by Ed Sykes

One of the important keys to employee motivation is to empower your employees to be successful. An empowered employee leads to the following benefits:

Increased creativity
Increased productivity
Increased teamwork and motivation
Increased initiative
Increased ownership of work
Reduced employee turnover
Reduced human resources situations
Better work environment
Increased results for your organization
Increased career opportunities

The following are ten motivation techniques to jumpstarting your employee motivation and empowering your team to outstanding results:

1. Motivate Your Employees to Find Solutions
   Encourage your employees to be solution creators instead of problem creators. When employees communicate a problem to you, look at it as an opportunity to empower the employees. Ask the employees how they would solve the problem, express your confidence that they are the person to solve the problems, give them the tools to solve the problem, and follow up with them. You have just empowered those employees to find ways in the future to create solutions and made your team more productive at the same time.
2. Motivate Your Employees by Soliciting Opinions
   Many times during our busy work day, we find it difficult to ask for opinions from our employees. But just the act of asking for their opinions tells your employees that you value their input and motivates them to accomplish more. Just imagine, it may be the first time that an employer has ever asked them for their opinion, and they appreciate it.
3. Motivate Your Employees by Managing to Their Level
   Learn your employees’ skill, experience, and motivation levels for performing workplace tasks. Then assign the task and follow-up based on your findings. For example, you may need to follow up more frequently with an employee who is fairly new to the project or organization as opposed to the “veteran” employee who doesn’t need much follow-up. Remember, the most skilled employee may not be the most motivated for performing the task you request.
4. Motivate Your Employees by Delegating Tasks
   Delegation is one of the most powerful motivation tools for empowering employees in the workplace. The sheer act of your delegating a task shows your employees that you have the confidence in them that they can do the job. Make sure you understand the task to be delegated so that you can clearly and concisely communicate how to do the task and hand off “ownership” of the task to the employees. Delegation is providing your employees with ownership of the task, providing the tools for successfully completing the task, expressing the reward and consequences for completing the task and following up accordingly.
5. Motivate Your Employees by Encouraging Ideas
   Ideas are the lifeblood of any organization, department, and team. I always say that every mind is too important to miss that one idea that can increase productivity, reduce expenses, or increase profit. Empower your employees by creating a safe environment for your employees to share their ideas. Remember, the idea that doesn’t make sense today might be exactly the solution you are looking for a week from now.

   Always give your employees credit for the ideas they express. Nothing will decrease employee motivation and dry up the flow of ideas quicker than having managers take credit for their employees’ ideas. If your employees are coming up with ideas, reward them publicly. You will be amazed how the flow of ideas from motivated employees will increase with each public recognition.

6. Motivate Your Employees by Letting Them Run Your Meetings
   One of the best ways to motivate and empower your employees is to involve them in running your meetings. Of course, you will set the agenda; but there are many opportunities for you as a leader to let your employees run portions of or the entire meeting. Take the time to work with the designated employees ahead of time so that they are confident with the assigned meeting tasks. During the meeting, you are there to support them and help with any sections of the meeting that may provide a challenge for them.

   I suggest that you allow as many opportunities for different employees to lead different meetings as possible. By allowing your employees to play leadership roles in your meeting, you will develop your employees for future opportunities and open additional opportunities for you as a leader.

7. Motivate Your Employees by Embracing Mistakes
   Without mistakes, there is no growth. Allowing your employees to make mistakes allows your employees to grow, be creative, and provide a vehicle for empowerment. Create a safe work environment so that when your employees make mistakes, they are not punished. Use the mistakes your employees make as learning experiences. Ask your employees how they would have performed the task differently and allow them to tackle the task again. Your employees will gain a new sense of empowerment and feel confident that you will support them when they try something new.
8. Motivate Your Employees by Assigning Leadership Roles
   Leadership comes at all levels and doesn’t require a title. Take the time to align your employees’ skills with leadership opportunities. Make sure you provide training in the areas of opportunities for each employee so that they are empowered to step up to new opportunities.
9. Motivate Your Employees by Rewarding Initiative
   Create rewards for employees who take initiative. Publicly recognize employees during meetings, with reward boards, etc., so that other employees are motivated to take initiative.
10. Motivate Your Employees by Getting Goal Setting Buy-In
    Your employees will be far more motivated to achieve your goals if they are allowed to help develop those goals. Involve your employees in the goal setting process and get their input so that it becomes believable for them. Once your employees feel ownership of your goals, they will be motivated to move quickly to help accomplish your goals.

    Apply these employee motivation tips and you will motivate your team, achieve greater results, and quickly accomplish your goals.

By Ed Sykes

Change is occurring all around us everyday. Most changes are small and go unnoticed by us. Think about your daily ride to work and notice what changes are taking place over the course of a week: possible changes in traffic patterns, new stores opening, weather patterns, etc. Each day we adapt to the changing situations without even thinking about it, and we achieve our goals.

The organizations we work for are going through change to adapt to a very competitive marketplace. Most organizational change, much like your daily commute, is subtle. Some changes create a variety of emotions among employees: from joy and enthusiasm to distrust and anger.

The best organizations create a strong culture of change management. In fact, management at these organizations is constantly encouraging change for the good of the overall organization.

The following are seven change management secrets to creating a winning culture of change:

1. Understand the Present
   Take the time to ask questions to understand where the culture of change presently stands. Examples of questions great managers of change are consistently asking to ensure the success of change are the following:

   Do employees understand the difference they make at work everyday?
   Are there strong relationships between employees and management?
   Is there an environment of openness and trust?
   Is there an understanding of mission, purpose, beliefs, and business goals?

   Do we have an environment of learning, growth, and empowerment?

   Take the time to ask these and other questions and, most importantly, listen to the answers.

2. Recognize That Change Management Culture Starts at the Top
   As a leader, you set the tone for change management. If you express or show a negative attitude towards the change, the culture for change will have negative results. If your attitude towards change is positive, then the culture for change will have positive results. Constantly communicate the positive overall results from the change and how the employee will benefit from this change.
3. Establish Channels of Communication
   Before the changes are to take place, implement ongoing channels of communication. This is important for the following reasons: a. Hear and address the concerns and fears of the employees. b. Obtain new innovative ways of implementing the change. c. Gain employee buy in for the changes. d. Address the rumor mill before it spirals out of control. Remember, there will probably be a lot of emotions mixed in with the communication. First, set the parameters for positive, productive communication and really take the time to listen. You will need to separate the emotions from the message and/or questions. Also, if you don’t have an immediate answer to the question, promise to find the answer and respond with the answer within a certain deadline.
4. Give Your Employees the Tools for Successful Change Management
   Make sure your employees have the tools to successfully implement the organizational changes. This could include training, technology, and additional management help to remove barriers to successfully implementing the changes. Be mindful that with the changes there are new relationships being developed. As the change leader, monitor what work relationships are working and what relationships are not working; and take the appropriate actions to remove any relational barriers to your employees’ successful completion of the plan.
5. Build a Change Management Community
   Build a sense that we are all in this together and that if one person on our team has a challenge adapting to change, we all have a challenge adapting to the change. Build this sense of a change team so that a positive environment for change and innovation is developed. It makes the road to change so much easier.
6. Understand That Employees Handle Change in Different Ways
   Because of stress and emotions, your employees handle change in different ways. The model employee who was once calm may now become disruptive and challenging in the environment of change. Take time to tone into your employees’ “emotional change barometer,” get their feedback, and provide the guidance so that they are successful in the culture of change.
7. Follow-up to Create Better Change Results
   As a change leader, follow-up through meetings, personal coachings, surveys, memos, e-mails, etc., to monitor how the changes are progressing. Embrace and acknowledge the employees’ valuable feedback so that you can efficiently implement the changes.

Apply these seven change management techniques and you will create a successful culture of change and achieve your organizational goals.

By: Darlene Siddons

Most of us have heard of treasure mapping, it is where you make a collage of pictures or words of things you wish to do, items you want, the life you want to live, the things you want to do in your life.

A vision board is a powerful visual tool to set your intentions in place and they are so simple that primary school children can learn to make them in 5 minutes or less. They are great family projects and are usually made on large poster boards with a collage of pictures of the items the family wants or strives for. The whole family can get involved in the vision of what the family wants to accomplish, for this reason I like to call them Vision Maps, as it takes everyone’s mind on their own journey so to speak.

Vision Boards are destined to become the most financially life changing tool of our times as they can be the key to attracting everything you want into your life. They are a terrific tool that combines all of these success and motivation techniques that are available to us today and keep them all in one spot where we can view them on a daily basis. In a way they are like a time capsule and you can make new updated ones and watch your growth and the things in your life manifest, it is a perfect way to keep track of your growth and progress.

With all the new technology available now the actual vision board is rather obsolete as now there is an even a more catchy and fun way to view your vision board and that is on a video; which I am going to call Vision Map Video. What you can do is take all the things you have on your vision board and make a movie out of it with positive affirmations between the slides. This way you can get better, clearer pictures. The actual physical vision boards can be frustrating because it’s hard to find the exact picture you want quickly from magazines and when pasted on, it can mess up your vision board. It is time to throw out the scissors, glue and stacks of old magazines and move into the digital age.

Now you can just turn on your computer; watch your vision map and not only are you watching something fun and catchy you are manifesting all the things you want in your life. It will easy to get your kids to watch it also as we are definitely in the age visualization and like to watch things visually.

Vision Maps are one of the most powerful tools in the deliberate creator’s toolbox. They are the best way to visualize what you intend to manifest in your life and are powerful tools when used in conjunction with the law of attraction. It is also a great way to help keep your dreams in front of you. You can see a Vision Map by visiting my website and I personalize them to suite your wants and needs. This is the new digital age version of the vision board, treasure mapping whatever we have called them before, move into the digital age with Vision Map Videos.

With so many things going on in our life some times it is hard to keep our focus, so this is a great way to keep us focused on abundance, joy, or a relationship that is important to us.

Vision Boards are too large to carry around, but we always have a computer close by these days, so there is your Vision Map right there nice and handy to watch any time you need it. They should be watch at least once a day, twice a day makes the manifestation speed up and things happen quicker.

Employee Feedback Surveys are the Key to Employee Motivation
Copyright © 2006 The National Learning Institute

When was the last time you felt excited, motivated and extremely keen to be at work? Chances are when you had a job that really interested you, had control over what you did and how you did it, and you didn’t have any worries about “zealous boss” interference or job security. It’s a great feeling - we can all probably tell stories of when we were most “motivated” at work.

As managers, do we try to provide this same level of motivation for our employees? Or, are we fixated on striving to achieve the deadlines, budgets and targets that are set for us (and that seem to be getting tougher and tougher and placing more and more stress on us and our people), and forgetting what it was really like when we worked in an environment that was truly “motivational”.

My challenge to managers, is to think back to when they were most motivated at work and identify the reasons why (list them on a sheet of paper as dot points). Then, set about implementing these same conditions for their own people. (Draw up your own list now and see how it compares with mine)

I’ve issued this challenge to managers over the last 20 years in management development forums and invariably their “motivational conditions” they identify are:

• Autonomy - the chance to take control over a complete project or unit of work in which I am really interested
• Responsibility - for setting goals and targets and being accountable for achieving them
• Recognition - for achieving meaningful results
• Development - of my skills, knowledge and capabilities to their full potential

I then ask them to identify the things that really irritate and annoy them and (often) change what could have been a motivating workplace into a drudgery. They list:

• Bosses who do not give recognition, or worse still, take the credit themselves
• A lack of feeling of “team”, ie., we are in this together
• Constant implied or implicit threats of demotion or dismissal
• Insufficient salary (by comparison to others in the firm or in the industry)

If these sound familiar, then you’re right! Frederick Herzberg in his classic article http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/ developed two similar lists nearly forty years ago that he called “Motivators” and “Satisfiers”.

Do they hold true today?

Research into turnover rates for young employees (20 - 30 yrs) shows that in some industries, the turnover rate of young employees is as high as 25% due to lack of perceived career development and training, and limited opportunities for involvement in other areas of their profession. These younger people:

• Are more opportunistic in taking new jobs.
• Are more mobile.
• Have greater expectations.
• Are easily bored.

Andrew Heathcote http://www.brw.com.au/stories/20040226/21726.aspx in answer to this challenge suggests that managers need to:

• Be honest during interviews.
• Be serious about performance reviews.
• Do more career mapping.
• Create a forum to develop a greater spirit of involvement.
• Provide more job rotation.
• Provide more rotation between offices.
• Develop specific training.
• Introduce variety.
• Develop forums for social interaction.
• Consider providing sabbaticals (so they can travel without resigning).
• Increase the availability of unpaid leave.

Richard Layard www.pfd.co.uk/clients/layardr/b-aut.html suggests that work plays a very important part in our happiness and that a lot of our happiness actually comes from the work we do. And the job that we do is affected by how we are allowed to do it!
(Managers this is your cue!!!!)