You can make their day - Ten Tips for the Leader About Employee Motivation

As a manager or supervisor, your impact on employee motivation is immeasurable. By your words, your body language, and the expression on your face, you telegraph your opinion of their value to the people you employ.

Feeling valued by their supervisor in the workplace is key to high employee motivation and morale. Feeling valued ranks right up there for most people with liking the work, competitive pay, opportunities for training and advancement, and feeling "in" on the latest news.

Building high employee motivation and morale is both challenging and yet supremely simple. Building high employee motivation and morale requires that you pay attention every day to profoundly meaningful aspects of your impact on life at work.

Picture Mr. Stressed-Out and Grumpy. He arrives at work with a frown on his face. His body language telegraphs "over-worked" and unhappy”. He moves slowly and treats the first person who approaches him abruptly. It takes only a few minutes for the entire workplace to get the word. Stay away from Mr. Stressed-Out and Grumpy if you know what's good for you this morning.

Supervisors frequently ask, "How do I motivate employees?" It's one of the most common questions asked. Wrong question. Ask instead, "How do I create a work environment in which individual employees choose to be motivated about work goals and activities?"

The right answer is that, generally, you know what you should do; you know what motivates you. You just do not consistently, in a disciplined manner, adhere to what you know about employee motivation.

The ten tips, outlined in this article, are the keys to supervisory success in creating positive employee motivation and morale. The challenge is to incorporate them into your skill set and do them consistently - every day. Author, Jim Collins identified disciplined people doing disciplined things every day as one of the hallmarks of companies that went from Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... And Others Don't? ‘You can make their day.’

Here they are:

1. Your Arrival at Work Sets the Employee Motivation Tone for the Day
2. Use Simple, Powerful Words for Employee Motivation
3. For Employee Motivation, Make Sure People Know What You Expect
4. Provide Regular Feedback for Employee Motivation
5. People Need Positive and Not So Positive Consequences
6. It Isn't Magic. It's Discipline
7. Continue Learning and Trying Out New Ideas for Employee Motivation
8. Make Time for People for Employee Motivation
9. Focus on the Development of People for Employee Motivation
10. Share the Goals and the Context: Communicate for Employee Motivation

People expect you to know the goals and share the direction in which your work group is heading. The more you can tell them about why an event is happening, the better. Promote problem solving and process improvement teams.

Happy Leading !

Thoughts in Mind

A man was sitting by a lake. He was throwing small pebbles into it from time to time. A young boy happened to cross by. He was intrigued to see that after every few minutes or so, the man would toss a pebble into the lake. The boy went up to the man and said, "Good pastime, this stone throwing, huh?" "Hmmm," said the man. He seemed to be deep in thought and obviously did not wish to be disturbed.

Sometime later, the man said softly, "Look at the water, it is absolutely still."

The boy said, "Yeah, it is." The man tossed a pebble into the water and continued, "Only till I toss a pebble into it. Now do you see the ripples?" "Yeah," said the boy, "they spread further and further."

"And soon, the water is still again," offered the man. The boy said, "Sure, it becomes quiet, after a while."

The man continued, "What if we want to stop the ripples? The root cause of the ripples is the stone. Let’s take the stone out. Go ahead and look for it." The boy put his hand into the water and tried to take the stone out. But he only succeeded in making more ripples. He was able to take the stone out, but the number of ripples that were made in the process were a lot more than before.

The wise man then said, "It is not possible to stop the movement of the water once a pebble has been thrown into it. But if we can stop ourselves from throwing the pebble in the first place, the ripples can be avoided altogether!”

“So too, it is with our minds. If a thought enters into it, it creates ripples. The only way to save the mind from getting disturbed is to block and ban the entry of every superfluous thought that could be a potential cause for disturbance. If a disturbance has entered into the mind, it will take its own time to die down. Too many conflicting thoughts just cause more and more disturbances.

Even trying to forcibly remove the thought may further increase the turmoil in the mind. Time surely is a great healer, but prevention is always better than cure."

So, before we allow a thought or a piece of information to enter our minds, let’s put it through the triple filter test of authenticity, goodness and value and…