Posted by Celia Couture on Thu, Feb 25, 2010 @ 11:35 AM
The January/February issue of Harvard Business Review wrote a great article entiled, "What Really Motivates Workers?" by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. I found the central theme of the article quite interesting. Most leaders assume that employees are motivated by money, reward systems or recognition. I would have agreed with them, but the study conducted by Amabile and Kramer over a multi-year study in a wide variety of industries found that workers are MOST motivated by "progress."
Workers want to feel that at the end of a work day they are making a difference in their jobs, or when they receive support to overcome obstacles and their energy level is at its greatest when their "drive to succeed is at its peak." Worker are most disheartened when they feel demotivated or when they are somehow thwarted in their efforts to make forward progress. There exists an inherent connection between employee motivation and meeting job objectives. Even minor accomplishments help workers feel good about what they do.
So why is this important for leaders to know? The key to helping your employees become more motivated and emotionally invested in the job is in your hands! Managers have total control over helping their employees achieve goals. You can provide guidance, assist them with overcoming obstacles in their work and you can encourage them to succeed.
It also means that you have to be decisive, adhere to goals and objectives and hold employees accountable for results. Changes in the work place requiring shifting of responsibilities, downsizing or reorganizing are the most difficult times to keep employees motivated. During these times, continue to make sure that employees are focusing on the goals. Celebrate progress often and on a regular basis and your employees will continue to achieve progress on a daily basis.
Posted by Celia Couture on Tue, Nov 03, 2009 @ 09:30 AM
This week's Harvard Business Review played tribute to Peter Drucker, the role model for our current guidelines for leadership greatness. Current Harvard Business School Professor, Rosabeth Moss Kanter was asked in an interview for the article, What she thought Drucker would make of the recent economic troubles, "His first comment might be 'I told you so,'" she writes in "What Would Peter Drucker say?" In the article Kanter points out that as early at the 1980's Drucker warned that companies would pay a price for allowing executive pay to get out of control and creating compensation systems that encouraged manager to take excessive risks and focus too much on the short term.
Drucker was a man of vision whose predictions about the auto industry collapse, competition from global markets challenging U.S. dominance would ultimately impact and blur our ability to recover quickly. After all these years, running a successful business continues to rely upon the ability of the organization to have a strong purpose.
Business models have drifted away from this very sage advice. We tend today to want to find someone to "blame" for our challenges. Drucker's work was dedicated toward looking at the entire enterprise--trends, organizational design, norms, processes and routines. He also reminded us that it is the responsibility of CEO's to challenge! The article also talked about the importance of both long and short term goals as they relate to the organization's mission and vision.
During crisis situations we can take our eye off the ball, but that leads to confusion, discord and anxiety. Executives constantly have to ask themselves if they are making the right decisions. As an executive, you need to utilize the talents of the management team around you. If you can't make mid-course corrections you really run the risk of failure.
Posted by Celia Couture on Thu, Sep 03, 2009 @ 08:41 AM
This blog is a continuation of an article written by Rosabeth Moss Kanter for the Harvard Business Review. Hope you enjoy the lessons learned!
"Business leaders who operate from a sense of values and purpose - a theme of my new book SuperCorp - are similarly able to win adherents and negotiate better deals, because they suspend ego in support of a cause larger than themselves. By working for others rather than scrambling for career advantage, they enhance their own reputations. And the work is more important than title or position. Ted Kennedy will go down in history as the Lion of the Senate and one of the most important figures of our time, although he was not the President, nor even the "CEO" of the Senate or his party. His mission gave him moral power as important as position power.
Keep going. Ted Kennedy faced numerous public crises, any one of which could have destroyed him, yet he proved resilient and able to learn. Through strong efforts on behalf of the greater good, he restored confidence in his leadership. The still-mysterious incident at Chappaquiddick in which a young woman drowned nearly drowned his career, too; far from showing courage, he ducked accountability. But Kennedy bounced back by redoubling his efforts to do his job well. He fumbled in his bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1980, but recovered by devoting even more energy and passion to his work in the Senate.
Never forget family. The hard-working Kennedy was a model for executive dads. De facto father to several touch-football-game's worth of children (his own and those of his late brothers and formidable sisters), he organized weekend outings to Civil War battlefields and made sure they studied their history lessons. Family was at the center of his satisfaction in life. At the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port, which I toured with him, he showed pictures of the late President John F. Kennedy and late Attorney General Robert Kennedy and talked of them as if still alive. The consummate professional whose greatness grew every year was still, at heart, a family man. His concern for relationships, and the love that guided his family through numerous tragedies, gave him the strength to take on tough challenges.
Business leaders should heed that lesson above all: Performance, mission, and endurance are possible because the people we support and care about also support us."
Posted by Celia Couture on Tue, Sep 01, 2009 @ 08:36 AM
I found this article written by Rosabeth Moss Karter. Ms. Karter is best known as the master of change for companies and organizations. With the death of Ted Kennedy this past week. Ms. Karter highlights some of the many leadership traits that she acknowledges is uniquely tied to former Senator Kennedy's success as a leader. Hope you enjoy reading this. The article is in this month's Harvard Business Review. Since the article is rather long it will appear as two different blogs.
"Senator Edward M. Kennedy, whose loss America is mourning, was no darling of the traditional big business community. He fought for the little guy, for children, for the poor and disadvantaged, sometimes against establishments and elites.
But as a leader, he was greatly admired across the political spectrum. Even those who disagreed with his politics can draw inspiration from his life. From knowing and observing him, I choose four leadership lessons I hope executives will take to heart.
Remember that performance is everything. No one is entitled to a position. When Ted Kennedy won his Senate seat for the first time during the Presidency of his brother, Jack Kennedy, critics said that he inherited his position in the family business and bought his way into the Senate through favoritism. Critics dismissed him as a weak younger brother who would be merely a celebrity Senator. How wrong they were. Ted Kennedy's route to the Senate stopped mattering once he began performing for his constituents and collaborating with his colleagues.
Kennedy did not rely on dynasty as destiny. He rolled up his sleeves and mastered the details, and he kept studying and learning as the issues changed. No one is entitled to a top executive position; everyone has to earn it through his or her deeds, and each is only as good as his or her command of the issues. When Mitt Romney challenged Kennedy for his Senate seat in 1994, the pivotal moment of their debate - which probably won Kennedy re-election - involved Kennedy pressing Romney for specifics on his health care plan, with Romney finally admitting he hadn't worked out all the details. "Well that's what you have to do with legislation," the Senator replied. Kennedy knew the job. His career rewards followed from his service. His career rewards followed from his service.
Even when Kennedy could not move the needle forward on really big change (health care reform), he supported incremental improvements (children's health insurance), which meant that he survived in office long enough for his big agenda to come close to being enacted.
Find a higher purpose. Think values first, and suspend ego.Ted Kennedy believed in public service as an honorable profession and in government as a vehicle for helping all citizens get their chance for high quality of life. Once he found his core mission (after losses and setbacks), it was clear where he stood and who he stood for - other people who needed a voice because they couldn't always speak for themselves.
This was not about Ted Kennedy or his ego. He was known for humility, graciousness, and geniality in the Senate; he was not engaged in partisan contests to win for the sake of winning. The goals were so important that he was willing to work with political opponents to reach agreement on measures that served the people. His work with Republican Senator Orrin Hatch was a model for collaboration that transcended ideological disagreements. He supported President Bush's No Child Left Behind legislation for school reform; the cause of children was so important that he would rather compromise and get a little something done than prevent any action. Negotiating by calling on higher principles made him effective with principled members of the other party.
Posted by Celia Couture on Fri, Aug 14, 2009 @ 01:12 PM
Persistence
"Persistence is what makes the impossible possible, the possible likely, and the likely definite." By Robert Half, personnel executive.
This is sage advice for leaders at all levels of an organization. If you are not successful at something one day, you can't let that one incident influence how you will approach the problem the next day. Being a Red Sox fan, watching the Sox drop 7 straight to the Yankees and the Tampa Bay, I have to admit was a downer. I was, however, impressed by the attitudes of the Red Sox Players. They viewed the succession of events as simply an anomaly and these things happen in baseball. They have full confidence that if they persist in playing the game the way they know how they are certainly going to come back and be in contention.
Whether they make it or not, this attitude is indicative of a strong personal and team effort. We can either throw in the towel or learn from our mistakes and keep going. It's really no different than following a rigid diet plan. Just because you have a piece of chocolate cake after losing 50 pounds, you are not sabotaging your success. You merely have to pick up the next day and continue to pursue those things that made you lose the weight in the first place.
Think about this advice the next time you are working with employees who are particularly down about their jobs. Part of our role as leaders is to ensure that we maintain a positve and persistent attitude even when times are tough.
Posted by Celia Couture on Wed, Aug 12, 2009 @ 01:03 PM
One of the most important activities you perform as a leader in your company is the role of the trainer. If an employee feels secure in the role that he is performing for you, he is more likely to succeed and contribute at a higher level. Oftentimes, we leave the training to another member of the team and although this is a good way to augment training, the employee should feel that their manager is invested in helping them to succeed. Remember also that regardless of how long an employee has been in a job, anytime you introduce something new in the way of products and services, the employee needs time to LEARN how best to position the product or service, how to answer questions and most importantly how best to feel comfortable fielding questions. Please keep the following in mind to ensure that you meet your most vital task as a manager:
- Be Patient and Be Available: Employees require time and energy when learning a new product or service or when they are new to a job. Give them the time to feel comfortable. Repeat instructions if necessary, cater to how the employee learns. Some would rather read a book of documentation, some would prefer hands-on training and other need a bit of both. Whatever the style, the manager must ensure they are willing to devote energy to the learning.
- Have a Plan: One of the most frustrating parts of learning from someone who is disorganized is that the facts become jumbled and the learner gets confused. As a leader, you owe it to your employee to be organized and to have an agenda or an outline of what needs to be taught and in what order. If you are training an employee on a particularly difficult tasks with many steps make sure you break down the steps in to bite size pieces so that the employee feels comfortable swallowing the information.
- Teach By Doing: Many employees are also visual learners. It really helps to watch someone performing a task in order to pick up the nuances, ask questions while they are in the process of performing the task and then letting the employee take notes. Make sure you give the employee ample time to practice, while you are watching them. In doing so, you are there to help them avoid errors or small steps you might have forgotten a long the way.
Whether we are adept at training in small groups or large groups, our employees expect us to be their guideposts for successful transitions in their work world. Part of your on-boarding process needs to include a training plan for both new employees and seasoned employees especially if you are introducing new activities, products or services.
Posted by Celia Couture on Tue, Jul 21, 2009 @ 03:19 PM
New Employees can make a decision about your company in a matter of days or hours in a new job. As a leader you need to know that during the first 60-90 days of employment can lead new personnel to look for a new job within the year. So how do you ensure that this doesn't happen.
- Make sure you contact the person as soon has they have accepted the position. Offer to answer questions or provide help.
- Designate a partner or a mentor for the new employee. Make sure that you outline the mentors responsibilities. If the mentor is responsible for training, introducing the employee to other people, escorting them to lunch...ensure that the employee feels as though they have a soft place to land.
- Make sure the work are is ready for the new employee. Starting a new job is both anxiety producing and difficult. New employees want to feel they have a clean slate and that starts with a clean and productive work area. Your job as a leader is to ensure that this happens.
- Make sure the person knows what the basics of the job will be. What are the minimum expecations they need to understand their job. If you start the person off on the right foot and you don't overwhelm them with too much, too soon, they are more likely to be successful.
- Make sure you vary how you are going to orient the new employee. Some employees are visual learners, some employees are hands-on learners. Some learn best by studying information on their own and asking you questions. Ensure that you provide that diversity in learning.
Posted by Celia Couture on Thu, Jul 02, 2009 @ 01:11 PM
Should a company have a formal mentoring program? I've found that mentoring is probably the single-most important activity to be involved in...both as a mentor to others and as a mentee to others. Growing within an organization always requires seeking solutions, options and other ways of getting to solutions in different ways. Most of us are discerning enough to recognize those people in our organizations who have the skills that we lack.
If we want the mentor/mentee relationship to work, companies often need to identify a "cheerleader" not necessarily the CEO, but someone in upper management that can act as a sponsor for the program. Mentors and Mentees need to be trained on how to be good at both jobs.
Mentoring programs can be viewed as a low cost company benefit especially if the mentor/mentee relationship is project or skill-based training. Here are some questions to consider before you consider a mentoring program for your company.
- Do you have support from top executives & management support.
- Do you have the time and resources.
- Is your organizational climate healthy (hiring, people interested in learning/developing).
- Is informal mentoring already happening: coaching, job sharing etc.
- Do you have some specific goals in mind for the mentoring effort.
- Do potential mentors/mentees have time to meet and work on development activity.
Call us to see how we might help you establish a mentoring program for your company.