16. Notice up-ticks. A lot of managers manage by exception. That is, they watch
mostly for down-ticks deficiencies, errors, and other failures and pounce on
the situation to get it back under control, usually by pounding it into submission. But
you can raise employee motivation and solve problems faster by watching for positive
developments. Whenever you notice some small up-tick in performance a small
increase in throughput, improved quality, a slight improvement in sales comment on
it. Reinforce anybody who contributed to that up-tick, praising specific actions. This
will not only raise motivation overall, it will encourage that person to increase that
behavior. If you specifically reinforce every positive behavior you can find, the overall
effect may well be a general upward trend for your company even while your
competitors are still trending down.
17. Keep a positive to negative feedback ratio of five to one. People tend to give
more negative than positive reinforcement typically three-to-one negative,
according to our studies, and even worse in uncertain times. To motivate people, however,
you need just the opposite: three-to-one positive, in normal times. And during economic
uncertainty, five-to-one positive is desirable.
Try monitoring your own feedback patterns. On one side of a three-by-five card, mark a
plus (for positive reinforcement); on the other side, a minus. For a week, keep a tally of
every instance in which you provide feedback, positive or negative. You may be surprised
to find your ratio somewhere around three-to-one on the negative side. Whatever it is, set
yourself the weekly goal of changing your ratio by a factor of one say, two-to-one
negative the first week, one-to-one the following week, then two-to-one positive, and so
on, until you have reached a five-to-one positive ratio. And thats a good
neighborhood.
18. Push problem-solving to the lowest appropriate level. An unsettled economic
climate usually brings an increase in problems. Some of these will be easy to solve, some
hard. The key to solving problems, and to increasing motivation, is to push them down to
the people closest to the situation people who know more than you do about how
things work and how to fix them.
Assigning problem-solving to knowledgeable people engages and motivates them by giving
them a stake in the outcome. The more they participate in formulating solutions, the more
committed they are to making sure those solutions work. And the faster problems can be
taken care of, the more confident and motivated everybody becomes.
About the Author
Tom Connellan is a
business keynote speaker regularly used
by leading firms such as GE, Neiman Marcus, Dell, FedEx and Marriott to strengthen customer
loyalty and leadership practices. When looking for a keynote speaker, Tom probably belongs on
your short list of possibilities.