Leadership Development: How To Motivate Employees In A Recession
Effective leaders and managers need to have committed supporters. Since your people are your best source of competitive advantage, you want each single team member to be totally committed to taking the company forward and doing everything that they can to make it a success in the future.
Unfortunately, the recession has caused many businesses to alter their course. In recession-altered workplaces, staff are often adrift, not really clear what the future holds for them or the company and unsure if or how they can make a contribution.
Here’s where it becomes crucial to develop positive picture of the future that enthuses and energises the work-force and gives your people something to believe strongly in.
Imagination can have a strong effect on motivation and belief. It may also have a direct effect on behaviour. Why do you think golfing coaches suggest their students to always imagine good shots, rather than think about all the ways the shot can be miss-hit?
Professional sportsmen and trainers in all sports know that imagining positive future scenarios is a strong way to increase the possibility of achieving a positive result. Employees become excited by their notion of a positive future, they become motivated to make it a fact and their behaviour becomes more concentrated on achieving the required result. In a similar way, you and your organization will have a much better chance of success if you create an image of the future that leads to positive outcomes.
So how should you go about creating a positive future?
* Involve your team. The process of creating a positive future can be energizing and engaging. Participation in making their own personal future – and the way ahead for their work environment – is often the vital factor in making sure employees buy-in to the vision and accept responsibility for making it a reality.
* Start with strengths. Although you’ve gone through a tough time, you and the company have survived. Establishing a robust foundation of strengths reminds the team of their talents and what they’ve achieved and provides a starting point of positivity and confidence. Things to review and debate are : – What do we all know about the strengths of the company, our team, every one of the team? – In spite of everything that we might have to change, what are we happy with? – What do we not wish to lose as we move forward?
* Describe the perfect future. If your organisation might be everything you dreamed, how would it be? Imagine the future as you want it to be, and then describe what you see in specific, detailed terms. In other words, look “back” from your success and see what helped you succeed in getting there. When this exercise is done with a team, they may typically see world class processes, culture, technology, people and performance. Importantly though , this positive image of the future doesn’t just come from anywhere ; because you started with strengths, it is constructed on the foundations of what you know that you can do, implying the imagined perfect future is essentially both desirable and achievable.
* Help every person identify the “What’s in it for me?” factor. Creating a positive future as a team is a great opportunity for synergy. However, while the whole team may have the same positive picture of the future, the benefits of making it happen in reality are likely to be different for everyone. To truly gain commitment and collective action, each employee must completely appreciate its meaning for them personally see what’s in it for them personally.
Ultimately, demonstrate your own personal sense of excitement about the positive future you’ve made. Constantly express your own confidence in eventual success and continually seek, find and use examples of success and progress to build a sense of momentum.
Walt Disney was a genius at getting his staff committed to his organisation’s future. When he started his theme parks he was clear on their purpose and their strength. He announced “We’re in the happiness business”. That’s completely different from being in the theme park business.
Walt Disney’s image of the future was clear. “Keep the same smile on people’s faces when they leave the park as when they enter”. He didn’t care whether a guest was in the park two hours or ten hours. He just wished to keep them smiling. A clear image of the future drives everything the cast members ( staff ) do with their guests ( consumers ) and inspires excitement, commitment and ownership for making that picture happen in reality.
Want to learn more about Leadership Development? Then visit Antoinette Oglethorpe’s blog at http://www.antoinetteoglethorpe.com