14 management dos and don’ts to motivate employees

Martin Zwilling

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Martin Zwilling for Business Insider. To read the complete article and check out out a wealth of valuable resources, please click here.

Up front, I want to acknowledge that I do not think it is possible to motivate another person. However, I do believe that it is possible to inspire, activate, energize, nourish, and support self-motivation.

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Is your team fully engaged to give their best, day in and day out? In a recent study by TowersWatson, an international HR consulting firm, fewer than 21% of employees surveyed described themselves as “highly engaged,” down from 31% in 2009. 8% admitted to being fully disengaged.

Having only one-fifth of your employees highly engaged is not the hallmark of a “Winning Business.” Other studies show that employee engagement derives from three important factors:

Alignment of the employee with the goals and vision of the company.

Faith of the employee in the competence of management and their commitment to realize the goals and vision.

Trust in their direct supervisor that he or she will support his or her people and help them to succeed.

It has often been said that employees rarely quit companies. Instead, employees quit their managers or supervisors by leaving the company. Mark Herbert, a consultant focused on engagement, says: “Engagement lives and dies on the front line of your business.”

Increasing positive managerial behavior and reducing negative managerial behavior will go a long way towards improving employee engagement. When your talented employees are engaged, they are able to perform spectacularly and build and improve your winning business. Here are some ways to get managers and supervisors started in focusing on ways to improve engagement (and to be better managers).

1. DON’T get angry

Recognize him?

“Getting angry is easy. Anyone can do that. But getting angry in the right way in the right amount at the right time, now that is hard.” (Mark Twain)

Anger does not belong in your managerial kit bag.

2. DON’T be cold, distant, rude, unfriendly

Image: Flickr via mikebaird
Especially in difficult times, employees take cues from their immediate supervisors and need to hear from them.

As such, your team will judge you by your action, moods, and behaviors, not by your intent.

3. DON’T send mixed messages to your employees so that they never know where you stand.

Keep your message simple, focused and prioritized.

Too many messages and initiatives just confuse and alienate people.

4. DON’T BS your team

This includes saying things that you don’t believe in. This includes hiding information and just plain lying.

By the time each of us is in our early 20′s, we have all developed very well-tuned BS detectors.

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Martin Zwilling‘s passion is nurturing the development of entrepreneurs by providing first-hand mentoring, funding assistance, and business plan development.  He is the Founder and CEO of Startup Professionals, a company that provides products and services to startup founders and small business owners.

e-mail: marty@startupprofessionals.com

A Quote for the Day from Thomas Jefferson – “Ideas should spread freely”

I read this near the end of Steven Johnson’s book, Where Ideas Come From:  The Natural History of Innovation.  You can read the entire letter by Thomas Jefferson here.  It was written to a Mr. Isaac McPherson, a Boston mill owner, in a patent dispute.

That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson
13 Aug. 1813

 

The Joy Of Reading More Than One Book At A Time – The Confessions Of Culture Critic Julia Keller

At any given moment, I have at least six half-finished books sitting within easy reach. But which six? How do I choose? Ah, that’s where the magic happens.
A wonderful literary synergy is created by the accidental juxtaposition of reading materials.
Julia Keller, CULTURAL CRITIC, Chicago Tribune – Why need read many books at once?

Keller:

So I really meant that it’s something I think is kind of part of the human species, to always be kind of looking over the horizon to the next thing. And I think that when you break off your reading to go read something else, the first thing is enhanced. It’s enhanced by that contrast by realizing all the different varieties of voices that there are out there.
The Joys Of Reading Many Books At Once (from an interview conducted by Jennifer Ludeen, for NPR’s Talk of the Nation)

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You are either a reader or you are not.  That’s my theory, anyway.  I have always loved reading. I started with comic books (if only I still had my original collection!).  I used to hide a book propped up in an open textbook during class as far back as junior high school.  (I think the first books I propped up in such manner were the Nero Wolfe mysteries, which I still re-read every few years).    It probably (ok – definitely) hurt my grades – but I loved my reading.

Anyway, I got the link to this NPR interview in an e-mail, sent by another book lover.  Here’s Jennifer Ludden’s introduction to the interview:

Many people are serial readers — they pick up one book and read it cover-to-cover before putting it down.
And then there are poly-readers like Julia Keller.
The Chicago Tribune cultural critic juggles four, five, or even six books at any given time, never able — or willing — to choose just one.
Some have frowned when Keller mentions how many books she’s reading…
But she’s nurtured her habit not because she’s flighty or easily bored — or even because it’s her job to read many books at a time. It’s just because she finds life is simply better when lived among multiple books.

If you love to read more than one book at the same time, then you know the joy of this approach.  If you don’t – well, I just feel sorry for you…