Empower Your School of Fish

How many times have you wanted to scream, “Just do the job I’m paying you to do!” Only to contort the muscles in your face to something resembling a smile and calmly hear yourself say something like, “Oh OK, well let’s just go over it again and see what we can do”?

When we talk about motivating our people and inspiring them to be the best they can be, we’re really talking about somehow instilling in them the desire to come to work and put 100 percent effort into their job.

When I first started out in business I was told by a friend that if anyone I employed could do 50 percent of the job that I thought I could do in that position they were ‘good workers’. If they could do 80 percent of the job, they were worth keeping at any cost.

Being young and naďve I believed this. All it led to was sleepless nights and stressful days filled with me taking up the slack and putting out fires.
This went on for a couple of years until I learnt a very simple truth. That is, if they’re not putting in 100 percent during working hours and I had to go around behind them doing part of their job anyway, why were they there?

They say that everything starts with your attitude and I’ve found that to be certainly true when it comes to motivating your people. You see, at this stage, I didn’t expect anyone to put in 100 percent. I was always told having your own business or being in management is stressful so I expected sleepless nights. All this just de-motivated me!

If I wasn’t motivated, how could I expect my team to be motivated?

This was the start of what turned out to be one of the key factors in the motivation of my people and the growth of the company. I sorted myself out first.

Below are some more basics that I’ve used successfully to help motivate any teams I’ve had the privilege of leading.

1. Let them do their job.

I had to learn to stop micro managing. I knew the result I wanted when I asked someone to do their job so instead of having long drawn out meetings or conversations about how to do it, I turned that totally around by saying, “Here’s the result we’re after, now go to it”. Of course, they got back up where necessary, however, so long as there were no laws broken or moral breaches, I became very flexible about how they got the desired result.

2. Be aware of the language you use and the way you speak to your people.

We paint pictures in people’s minds with the words we use. You may have noticed throughout this article I refer to the people you employ as ‘your people’. This is quite deliberate, the words ‘staff’ and ‘employees’ paint a picture of a class system that is antiquated and almost non-existent here in New Zealand. It also subconsciously ties them into being an item or of dollar value.

The people you employ are valuable human beings and we should be viewing them that way.

3. What to do when you’d prefer that one of your people was someone else’s.

If you’ve tried everything and one of your people is just not working out, sort it out sooner rather than later. If you don’t, their challenging behaviour and attitude will spread. The rest of your people will be thinking, “Well, if the boss doesn’t care, why should I?”

4. Reprimand in private and praise in public.

Telling someone off in front of others, or ‘shamming’ them, will only de-motivate them further. Conversely, praising them in public will have the opposite effect. Whatever you say in public about one of your people is what they will live up to.

5. Use ‘explosions’ sparingly. Save them for something that is ABSOLUTELY necessary.

There is nothing more de-motivating than working for someone who runs hot and cold all the time. I remember in my youth working for a guy who would be your best friend one day and explode at you the next. Still, 20 years later, I have no idea what we did to upset him from one day to the next that caused such a reaction. After a while, it just became like the boy who cried wolf and no one took him seriously about anything.

6. Empower your people

Remember, most people don’t come to work in the morning wanting to make as many mistakes as possible. If they come to you with a challenge or ask what they should do, simply empower them. Ask them what they think they should do. When they come up with something (providing its right) say, ‘ok, do that then’.

You need to be consistent with this. Soon, they’ll come to you saying ‘this has happened so I’ve done this. Is that ok?’ And not long after that, they’ll just sort it out and you won’t need to be bothered with the small stuff.

Vaughan Tombs
www.vtsalestraining.com