ability to innovate.  Never underestimate an employee’s ability to perform until you have properly evaluated and tested their abilities and potential.
4.       Career Advancement
Perhaps the most important factor on this list is the ability to advance.   Employees are extremely motivated to achieve if this means that advancement awaits them.   This requires employees to be mindful of opportunities that lie around, beneath and beyond what they seek.  As leaders, you will sustain high levels of motivation from your employees if you can open doors of opportunity and accelerate their chances for advancement.  Remember, just because your employees may be relevant, it doesn’t guarantee advancement.  So make it a point to help them get there.
How proficient are you at seeing and seizing opportunity?  If you haven’t taken my assessment, I suggest that you do (click here).   Over 200,000 people have taken it and less than 1% of them have ever scored over 35.

5.       No Regrets

People only have a few real chances in their careers to reach their ultimate goals.   In fact, how many times do you meet people that are more successful than you are and you wonder how they got there.   People don’t want to live with any regrets in their career/life and thus are motivated to not disappoint themselves.
As a leader, don’t allow your employees to walk around carrying a load of guilt.  Share your journey with them – your failures and successes.   An employee that doesn’t believe will never achieve.    Help your employees embrace the unexpected and help them navigate uncertainty and change.   Many people are confused in today’s workplace about their future.  Motivate them by giving them the perspectives they need to achieve.

6.       Stable Future
People are motivated to have safety and security.  Everyone wants a stable future, but you never know when time will pass you by.  That’s why we are all in a race against time and thus motivated to achieve faster than ever before.   We have all learned from the 2008 economic collapse that we can all quickly become victims of unexpected change without preparation.
As a leader, be mindful of providing security and stability in how you lead your employees – and watch their motivational levels rise.

7.       Self-Indulgence
This factor is quite interesting and extremely important to put into proper perspective.   People are motivated for selfish reasons to achieve – albeit money, attention, fame, etc.    Must we be reminded that greed and selfishness contributed greatly to America’s current economic hardship?
Motivation that satisfies our self-indulgence is can also be risky.   In reminds me of a great quote from Peter Drucker in his book, “The Effective Executive” when he says that every time you meet a person with great strengths, you are also meeting someone with great weaknesses.
As a leader, be aware that of your employees motivations are balance and well intentioned.   Self-indulgence can bring tremendous short term benefits – with longer term repercussions.

8.       Impact

As mentioned earlier on, today’s employees are motivated to achieve more than ever simply by the opportunity to create impact.    As employees reflect on their lives and careers – they want to contribute in ways that measure their achievements based upon the long-term benefits that the company they serve bears.
As a leader, allow your employees to have sustainable impact in the work they perform.  Allow them to make a mark toward significance.   Create the opportunity for their achievement to leave a long lasting legacy that rewards the organization they serve and for future generations to learn from.
9.       Happiness
In the end, happiness is one of the greatest motivations to achieve.  Happiness fuels ones self-esteem and gives people hope for a better tomorrow.   We are all victims of taking our work too seriously.   Step back and enjoy the journey.  Your motivation to achieve is ultimately based on earning a living that brings you tremendous joy and satisfaction.
As a leader, be aware of whether your employees are satisfied in their work and that you are deliberate in having this type conversation with them.  Never assume.   Employees will smile to save their jobs even if they aren’t content.   Assure your employees happiness shines and allow the previous eight motivational factors to influence the process organically.


By: Glen Llopis

Source: Forbes

Friday, April 26, 2013

3 Ways Great Leaders Hold Themselves Back



3 Ways Great Leaders Hold Themselves Back

Are you getting in your own way? You might be shooting yourself in the foot if you're guilty of these three things.


Leadership is tough, and often confusing. To use two metaphors that frankly shouldn't be seen on the same page together, being a leader often feels like you're the only one driving northward in a southbound lane; or that you've suddenly found yourself alone, paddling a canoe through snaking river rapids. In fog. At night.

It's difficult enough to lead, even at the best of times. The information leaders receive is imperfect and rarely timely, the resources they have at hand are usually insufficient for the challenge ahead. And in the heat of execution, communications are often garbled, imprecise, or ambiguous.
So it's distressing to watch when a leader makes their already highly stressful and complicated job close to impossible by adding self-imposed-- albeit subconscious-- constraints on their ability to lead well. And surprisingly, leaders do precisely that, all the time.

In my work as an executive coach, one of the first things I have to ascertain are the ways in which a leader is making their job even more difficult, simply by getting in their own way. The ways in which this happens are manifold, of course, but three of them recur so often as to make them a useful starting point for your own self-analysis:

1. Bringing hidden presuppositions to important decisions.
I see it all the time: a team of key executives get together to make a decision about an important issue or initiative, and the discussion is free, open, honest and engaged.
Pretty good, huh? What else could you reasonably expect?
Well, here's the kicker: the discussion, great as it might be, only covered about 20 percent of the waterfront. Because of the presuppositions of one or more of the leaders (usually based on their personal history, experiences and preferences, some or all of which may or may not be relevant to the matter under discussion) a whole bunch of possible solutions or actions never even reached the table. 

Presuppositions are slippery things. By their nature they are almost always held subconsciously (which means we don't recognize the need to take them into account). They're usually deeply felt. Most damagingly, their relevance to a specific subject matter is rarely challenged.
Try this: next time you have an important issue under consideration, take five minutes to reflect and write down all the presuppositions you're carrying in your head regarding that decision. Don't edit your thoughts, don't justify or defend them. Bring them with you to the meeting, and air them with your colleagues. You'll almost certainly have a much deeper, richer and effective discussion as a result.

2. Planning based on people rather than roles. 
The new strategy should include $10 million in new sales targets, but you know your sales manager doesn't have what it takes to get you $10 million in new sales.

The next version of your product really should be two pounds lighter, but you know your head of product design doesn't have what it takes to deliver that.
I see leaders hobble their businesses all the time because they make strategic decisions based on what their team can deliver, rather than what the market is demanding and what their business should be delivering in response.

If you have people in roles that aren't capable of delivering what that role should, your first priority is to upskill, coach, mentor or hire that skill into your organization. Not to lower your strategic goals and settle for what the existing team can deliver for you.
Yes, I know-- glib, and easy for me to say. But here's the thing: your competitors aren't beating you because they caught a lucky break. They're beating you because they have better people. Because they took the time to work on their team, and didn't compromise their strategy.

3. Welding delegation to trust.
 Trust is a good thing. Trust builds loyalty and welds a bond of valuable sweat equity between the trust-er and the trust-ee. Trust also makes leaders lazy and teams weak. Why? Because it develops in the leader a default reaction when something important needs done--give it to the trusted colleague.
And a few months later, the trusted colleague is overworked, resented by others on the team and the leader has no greater bond of trust with the team as a whole than they started with. The next time you find yourself turning to "old reliable" to get that vital task done, remember this. You're subconsciously abdicating one of the most important tasks of leadership: The hard work involved in building and spreading trust in your team as a whole.



By: Les McKeown


Source: Inc.


Monday, April 22, 2013

Good Employees Make Mistakes. Great Leaders Allow Them To.


Good Employees Make Mistakes. Great Leaders Allow Them To.


As a business leader, I found that one of the scariest things to do was to give your people the freedom to make mistakes. While mistakes allow individuals to learn and grow, they can also be very costly to any company. Scared as I was, I knew that truly great leaders found ways to allow their people to take these risks, and I genuinely wanted to be a great leader. I wanted to help my employees to grow. So I set out to discover how to accomplish this without placing my company in jeopardy.
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”  - Meg Cabot
I quickly discovered that the first step was to determine the areas of the business where a mistake could take place without causing too much damage. I took careful attention to make sure that any areas where we would damage our clients and the trust they had placed in us were off limits for significant risk without serious executive involvement and oversight. I identified other areas where I could feel more comfortable allowing people the freedom to experiment on new and better ways of doing things.
The second step was to communicate to the employees that we were setting an official company policy:  Making any mistake once was OK, so long as it was an honest mistake made while attempting to do what they felt was the right thing. Making any mistake once was OK, but repeating that same mistake a second time was NOT OK. The hard, fast rule was that if you made any mistake for the first time the entire team would have your back in fixing that mistake if anything went wrong. However, if you ever repeated the mistake a second time, then you were 100 percent on your own to face the consequences.  This rule applied for every first-time occurrence of each new mistake you made.

We all make mistakes. Every one of us. If we aren’t making mistakes, then we likely aren’t trying enough new things outside our comfort zone, and that itself is a mistake. That process is the best way to learn and grow as a person.  As John Wooden once said, “If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything.” Mistakes are the pathway to great ideas and innovation. Mistakes are the stepping stones to moving outside the comfort zone to the growing zone where new discoveries are made and great lessons are learned. Mistakes are not failures, they are simply the process of eliminating ways that won’t work in order to come closer to the ways that will.

1.       Learn from them:  Good employees recognize that they have, in fact, made an honest mistake.  They do not get defensive about it, rather they are willing to look objectively at their mistake, recognize what they did wrong, and understand why their choice or actions were the wrong thing to do.
Great leaders allow their people the freedom to make mistakes. But good employees are those who when mistakes are made 1. Learn from them, 2. Own them, 3. Fix them, and 4. Put safeguards in place to ensure the same mistake will never be repeated again.
2.       Own them:  Good employees take accountability for their mistakes. They admit them readily.  They don’t make excuses for their mistake, rather they acknowledge that yes, they made a mistake and they express openly what lesson they have learned from that mistake. They go on to express steps 3 and 4 below.
3.       Fix them: Good employees do what it takes to rectify their wrongs. They are willing to do whatever they can to fix the problem and make it right. Certainly there are times when the damage is done and recompense cannot be made, but good employees do their very best to repair whatever damage has been done to the best of their ability. They always establish a timeline with follow up for when the problem will be fixed and make sure that progress is communicated throughout the process so everyone feels the urgency and care with which they are correcting the problem.
4.       Put safeguards in place to ensure the same mistake will never be repeated again: This is the most critical step in the learning process. When a mistake has clearly been made, the most important thing anyone can do is figure out what safety nets and roadblocks can be carefully established to ensure that this same mistake will never take place again. Document this step so the lessons learned and the safeguards setup can always go beyond you. Do everything in your power to help others learn from your mistake so they don’t have to experience them on their own to gain the lesson you’ve learned.
The steps to correcting mistakes apply to any area of life. Whether it’s business life or home life or personal life, the principles of apologizing remain the same. Good employees make a lot of mistakes, and truly great employees are those have mastered the art of apologizing for those mistakes:
Great People Practice The Six A’s of a Proper Apology:
  • Admit - I made a mistake.
  • Apologize - I am sorry for making the mistake.
  • Acknowledge - I recognize where I went wrong that caused my mistake to occur.
  • Attest - I plan to do the following to fix the mistake on this specific timeline.
  • Assure - I will put the following protections in place to ensure that I do not make the same mistake again.
  • Abstain – Never repeat that same mistake twice.
People who implement the Six A’s will find that the level of trust and respect others have for them will grow tenfold. People who implement the Six A’s will find that others will be quicker to forgive them and more likely to extend a second chance. It’s not the making of a mistake that is generally the problem; it’s what you do with it afterward that really counts.


By: Amy Rees Anderson

Source: Forbes



Friday, April 19, 2013

The 5 Biggest Misconceptions About Success


The 5 Biggest Misconceptions About Success


Success has become an overly and not always appropriately used buzz-word in life nowadays. That is because the very concept is often muddled by myths which cause people to approach their goals the wrong way.
Here are some mistaken perceptions you need to avoid if you want to stay on the right track.

#1: You Just Have To Go Through The Motions

Here’s a basic truth: The world will not make it easier for you to succeed. The path isn’t laid out for you, so you can’t expect stellar results with half-baked efforts.
As a wise man once said, “Do or do not. There is no try.” Life has a way of dealing in absolutes, especially when it comes to making a name for yourself. Never assume that you just have to show up and everything will follow. Nobody got to where they are without shedding blood, sweat and tears.

#2: You Can Do It Alone

It’s one thing to rely on your own strengths to succeed; believing that you already know everything is another matter entirely. Success doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and there are other people in the scene that can enrich your existing knowledge.
It isn’t wrong to acknowledge that other people’s perspectives can inspire you and help come up with new ways to succeed. The first step to broadening your horizons is by simply asking other people about their own ideas.
Have the initiative to ask for their input and learn what you can from them. You might be surprised by how much you’ll grow after circulating within your professional community.

#3: There Is No Margin For Error

Ok, so maybe life-and-death scenarios do exist, but most of the time, making mistakes won’t mean the end of the world. Of course, there will be a time when you’re not supposed to screw up, but this doesn’t apply to all parts of your life.
Expect to make a handful of mistakes along the way. Only through hands-on experience will you learn the right way to do things. You might think you have it all figured out – especially when you’re just getting started – but doing it in the real world will reveal unforeseen factors which you didn’t take into account. This is why trial and error is an essential part of the learning process.
Remember, it’s not about the mistakes you make, but rather how you make use of the lessons you’ve learned from them.
However, don’t think this is an excuse to be mediocre because the point is to always give it your best shot. If you miss the mark, take notes and do it again.

#4: You Need To Keep At It Non-Stop

In the long run, it’s important to be consistent with your efforts and maintain the desire to succeed. However, perseverance should also be tempered with knowing when to take a step back and reflect.
What does this mean? There’s nothing wrong with taking a short breather to give yourself a chance to see where you’re at. Part of succeeding is about re-evaluating your current approach every now and then.
Are you still using the most efficient way to meet your ultimate goals? You might find that you can refine what you’re doing by reflecting for just a bit. This also prevents you from developing “tunnel vision”.
At the most basic level however, you also can’t ignore the need to recharge your batteries. Regardless of everything else, there is a physical aspect to your being so you need to take care of yourself through proper rest and eating well. In the big picture, this is a good investment because getting sick could throw a wrench in your plans.

#5: You Can Slack Off Once You’ve Reached The Top

You know how they say that it’s not the journey, but the destination? Success is awesome, but it’s not the end-all, be-all. It’s not just about hitting a target – it’s also what you do after you’ve reached your initial goals.
Are you just going to take it easy and switch off your “motivation switch”? Or are you going to make new goals and challenge yourself? These choices represent your desire to grow as a person.
Sure, you don’t always have to move on to a new project right away, but it is important to ask yourself “How can I do things better?”
Here’s the thing: people change, whether you like it or not. Think about it – are you the same person that you were 10 years ago?
We’re never static and always remain in motion. Even after you’ve earned your first million, you’re either moving forward or backward. Although you should never take your current success for granted, you do need to understand that everything you do in the present will either help you evolve or decline.
Besides, you’re not the only one – the rest of the world is also in a state of constant change. This means you need to avoid being complacent to stay on top of your game and adapt to ever-shifting circumstances.


In many ways, long-term success is not just about adding another trophy to your collection. In the greater scheme of things, it boils down to maintaining the same attitude and mindset that made you successful in the first place. The way to do this is to stay sharp, stay hungry!


By: Joel Brown

Monday, April 15, 2013

Leadership Tip: Hire the Quiet Neurotic, Not the Impressive Extrovert


Leadership Tip: Hire the Quiet Neurotic, Not the Impressive Extrovert


Most leaders are attracted to the guy or woman who seems confident and outgoing, unafraid in any situation or facing any challenge. They expect an extrovert to infuse any team with energy, to push ahead on projects and to motivate colleagues to do their best work. Meantime they have low expectations of anyone who appears neurotic, who seems withdrawn and too anxious to live up to their potential. Leaders expect neurotic employees to contribute little and to drag down colleagues’ morale.
Not true, says a new study by Corinne Bendersky, an associate professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. In a paper called “The Downfall of Extraverts and Rise of Neurotics: The Dynamic Process of Status Allocation in Task Groups,” Bendersky and co-author Neha Parikh Shah, an assistant professor at Rutgers Business School, explodes stereotypes about how extroverts and neurotics perform on teams. It turns out that extroverts contribute less than team members expect and the contributions they do make are not valued highly over time. Neurotics, by contrast, are motivated to work hard on behalf of their teams, who wind up appreciating their efforts, in part because they exceed everyone’s expectations. In the end, extroverts decline in the teams’ esteem while neurotics rise in status.

After the personality assessments, they had the students predict how they thought their team members would influence their groups and how team members’ status would play out in the process. The more extroverted the student, the higher their peers rated their expected influence and status. The neurotics got much lower ratings.
To reach these counter-intuitive conclusions, Bendersky and Shah ran two experiments. In the first one, they broke 229 MBA students into study groups of five people and surveyed their personalities. To determine whether students were extroverted, they asked them if they agreed with statements like, “I like to have a lot of people around me,” “I really enjoy talking to people,” and “I like to be where the action is.” To identify neurotics, they used lines like, “I often feel tense and guilty,” “Sometimes I feel completely worthless,” and “When I’m under a great deal of stress sometimes I feel like I’m going to pieces.”
Then Bendersky and Shah waited for the ten-week academic quarter to pass and went back to the students to ask them how their team members had done. It turns out the extroverts disappointed their peers and lost status in the group as a result. The neurotics, by contrast, exceeded expectations and contributed more generously to the group than anyone had expected, driving their status up over time.
In the second experiment, Bendersky and Shah set up an online study with 300 people who were told they needed to make an urgent request for help preparing a work presentation from a colleague named  John, who they didn’t know well. The survey described John as either extroverted, introverted, neurotic or emotionally stable. The survey then reported that John answered the request, either saying he was too busy to help much or that, even though he was busy, he would help as much as needed.
After the response from John, the survey asked about the respondents’ perception of John. As with the first experiment, respondents expected a lot from the extroverts and evaluated them quite critically if they gave an ungenerous response. By contrast they expected little of the neurotics. The ungenerous neurotics didn’t change much in the eyes of the respondents while the generous ones leapt in status. “The neurotics are rated as being more generous and exceeding expectations for the exact same response,” explains Bendersky.

The lesson of the study: Bendersky says team leaders should be wary of extroverts. “The core of an extroverted personality is to be attention-seeking,” she observes. “It turns out they just keep talking, they don’t listen very well and they’re not very receptive to other people’s input. They don’t contribute as much as people think they will.” If she were putting together a team, says Bendersky,“I would staff it with more neurotics and fewer extroverts than my initial instinct would lead me to do.”
What does this mean for team leaders? Bendersky says they should rethink their assumptions about how extroverts and neurotics will perform. “The extroverts are probably going to contribute less to the team and the contributions they make will be undervalued by the team,” she says. “They will do less and what they do will be under-appreciated.”  By contract, neurotics are motivated by their anxiety and feelings of inadequacy to work hard on behalf of the group. Meantime the group appreciates neurotics’ contributions because they exceed people’s low expectations.
The paper will be published in the April issue of the Academy of Management Journal.

By: Susan Adams

Source: Forbes