Employees sluggish? Unmotivated? Need some ideas….

Has the momentum of the holidays, the new year, the candies and hearts worn off?  Struggling to find the next idea?  the next inspiration?  the next focus that will save your company money?  Economic times have you down?

Now is the time to gather employee input.  Get an idea of where everything stands.  No, it’s not a gripe session, but it is a chance to find out how your people are feeling and discover any new ideas they might have.  (If it turns into a gripe session, don’t simply dismiss it.  The gripe might be legitimate.  If so, put your people to work on a solution that pleases everyone.)

During these times it is incredibly important your team realize they aren’t alone.  They need to feel you hear them, and they need to see you taking action. 

You are not in this alone and neither are they.  Realize and embrace you’re a team.  Generating their ideas, generates their buy-in, generates its own inspiration!

Filed under: Business, Employee Inspiration, Feedback, Follow-Up, Management Lesson, Management Training, Motivation, News, employee motivation, teamwork

Holding Employees Accountable

One of the biggest mistakes managers can make is to continuously frustrate their employees by not holding them accountable.  Believe it or not, it can frustrate your employees as much as it does you.  Accountability is the key to achieving results and helping identify the opportunities in your organization.  Holding employees accountable helps them to know the satisfaction of achieving a goal and performing to standard (or above!)

If you find yourself addressing the same issues in the same manner time and time again, you might have an issue with accountability.  The same is true if you don’t see your employees and your organization moving forward.  The first step is to identify in which areas you find yourself and your team stagnant.  Everyone will easily choose at least one area in which they would like to see improvement.  To master accountability, choose this one area and focus on it first.  Once you see the results, you’ll be inspired to approach all performance issues with a keen focus on accountability.

The Hallmarks of Accountability

• Understood Goals – the employee must understand what the team is trying to achieve
• Buy in – employees must believe in the goal and be a part of the success
• Benchmarks and a Quantifiable Result – employees need milestones and a result that can be measured
• Dual Feedback – feedback from the supervisor to the employee and from the employee to the supervisor
• Evaluation – once a goal is accomplished, celebrate the success

To be successful, the manager must also hold themselves accountable to following through with accountability.  One of the biggest failures is to start the process and not follow through with it.  This causes the employee to lose respect for the process and to question a supervisor’s commitment, which can undermine the entire organization.  Once accountability becomes a part of your management style and organization, you will see improved results and more satisfied employees.

Filed under: Business, Employee Accountability, Feedback, Follow-Up, Management Lesson, Management Training, News, Setting Goals

Documentation not a bad word

Documentation can be one the most effective tools you have.  It’s also most likely the one you never make time for.  You’re not being fair to yourself or your team.   There are so many reasons managers choose not to document; the most popular are negativity and laziness. 

Many people see documentation as a negative.  They have a belief if something warrants documentation it must be a bad thing.  Strike this notion now!  Documentation is a tool, a teaching tool if used properly.  Many times we find ourselves following up with our people on multiple occasions regarding the same behavior, or lack thereof.  Our feedback is much more effective if we can show them the various times you’ve spoken to them concerning the issue.  It makes it a more serious conversation when someone realizes they’ve had the same conversation any number of times.  Not necessarily more serious in a negative way.  To be fair, hasn’t someone spoken to you regarding a matter and you didn’t see the severity of the situation?  You didn’t recall they’d spoken to you at least 4 times about the same thing?  You didn’t share their frustration because it just didn’t seem like a big deal to you?  By documenting we’re being fair to our people.  They can begin to understand the frustration associated with repetitive conversations.  I’ve found many people see this documentation as a necessary reminder in the course to change behaviors. 

Then there are those of us who are just too lazy to document.  All I can say is shame on us.  I was one of these people for a long time.  I would run myself in circles following up with my reports, revisiting matters, retraining and never seeming to get anywhere.  It was not fun for me.  I was never able to get past the initial conversations because I was having them everyday.  Then one day I committed to making the time.  The initial documentation was the worst, but once you get it down, the rest are so much easier.  I would simply talk to a report and make notes on a piece of paper.  I would let the report read those notes and agree on accuracy and a course of action.  Later I would type it up and have them sign it, agreeing on the wording, etc.  Then subsequent conversations involved simply adding a date and time at the bottom, along with their signature.  Once I’d shown the same sheet of paper to one of my mangers 4 times, she took notice.  She didn’t even realize what a problem her action was.  She quickly moved toward correcting the behavior.  To get to this point, I had to make the commitment to document. 

Now this goes beyond being a manager of people.  You can use this tool being a manager of life, finance, etc.  I had a habit I wanted to break (late night chocolate milk binges).  I would document each time I went to the fridge.  Initially, it didn’t change.  But once I saw the pattern of my behavior, I was able to limit my trips (limit not eliminate).  I also am taking this course of action with my debit card spending.  I am the worst at not recording my spending. 

Documentation helps me see the pattern.

Filed under: Business, Feedback, Follow-Up, Management Lesson, Management Training

Feedback and Follow-Up Sessions

Feedback and follow-up need to go hand in hand, you should not ever give feedback to an employee without providing a subsequent follow-up session.  The opportunity area for many managers is remembering to have the follow-up and taking the steps necessary to ensure it is an effective conversation.  There are many ways to hold yourself to these follow-up sessions. First you need to identify why you are not having follow-up sessions.  Understanding why you are not successfully following-up with your employees will prove quite valuable.  Once you understand the “why” you can begin to formulate an action plan to ensure every time you give feedback, you’re also giving follow-up.  When properly utilized the feedback/follow-up model is one of the most important, if not THE most important tool we have as managers when dealing with our reports; it holds us and them accountable.  I’ve also found that by having a properly planned follow-up session I’ve minimized the time it takes to identify concerns, develop action plans, and strengthen opportunity areas. Some possible solutions for the “why” you aren’t having follow-up sessions:

• “I forgot.”  This is the easiest thing to do.  You give feedback to someone and you simply forget to follow-up with them.  This is not only unfair to your people, it’s unfair to you.  You’re basically telling yourself and your employee that this situation is concerning enough to me right now that I need to give you some feedback, but it’s not enough of a concern for me to follow-up with you.  It trains our people to react to particular situation and not necessarily correct a behavior since the manager will most likely forget to follow-up.  Learn to write your feedback down.  Many times feedback comes during an evaluation or walkthrough.  If so, write the feedback down and give the employee an expected date you will be following-up.  (Hold yourself accountable to this; put the date in your planner.)  If you don’t have the chance to write down the feedback and the follow-up date, do it as soon as possible.  I have one manager who calls and leaves herself a voicemail with vital information, then retrieves and records this information later the same day. 

 

• “I don’t have time.”  Solution:  Make the time; you will see a return on this investment even the most successful broker would envy.  Don’t assume follow-up sessions need to be lengthy or detailed.  Simply restate the feedback session and ask the manager for an update.  If nothing more, take the time to do this.  This less than two minutes exchange will train your employee to learn that you will follow-up on feedback.  If you have more time or if the situation warrants, dig into the details and determine if redirection or further feedback is needed. 

 Do you have a reason why feedback/follow-up isn’t happening?  Let me know and we’ll find an action plan that can help you.

Filed under: Business, Feedback, Follow-Up, Management Lesson, News, training