Leadership Fundamentals

Incoming search terms:

• engagement quotient (4)
• employee engagement quotient (3)
• fundamentals of employee engagement (3)
• employee engagement basics (3)
• fundamentals of engagement employee (3)
• fundamentals of world class organizations (3)
• steps to successful employee engagement (2)
• main elements of employee engagement (2)
• employee engagement steps (2)
• employee engagement requirements (2)

We often think that a good salary is reward enough for the efforts of an employee or for the entire team. They’re getting paid well for their efforts, so what more could they want?

They might want to feel that someone at work recognizes their achievements and really cares about them as a person. They might relish the idea that sharing in rewards as a team makes their work life more interesting, more fulfilling and yes, even more fun.

There are many ways to achieve the camaraderie which comes from sharing good experiences with your team — either as individuals or as a group. Here are some that succeed in building good feelings in your employees because they experience a sense of appreciation that goes deeper than just a raise – because sometimes raises aren’t enough.

• Taking the team out to lunch
• A team outing – perhaps a movie, an amusement park, a picnic – any fun thing you can all enjoy together
• A gift card to a local restaurant
• An email within the organization to compliment the efforts contributing to a successful project
• Time off – could be only a half day, could be more
• Tickets to a sports even or a play or concert

Try and be consistent about this. Don’t reward one person’s efforts and neglect others’. You don’t have to reward everything ever achieved, just determine an approach and stick with it. If you offer it whenever a project’s goals and schedules are met or exceeded, then that should be your guideline. It won’t always be possible. Sometimes the workload just can’t handle it. If that’s so, explain why it’s not possible. The key is to be able to consistently share achievements with each other.

Incoming search terms:

• fun employee rewards (1)
• Theme park employee rewards (1)

Great teams don’t just happen. It takes work on the part of the Leader/Manager, as well as the individual members of the team. We can make it easier for it to happen by not creating an environment which allows office politics to interfere with cooperation, and pits one employee against another. Each member of the team will have different strengths and approaches, and that is not a bad thing. You don’t want your team to think exactly alike. Cookie-cutter team members make for a boring and less creative environment anyway.

Skills Sharing
The different natural strengths of employees are not a negative thing. In an open, sharing environment, team members will be eager to share their own skills and happy to enjoy the reward of appreciation from their other team members. In a back-biting, one-upsmanship environment, this is fairly impossible due to a lack of trust.

When people are afraid to show their weaknesses, they’re in a constant state of anxiety about being “found out”. Employees who are anxious just don’t perform as well. They spend too much time measuring themselves against other members of the team and coming up short. They may think, why did it take me more time than (choose a team member) to complete my part of the project? What kind of light does that put me in? In fact, there could be any number of valid reasons why any particular member of a team might take longer to complete their own individual assignment. Perhaps certain information was not immediately accessible, or their part of the assignment was dependent on someone else’s input.

R-e-s-p-e-c-t
It’s more than a song. If you can generate an environment of mutual respect between team members, and give them your own respect, you’ve already taken a giant step. You see, it’s not really much different from a family. Each individual is respected for their uniqueness.

If you’ve started out by hiring the best team members you can find, members that respect each other’s ideas and experience, and then you have prepared an environment where growth can take place, you’ve done a good job.

Incoming search terms:

• fundamentals of great teams (2)
• team leadership fundamentals (1)
• team building (1)
• manage backbiting in office environment (1)
• great teams don\t just happen (1)
• great team fundamentals (1)
• fundamentals of team development (1)
• fundamentals of team building (1)
• 5 fundamentals of creating a team (1)
• fundamentals of great team (1)

Even in today’s economy, companies need to focus on getting and keeping good employees. In fact, with the workforce getting smaller, it is more important than ever to retain the most productive, team-oriented, creative employees.

Key Factors in Creating Job Satisfaction in Key Employees

• Eliminate boredom. Many people move on simply because they have lost interest in doing the same thing every single day. Involve them in new and interesting projects. Ask for their input on improving processes. Send them for training in new software or other work-related practices.
• Communicate! Don’t leave them guessing about what you’re thinking and doing, as well as what the company’s plans are, its financial status, and any projects under consideration.
• Reward special efforts. If you respond the same way to special and intense effort as you do to day-to-day work habits, you will take away their self-satisfaction at going above and beyond the norm.
• Compensate according to skills and creativity, so they’ll know the company is fair and recognizes excellence. You’ll end up with excellence.
• Talk to them. Be involved with them and the parts of their lives that have nothing to do with their jobs. Are they having difficulties? Did they enjoy their weekend? What do they like to do in their free time?
• Does the team work well together? If not, uncover the reasons behind this so you can eliminate them. Nothing kills job satisfaction like a team that doesn’t “fit”. Nothing does more to guarantee successful project development than an enthusiastic and well-integrated team.

Incoming search terms:

• gavin mcmurdo (1)
• retaining key employees job satisfaction (1)

Job descriptions can be a burden. If they are too heavily detailed, it leaves little room for growth or learning new skills. They can be frighteningly specific, detail piled upon detail. A job applicant may be turned off or turned away purely by the weight of the job description. I once was handed a job description to give to HR for an open position. The itemized list of requirements were so daunting, I was taken aback. It would be like finding a needle in a haystack to find an applicant with the skill set so exactly outlined in that classified ad. Sure enough, we received NO enquiries and no resumes in the 2 weeks it was posted in the various papers (this was before internet job posting became the standard).

I asked if I could rework the ad, separating skills and experience that were absolutely required from those that would be a plus, but could be acquired easily enough on the job. The new ad was placed and we immediately began being contacted by applicants, one of which was a quite good fit and was hired.

Recently, I was doing a lot of reading about Leadership and Management excellence and I came across a sentence that has stuck in my mind – “You don’t hire the best talent – you grow it.” The book was First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, and it agreed with how I feel about job descriptions. It is just as important to find someone with drive, creativity, the ability to work as a team member, and the desire to grow. Someone with this profile will easily acquire many skills along the way, and will be appreciative of the opportunity to do so. And they’ll want to share their acquired skills with others, so now you’ve widened the group of people who work for you into a team that shares information for the good of the company. You haven’t just hired an applicant, you’ve built a foundation for excellence and the creation of a good team.

Do the members of your existing team know what’s expected of them?
Try this exercise: Ask each employee to write their own job description, based upon what they believe they should be achieving and go a step further and ask them to write what they believe is the percentage of time they need to spend on each activity and its degree of importance to the job. You may be surprised to see that their assessment of their activities do not agree with your own. They may perceive different priorities. This means that in a given day, there may be time spent on non-consequential activities which prevent them from doing the work you rate high in importance. Don’t get mad at them. This is a unique opportunity to really communicate with them. Let them know the actions they are performing that are really important to you. It always comes back to communication.

Incoming search terms:

• leadership reply to job requirements (1)
• too detailed job description (1)

Are you shielding a non-performer because letting someone go is not an easy task? I’ve learned from bitter experience the havoc that can bring. The other players on your team are no doubt aware of the discrepancy between their efforts and the non-performer. They have to pick up the slack, putting an unfair burden on them. They will certainly wonder why you are putting up with it. Your own credibility is at stake, and the longer the situation is allowed to go on, the more it will become obvious that you lack the courage to do something about it. In time, your team will experience an atmosphere that is divisive and considerably unfair.

On top of all that, by allowing the non-performer to remain, you are not doing that employee any favors either. They never get to understand that this kind of behavior must be corrected and their performance must improve if they are to move up in their career. When they have been severed from the company, they will have to examine their own behavior and discover how to correct it. A non-performer tends to muddy the waters by creating dramas that keep attention focused away from themselves and on issues that take attention away from their performance.

The non-performer needs to be separated from the rest of the team. It’s a hard situation, I know. I’ve been there and made the mistake of not acting quickly. This showed a lower level of support for my real performers, something not to be proud of as a manager. If you have repeatedly spoken with your non-performer about his/her failings and have not seen improvement, it’s time to grab the reins and sever the relationship.

Incoming search terms:

• non performer employee (22)
• non performers sales (3)
• how to motivate non performers (3)
• how to handle a non performer (2)
• how to lead non performers (2)
• how might a team motivate non-performers (2)
• How do you get a Non performer to performer level? (2)
• how to motivate non performer in sales? (2)
• how can one han dle a non performer in sales (2)
• how will you handle non performers in team (2)