The other day I was discussing with a friend about how athletics has changed over the years. “The days are gone where you can tell a player to run another lap without them ‘lawyer-ing up’ or dropping out to join another team.” she said. This wasn’t the first time I had participated in such a discussion.
Whatever the case may be for why we have arrived here, motivating the workforce has become increasingly more important to executing business objectives. Here are a few management tactics that might be applied to these situations:
- Align Growth Plans - For a leader, it can sometimes be frustrating to think about the fact that at any moment their people may want to exit and join another team. An effective tactic is to open and maintain a regular dialogue to discuss the win / win of continuing to work together.
- Win / Win Results - Most people do not like to be told how to do things. A more effective method is to clearly define expectations around the desired results, then let the employee explore how to reach them.
- Time Management – Most employees today place a lot of value on their time away from work and want to use their work time to effectively achieve their objectives. According to a recent poll, the biggest “waste of time” in business is meetings. As a leader, setting and holding clear objectives for these discussions helps all involved retain value for the time spent.
Contributed by Jane Henry. Jane coaches managers in the corporate environment to forge strong partnerships and increase the value they contribute to the bottom line. She can be contacted via email at Jane@Xcution.com
Reid Henry
Jane Henry
