People who feel ownership of their work are likely to find that work more meaningful than people who have no say in how goals are accomplished.
Recognition extends the motivating effects of personal achievement into responsibility and accountability, which are motivating for the employee, valuable for the manager, and also cost-effective for the organization.
How Managers Can Create a Culture of Motivation
The following are meaningful ways that managers can create a culture of motivation:
Get acquainted with your employees
- Encourage people in the team to ask questions about their role and current assignments.
- Re-read resumes of employees.
- Take time to listen, clarify and confirm.
- Network with staff.
- Ask for and consider input from direct reports.
- Delegate more.
- Mix it up with cross-functional teams.
Establish clear expectations
Require all project managers to clearly state goals of any new project before it is started.- Set measurable objectives.
- Model appropriate behavior.
Provide constructive feedback
- Performance coach, don’t criticize.
- Rely more on asking questions than giving answers.
- Look for opportunities to credit good performance in order to maintain and enhance it.
- Give constructive feedback when performance/ideas need to change.
- Humanize the feedback.
- Be discreet when providing constructive feedback (communicate in a private, non-threatening manner).
- Feedback should be timely, specific and not imposed.
- Focus on a behavior and its consequences.
- Describe-do not evaluate-the behavior.
- Feedback should be motivated by a sincere desire to help.
- Ensure you have earned the right to give feedback to the person i.e. there is credibility.
- Behavior breeds behavior; if the feedback given is constructive, the response to the feedback will likely be constructive.
Reward openly and often, with more than money
- Use responsibility and advancements as rewards.
- Celebrate as a team.
- Congratulate one-on-one.
- Promote only on merit.
- Personally reward great performance.
These are simple but powerful ways to create a culture of motivation in the work environment. It also goes hand in hand with the managers role as a performance coach. Performance coaching harnesses the value of the manager to develop others, which in turn saves time, money and increases overall employee motivation, engagement and retention.
For a conversation on how to create a culture of motivation, call us at 1-800-FKA-5585 or you may also click www.fka.com and speak to an online representative.
