Eric Jacobson

Archive for the ‘Motivating Employees’ Category


Are Your Supervisors Driving Away Your Employees?

In Company Culture, Effective Communications, Employee Engagement, Employee Retention, Employee Satisfaction, Engaging Employees, General Leadership Skills, Leadership, Leadership Books, Leadership Education, Leadership Skills, Leadership Training, Management, Motivating Employees on February 15, 2012 at 8:08 pm

One section in Richard Finnegan’s book called, Rethinking Retention in Good Times and Bad, compares traditional thinking versus new ways to think about retention and the vital role supervisors play in retaining employees.  For example:

Traditional Thinking:  Human Resources-driven programs like pay and recognition are essential for retention.

Rethinking Retention:  Ineffective supervisors trump programs and drive turnover.

Traditional Thinking:  All aspects of company culture contribute equally to retention.

Rethinking Retention:  Supervisor-employee relationships have a disproportionate impact on retention; the supervisor is the company.

Traditional Thinking:  Centralized communication and career programs impact all employees equally.

Rethinking Retention:  Supervisors drive what employees know and learn and help them prepare for careers.

Are your supervisors helping to retain employees or driving them away?


How To Give Praise

In Effective Communications, Engaging Employees, General Leadership Skills, Giving Praise, Leadership, Leadership Education, Leadership Skills, Management, Motivating Employees on January 29, 2012 at 7:51 am

Entrepreneur magazine’s February 2012 issue offers these great tips on how to give praise:

  • Praise followed by criticism is not praise.
  • Praise followed by praise is probably a little too much praise.
  • Ending an expression of praise with “…and stuff” nullifies the praise.

And,

  • Make it timely.  The closer the recognition is to the behavior, the more likely the behavior will be repeated.
  • Be sincere.  Be impromptu.
  • Remember, a handwritten note is worth more than a gift card.

Having trouble writing your handwritten note of praise?  Try this template to get you started:

  • _______, I couldn’t be more impressed with how you______.  Not only did you____, but you_______.  Beautiful.  Thanks, ________


Leaders: Tips For How To Reach Your Goals

In General Leadership Skills, Leadership, Leadership Books, Leadership Education, Leadership Skills, Leadership Training, Management, Motivating Employees, Setting Goals on January 12, 2012 at 7:55 pm

Social psychologist, Heidi Grant Halvorson, wrote Succeed to help you understand how goals work, what tends to go wrong, and what you can do to reach your goals or to help others reach theirs.

Because many of us may soon start struggling to fulfill our New Year’s Resolutions (goals), Halvorson’s book, packed with the findings from her own research, along with the most useful tips from academic journals and handbooks, is a timely read.

In her 260-page book, Halvorson covers:

•  How to set a goal that you will pursue even in the face of adversity.

•  How to avoid the kind of positive thinking that makes people fail.

•  How to create an environment that will help you win.

“Setting goals is important,” said Halvorson, “But that’s not the whole story. Because how you set your goals–the way you think about whatever it is you want to do, and how you will get there–is every bit as important.”

Halvorson recommends:

•  Making your goal as specific as possible.

•  Making your goal difficult, while still being realistic.

•  Being sure you don’t underestimate how difficult it will be to reach your goal.

•  Making sure you think about both the wonderful things that will happen if you succeed and the obstacles that stand in your way.

•  Filling your environment with reminders and triggers that will keep your unconscious mind working toward your goal, even when your conscious mind is distracted by other things.

•  Remembering why the goal is important to you. Also, choosing prevention goals, focusing on what you could lose if you fail.

She also said that, “One of the most important things you can do to reach any difficult goal is know when to ask for and accept help.”

And, if you are a team leader or business leader and you have the task of trying to get other people to adopt the goals assigned to them, Halvorson suggests you:

•  Try giving your employee or team member a sense of personal control. It helps when people can choose from several options–even a choice between two goals is still a choice.

•  Keep in mind that people are motivated to achieve a goal only when they feel it has value and when the value is clear. So, have your employees participate in decision making and goal setting.

•  Ask employees to commit publicly to reaching a goal. That will increase their motivation.

Halvorson stresses that it’s vitally important that employees understand the rationale behind goals given to them by their leaders. They need to know how to answer:

• Why is the goal worth pursing?

• How will I benefit from it?

“Remember that people are motivated to achieve a goal only when they feel it has value. When the value is clear, you’ll have fewer problems getting people on board and fully committed to succeed,” explained Halvorson.

Perhaps most important, Succeed, drives home the fact that persistence is key when working to reach a goal.

• Persistence comes more easily when a person believes more in effort and the effort to get better, rather than believing in ability.

I appreciate Halvorson sending me a complimentary copy of her book.  It’s a good read.


5 Questions To Ask Employees During Performance Reviews

In Effective Communications, Employee Engagement, General Leadership Skills, Leadership, Leadership Education, Leadership Skills, Leadership Training, Listening Skills, Management, Motivating Employees, Soliciting Feedback on January 4, 2012 at 8:34 pm

Here are five important questions you, as a manager and leader, should ask during employee performance reviews:

  1. What have I done to help – or hinder – your job performance?
  2. What can I do in the next review period to help you achieve/improve?
  3. What conditions here enable you – or make it hard – to do your best work?
  4. What do you want most from your job?
  5. How can I help you reach your career goals?

I bet most employees have never heard most of these questions from their supervisors on a consistent basis.

Thanks to Sharon Armstrong and Barbara Mitchell for these questions — just some of their great advice from their book, The Essential HR Handbook.


What Southwest Airlines Taught Us In 2011

In Company Culture, Customer Service, Employee Satisfaction, General Leadership Skills, Leadership Books, Leadership Quotes, Leadership Skills, Leadership Training, Leading By Example, Listening Skills, Management, Motivating Employees on December 31, 2011 at 6:31 am

Southwest Airlines celebrated its 40th this year and was kind enough to share in its in-flight magazine 40 lessons it learned since 1971.  The lessons provide good tips for business leaders.

If you missed the full list, here are some of the highlights:

  • Invent your own culture and put a top person in charge of it.
  • A crisis can contain the germ of a big idea.
  • Simplicity has value.  For Southwest, simplicity means using 737s for most of its fleet, which makes maintenance more cost-effective and allows more efficient training for flight crews and ground crews.
  • Remember your chief mission.
  • Take your business, not yourself, seriously.
  • Put the worker first. For Southwest, that meant being the first U.S. airline to offer a profit-sharing plan, in 1974. Employees now own 13 percent of the airline.
  • The web ain’t cool, it’s a tool. Southwest was the first U.S. airline to establish a home page. By 2010, Southwest.com boasted more unique visitors  than any other airline, and ranked as the second largest travel site.
  • Get Green.  That means for Southwest embracing conservation.
  • Manage permanence.  Southwest knows what not to change, even when it’s managing change.
  • Keep the idea simple enough to draw on a napkin.
  • Never rest on your laurels.
  • It’s about customer service, not scalability.
  • Promote from within.
  • Recognize your luck.

One can learn a lot of Southwest! Thank You!


6 Ways To Discover What Motivates Your Employees

In Effective Communications, Employee Engagement, General Leadership Skills, Leadership, Leadership Books, Leadership Education, Leadership Skills, Leadership Training, Listening Skills, Management, Motivating Employees on December 17, 2011 at 8:48 am

When you meet with your employee during her annual performance appraisal take time to determine what motivates her when it comes to her career development.  Motivation changes over time and changes depending on where the individual is in her career.

So, to determine what motives her, author Paul Falcone recommends you ask her to rank-order her priorities in terms of the following six guidelines:

  • If you had to chose two categories from the following six, which would you say hold the most significance to you career-wise?

1.  Career progression through the ranks and opportunities for promotion and advancement.

2.  Lateral assumption of increased job responsibilities and skill building (e.g. rotational assignments).

3.  Acquisition of new technical skills (typically requiring outside training and certification).

4.  Development of stronger leadership, managerial, or administrative skills.

5.  Work-life balance.

6.  Money and other forms of compensation.

Then, do your best to match her next year’s goals and objectives with projects, duties, assignments, activities, actions tied to what motivates her most.

You’ll find many more helpful tips in Falcone’s new book, 2600 Phrases for Setting Effective Performance Goals.

Note:  Thanks to the book publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.


Leadership Skills: Be Decisive; Find The Truth; Send A Thank You Note

In Company Culture, Effective Communications, General Leadership Skills, Leadership Education, Leadership Skills, Leadership Training, Leading By Example, Making Decisions, Management, Motivating Employees on December 11, 2011 at 10:59 am

Be decisive

A manager who can’t make a decision or who can’t make a timely decision will frustrate his/her employees. Equally bad, a lack of decision will impede the progress of the manager’s team.

Some managers make endless requests for data as a way to postpone their having to make a decision. Employees end up spinning in circles, slicing and dicing the information far beyond what is truly needed for the manager to make a decision.

Some managers are simply afraid to make a decision in fear of making a “wrong” decision. These managers don’t necessarily request needless data, but simply just never made a decision.

Successful managers (true leaders) gather the data from their employees, make any necessary follow-up requests (probing beyond what their employee may have researched/gathered on their own), and then make their decision…knowing that in virtually all cases most decisions are not black and white “right or “wrong,” but are the best decisions made at that time for the current circumstances.

Good managers also know that most decisions can be tweaked along the way as their teams carry out their tasks impacted by the decision.

Find The Truth

If you’re a parent of two children you already know that when the two are fighting and child #1 tells you what happened, you then ask child #2 what happened, and most often the truth is somewhere in the middle of what the two children have told you.

Surprisingly, many managers, even when they are parents, don’t use this parenting “discovery” skill in the workplace. Instead, they often listen to only one side of a situation. Whether it is because of lack of interest or lack of time, they don’t proactively seek out the other side of the story.

The unfortunate result is those managers form incorrect perceptions that can often lead to poor decisions and/or directives.

So, the next time two employees are at odds, or when one department complains about another department within your organization, take the time to listen to all sides of the situation to discover the truth that’s in the middle.

Send A Written Thank You Note

Nearly all employees want to do both a good job and please their supervisor. When they succeed, send them a thank you for a job well done.

A short note (handwritten is particularly good) thanking them for a good job is extremely powerful. Particularly for new employees on your team. Or, for employees new to the workforce and early in their careers.

Include in your note a sentence regarding what they did especially well and how their specific action made a positive impact. Remember, be as specific as possible in what you write.

Be sure to send your note soon after the job was completed. If you wait too long (more than a week), the note will lose its impact.

Send your note in a way it can be easily saved by your employee. Even employees who have been on your team for a long time will likely save your note.

Finally, reserve your sending thank you notes for the big jobs, large projects, extra special work. If you send thank you notes too often they’ll lose their effect.

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Top 20 Leadership Books: What To Give First To A New Manager

In Effective Communications, Employee Engagement, General Leadership Skills, Hiring Great People, Leadership, Leadership Books, Leadership Education, Leadership Quotes, Leadership Skills, Leadership Training, Leading By Example, Listening Skills, Management, Mentoring, Motivating Employees, Sales Management, Setting Goals, Strategic Planning, Team Building on December 10, 2011 at 6:53 am

Eighteen months ago, I posted the question “What’s The First Leadership Book You Would Give To a New Manager?” within the discussion forum for the LinkedIn group Linked 2 Leadership.

That question generated 603 comments and 690 recommendations.  Some people suggested more than one book.  Some during the course of the 18 months made the same book recommendations a couple times.  And, the group discussion continues to be one of the most active still today.

In early November 2011, group member Len White graciously culled through the comments using his company’s Symphony Content Analysis Software that assists with the organization, analysis, and reporting of themes contained in text data.

And here are the results:

·    412 different/unique books were recommended

·    The Top 20 recommended books, collectively, received 250 of the total recommendations

·    Two authors – Stephen R. Covey and John C. Maxwell each have two books in the Top 20

·    Group members recommended other things instead of giving a book about leadership to a new manager, such as:

o   Interviewing everyone in the company with whom they will directly work 

o   Giving a book about management first

o   Mentoring the person for a period of time before recommending a leadership book

And, unlike a question about “What is Your Favorite Leadership Book,” the question this time asked what is the first book you would give to a new manager.

The Top 20 Books are:

  1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen R. Covey
  2. Leadership and Self-Deception– Arbinger Institute
  3. The One Minute Manager– Kenneth H. Blanchard
  4. The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership– John C. Maxwell
  5. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team– Patrick Lencioni
  6. First Break All the Rules– Marcus Buckingham
  7. The Leadership Challenge– Jim Kouzes
  8. The First 90 Days– Michael Watkins
  9. How to Win Friends and Influence People– Dale Carnegie
  10. Good to Great– Jim Collins
  11. It’s Your Ship– Michael Abrashoff
  12. The Speed of Trust– Stephen R. Covey
  13. Developing the Leader Within You– John C. Maxwell
  14. Who Moved My Cheese– Spencer Johnson
  15. Don’t Bring it to Work– Sylvia Lafair
  16. Leaders Without Borders– Doug Dickerson
  17. Leadership and the One Minute Manager– Kenneth H. Blanchard
  18. On Becoming a Leader– Warren Bennis
  19. The Anatomy of Peace– Arbinger Institute
  20. The Art of Possibility– Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander

Within the Top 35 list of the book recommendations, you’ll find four more John C. Maxwell books, including:

·        The 360 Degree Leader

·        Developing the Leaders Around  You

·        Failing Forward

·        Leadership 101

The authors and leadership book publishers most discussed within the group forum have been:

·        Dale Carnegie

·        Jim Collins

·        Jim Kouzes

·        John C. Maxwell

·        Kenneth H. Blanchard

·        Marcus Buckingham

·        Michael Watkins

·        Patrick Lencioni

·        Stephen R. Covey

·        Arbinger Institute

Group discussion participants are clearly inspired by a wide variety of books – biographies, autobiographies, books backed by research and academia, books made famous by the popular press, books by motivation speakers, and books by professionals eager to share their personal and professional leadership success stories, tips and suggestions.

Finally, the book I recommended, The Leadership Test, by Timothy R. Clark made it within the Top 35.

Thanks to all the group members who made recommendations and to Tom Schulte, Executive Director of Linked 2 Leadership, and the owner and moderator for the LinkedIn group, Linked 2 Leadership, which has 19,678 members.

Note:  Symphony Content Analysis Software is designed and published by Active Java.


Why Giving Praise Doesn’t Work

In Effective Communications, General Leadership Skills, Leadership, Leadership Books, Leadership Education, Leadership Skills, Leadership Training, Management, Motivating Employees on December 10, 2011 at 6:40 am

There is an important difference between giving your employees positive  feedback and giving them praise.

Positive  feedback focuses on the specifics of job performance. Praise, often one-or  two-sentence statements, such as “Keep up the good work,” without positive  feedback leaves employees with empty feelings.

Worse yet, without  positive feedback, employees feel no sense that they are appreciated as  individual talents with specific desires to learn and grow on the job and in  their careers, reports Nicholas Nigro, author of, The Everything  Coaching and Mentoring Book.

So, skip the praise and give  positive feedback that is more uplifting to your employees because it goes to  the heart of their job performance and what they actually do.

An  example of positive feedback is:

“Bob, your communications  skills have dramatically improved over the past couple of months. The report  that you just prepared for me was thorough and concise. I appreciate all the  work you’ve put into it, as do your team members.”


New Book Offers Tips For Work-From-Home Employees

In Employee Engagement, General Leadership Skills, Leadership, Leadership Books, Management, Motivating Employees, Work From Home Employees on December 3, 2011 at 7:14 am

About 42 million people — roughly one-third of the U.S. workforce — work from home at least one or two days a week.

If you are a leader of work-from-home employees, share the new book, There’s No Place Like Working From Home, with them.  Share it particularly with an employee new to working from his or her home.

Author Elaine Quinn wrote the book after working as a consultant for 10 years with small business owners who struggled with organization, time management, workflow processes, productivity and related challenges.

The techniques Quinn teaches small home-based business owners also apply to work-from-home employees of large organizations.

“Poor organizational and time management skills are among the top ten reasons small businesses and work-from-home employees fail,” said Quinn.  “And being disorganized can cost business owners and corporations lost revenue, wasted time, professional embarrassment, damaged relationships, and missed opportunities.”

There’s No Place Like Working From Home includes chapters on:

  • Making your workspace work for you
  • Conquering computer challenges
  • Staying motivated
  • Setting goals and priorities
  • Managing your time
  • Creating the optimum work/life balance

Prior to founding her consulting business in 2001, Quinn held sales and management positions with various Fortune 100 companies in the pharmaceutical industry where she developed strong skills in productivity and problem-solving.

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