The changing face of motivation.

The world of work is rapidly changing. The days of motivating employees 

to simply complete a task are well and truly gone. In a competitive work environment the most valuable commodities in your workplace are lateral thinking, problem solving, and innovation. These higher order concepts need to be encouraged and reinforced to ensure sustainability in your business or organisation.  

When it comes to looking at motivation one thing is true, what has worked in the past isn’t going to be the thing that will work in our rapidly changing future. Motivating others to think and behave differently is not an exact science and requires you to understand the drivers of behaviour as well as get clear on the outcomes you are seeking.

Employee motivation is a topic that has spurned a whole industry within the corporate world, but there are a couple of myths when it comes to looking at motivation that are worth clearing up:  

Myth 1: People are unmotivated

Reality: There is no such thing as no motivation. Everyone is motivated for something, the key for you is to discover what are the motivating factors at play for an individual and work with those. 

Myth 2: Money is the primary motivator at work.

Reality: Money is not a strong motivator. When employees have enough money, and money is distributed in a fair and equitable way, monetary rewards cease to be a motivating force at work. The individual values of an employee are a good indicator of the factors that drive behaviour and decisions, and it’s important to always remember the number one strongest reinforcer of behaviour change - praise. 

Myth 3: Yearly bonuses are motivating

Reality: When a reward is predictable it ceases to be a motivator and becomes an expectation. 

The bottom line is that individuals are motivated when they are engaged in meaningful work, when they are connected to the purpose of the outcome. In our book, “Dealing with the Tough Stuff: How to achieve results from crucial conversations” we make reference to Malcolm Gladwell insights into what makes meaningful work. Gladwell identifies that three things are needed: 

1. Complexity: The work needs to have a level of complexity in order to be challenging. Individuals are not motivated by tasks that are easy to do.
2. Autonomy: Individuals need the space to be able to do what needs to be done there way. 
3. Relationship between effort and reward: Individuals need to know that their effort has a direct relationship on the rewards they can gain. It needs to be clear that if individuals put in the effort there is an equivalent reward. Rewards that are over the top are not motivating. 

The world of work is rapidly changing. The days of motivating employees to simply complete a task are well and truly gone. In a competitive work environment the most valuable commodities in your workplace are lateral thinking, problem solving, and innovation. These higher order concepts need to be encouraged and reinforced to ensure sustainability in your business or organisation. 

Warm wishes, 

Darren and Alison 

THE GIFT: Tempest Freerunning Academy Video
This week's gift is a brilliant video demonstrating the changing world of fitness. Who ever thoughts there would be a gym without equipment? Just walls and carpet that procudes amazing athletes like the ones featured in the video. Enjoy!

Stop wasting your money on customer engagement

OK, time to start Tuesday with a rant.

Too many organisations and businesses are spending ridiculous amounts of money on trying to achieve customer engagement, improve customer service and strengthen stakeholder/client relationships yet they may as well not bother; it’s wasted money unless we first start with a truth.

Customer engagement starts with staff engagement. It’s as simple as that.

If you are in a service-related industry (and current labour stats show over 80% of you are) the relationship with your customer or client is critical to your success. But it isn’t your product that builds the relationship, it’s the human being that offers it.

Here’s another truth for you to consider.

Every business is a human business. People buy people.

And before you show me your strategy, your systems or your KPI’s around customer service strategies, let us leave you with one last truth.

Attitude trumps policy every single time. Our behaviours are language, and the way you engage your staff will speak louder and more accurately than anything you put on paper...

Focus on engaging your people and watch how it changes the relationship with your customers.

We don't do direct plugs often, but we have an awesome program that focuses on Engagement. Check it out here. Now that’s sure to be money well spent!

End of rant.

Engagingly yours,

Darren and Alison 

THE GIFT:  There Are no Limits - Whitepaper by AIM

The gift this week is a Whitepaper by AIM (Australian Institute of Management) on Employee Engagement. It's from 2006 but does give you some interesting statistics on Employee Engagement.

Strip back your message.

The following is an excerpt from our new book Dealing with the Tough Stuff that is hitting the shelves nationally in June 2012.

With the advent of Twitter and status updates on Facebook, we are being asked to exercise the skill of stripping back our message to the core (to 140 characters or less, in fact). We think that this is a good skill to learn, particularly if you are in a leadership role. Imagine if your manager or CEO came along to your next meeting and was able to clearly explain the vision, strategy and purpose of the organisation in 140 characters (or less), what would that be like? 

There is a saying that ‘the most important thing is to know the most important thing’. How many people in your team and your organisation know what the most important thing they need to do is? If you are a manager and a leader then you need to ask yourself the following questions: 

• What is the most important point I need to get across at the moment? 
• What is the most important goal I need my staff to be striving towards?
• What is the core intent behind our actions as a team? 

Dan Heath and Chip Heath, prolific writers and columnists for the magazine Fast Company, have written a brilliant book called Made to Stick. Their book talks about having a message, idea and a strategy that is a ‘sticky’ one that stays with people for a long time. 

Too often we feel like we have to add more to our message, idea or strategy so that it can be made clear to others. In fact stripping back your message to the core is more important. Take the time today to think about your core vision, goal, idea and strategy, and how can you communicate this to your staff and your customers in 140 characters (or less). And if you are stuck, then take the time to read Made to Stick.

Importantly yours,

Darren and Alison 

THE GIFT:  Made To Stick - The First Chapter

We thought we'd let you have a sneak peek at 'Made to Stick' so as this week's gift, you get the first chapter for free. Enjoy!

‘He said/she said’ - How to resolve the tug of war conversations

Do you ever find that you get caught up in conversations that go round in circles?

Are there times that you find yourself acting as peace keeper trying to figure out the real issue of a disagreement between others?

Sometimes when faced with conflict and interpersonal issues within the workplace conversations can get caught up into ‘he said, she said’. You know the ones, where both parties are 100% right and start to point fingers or deny actions in order to try and convince you they are 100% right. 

The reality is that these conversations go nowhere fast in fact, if left to continue they escalate into heated discussions and can be the source of long-standing disagreements and grievances - none of which is good for the bottom line and makes coming to work very uncomfortable. 

The problem with these conversations is that they get stuck in the nitty gritty detailed content. What happened, when did it happen, who was involved, who wasn’t?

There is a way to get out of this downward spiral. When dealing with heated and tough conversations that are getting bogged down you need to focus on two things: 

1. Chuck it back up to talk about the CONTEXT - what is the bigger issue? (eg. good customer service, patient care, quality product, collaboration etc)
2. Be relentless in seeking solution-focused discussion - this is the situation - what might be some strategies about how to resolve this?

So next time you are drawn into a conversation that is going nowhere ask yourself and those around you, what is the bigger issue here?And how can we resolve this?

Here’s to focusing more on the solutions. 

Darren and Alison 

THE GIFT:  Surrounded by Inspiration e-book

The reality is that we are all surrounded by inspiration every day and yet in the daily grind and busyness of life we are often too rushed to lift our heads up and notice.

This e-book by Darren & Alison Hill is a collection of some of our newsletters that have been a source of inspiration for both us and the incredible clients we are privileged to work with. 

Are you missing the important conversations?

Are you missing the important conversations?

Where are the most important conversations being held in your workplace?

And what are you doing to make sure that you are a part of them?

Last Friday at our Think Tank we were fortunate to share the space with a sensational group of individuals where we talked about the future of customer service. 

One of the components of exceptional customer service is having highly engaged staff. You know the business or the organisation that you walk into and the people who greet you are inspired, light up, and will do whatever needs to be done for you, the customer. 

These are people who are engaged with what they do, and it makes all the difference. Not only are teams with engaged employees up to 43% more productive (Hay Group), a large percentage (72%) of highly engaged employees believe they can have a positive effect on Customer Service, as opposed to only 27% of disengaged employees. Despite these phenomenal statistics, the reality is that only 31% of employees are actively engaged in their jobs. 

The thing is that our levels of engagement can change every single day depending on our interactions, our mood, how the business is tracking etc. So how can you know with certainty who is engaged in your workplace? Our colleague, Kara Emerton from Department of Human Services, shared with the group the importance of both using and being a part of the ‘corridor conversations’. 

We love this concept of engaging in ‘corridor conversations’ because the reality is that this is often where the most important conversations are being held in your workplace. 

This is the place where the true team conversations occur, you know the meeting that happens after the meeting. It is the informal setting, the neutral territory, the creative space for frustrations to be aired and as a result an opportunity for Managers to seek out solutions. It is here that informal and authentic connections occur. 

So, today take the time to step away from your desk, from your computer and phone for a moment and walk around the office with the intent of connecting in these ‘corridor conversations’. They are happening whether you are involved or not; your ability to influence change will be far greater if you are a part of them. 

Warm wishes, 

Darren and Alison 

THE GIFT:  What Every CEO Needs to Know About HR
A great article from the Bloomberg Business Week website which outlines the important role of HR within a company. (Might be worth holding onto if you still get blank stares from people when you tell them you work in HR!)