Employee engagement that means business
Many people feel their bosses only ever comment on what they are getting wrong. So make a conscious effort to make someone’s day, catch them doing something right. Then congratulate them with some authentic, specific and positive feedback.
How to fine tune your communication activities to power up your people
What you communicate, and how you position it, can go a very long way towards motivating your people – or indeed have the opposite effect. So it is worth taking the time and trouble to think these matters through and achieve an even bigger bang for your communication buck.
I’m not arguing that you should abandon all of your carefully crafted corporate messages, or go all happy clappy. What I am saying, is that you can craft your key messages in the context of what we know tends to motivate people.
Motivational theory gives us some very practical places to start. Achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility and advancement are the top five motivators according to Herzburg’s two factor model.
So why not actively promote these elements of life at work as an integral part of your approach to communication, for example:
Alternatively you could ignore the people dimension and simply bang on, for example, about how Office 360 is revolutionalising workplace efficiency, delivering a great ROI and run a quote from the VP of IT. Just don’t expect this approach to move the motivational needle of anyone involved in the project – let alone the wider workforce.
And if you want a more targeted approach, perhaps towards motivating a discrete, possibly smaller group such as a project team, you’d better find out what makes them tick. Then you can align your communication to maximise the contribution they can make to the success of the initiative.
I use a simple questionnaire to kick start the conversation about motivation with these smaller teams. Over the years some clear patterns have emerged. People are looking for clear direction, a sense that they are being listened to, the buzz of achievement that tops Herzburg’s list, and praise and encouragement for a job well done. The questionnaire also identifies the topics that don’t motivate them. The trick of course is to turn down, or even off, the communication volume on the latter items, focusing your efforts instead on the things that you now know get people fired up with enthusiasm.
Doing all this does mean you have to invest some time and effort, but that will soon pay dividends as business performance improves through the actions of your own better engaged and motivated people. Assuming you can be bothered of course.
For further powerful tips and techniques to help you to motivate and engage your workforce through better communication, take a look at our book, How to be a better communicator.
More than 100 patient safety specialists at AstraZeneca have taken part in workshops to equip them with the communication and interpersonal skills to make more impact than ever before.
Designed and run by Axiom, the training supported a major project, billed as One Patient Safety, that brings together previously separate patient safety teams at AstraZeneca into a single organisation with a consistent way of working.
Patient Safety leaders reviewed our range of engagement skills workshops and chose four to include in a global ‘capability build’. In May and June, Axiom’s Chris Carey and Miles Henson led workshops in the US and Sweden on:
In their feedback, participants gave an average rating of 9.3 out of 10 for the communication capability workshops. Their comments included:
Our work to support One Patient Safety has also included writing and producing a range of printed and digital communication materials to engage staff worldwide. More workshops for Patient Safety staff are scheduled around the world later this year.
See our range of in-house communication skills workshops.
Taking a positive viewThis week many of the world’s most important leaders gather for the G8 summit in the beautiful setting of Enniskillen in Northern Ireland, or the north of the island of Ireland depending on your political point of view.
I’m not about to make a political point here, far from it. But the very word Enniskillen conjures up in so many minds terrible memories of darker days in the history of this corner of the world.
Who, back then, would ever have dared think that The Troubles would be pretty much over? Let alone that Enniskillen could be in the global news for potentially positive reasons?
I see this as a good example of a mindset not allowing past events to dictate the future. In this blog I’ll share some observations that might stop past events in your life dictating your future.
In an earlier blog, I spoke of the potential power of ‘taking a positive view’. More recently, I discussed how, as intelligent human beings, we do not have to be slaves to the thoughts of our biggest critics, ourselves, and our ‘inner dialogue’.
But have you ever noticed how this usually hugely negative inner dialogue, or self-talk as it is sometimes known, is often triggered by past events, and seems to have direct access to our mouths?
Well, we all do it: Wake up, flick on the TV, turn on the radio or go to our personalised home page and from the get-go we’re surrounded by bad newsTerrorism, the threat of nuclear war, global warming, failing economies, failing companies, redundancies – all ringing in our ears as we steel ourselves for what lies ahead.
Hardly a motivational way to start the day, is it?
Then you drive to work – and the traffic is worse than it’s ever been. The nearest car parking spots to the office are taken – that always happens. Then it rains – the hardest rain in years. And then you meet the new boss for the first time, and you’re looking totally dishevelled! And you cry: “Arrgh! Is the whole world against me?”
Point one: Notice our innate ability to catastrophise. The worst traffic ever. Really? Always happens. What, every day? Hardest rain in years. Truly, in years? What’s the evidence? Totally dishevelled? Not just wet then?
This language – the language we all tend to use – encourages us to see the worst in things.