Name: Roxanne
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Bio: Roxanne Emmerich is renowned for her ability to transform the “ho-hum” attitudes of leaders, executives, business owners and entrepreneurs just like you into massive results-oriented “bring-it-on” attitudes. To discover how you can get motivated and love your job again, check out her new book – Thank God It’s Monday. Now, you can get a free sneak preview at: http://www.thankgoditsmonday.com/preview_the_book/
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- 1. Show up fully and commit with all your heart
10 Workplace Motivation Commandments All Leaders Must Follow
March 18th, 2010Unmotivated employees have rightly been called “the black holes of the business universe.” Fortunately, motivation is not something a person is born with or without. Applying these Ten Commandments can go a long way to helping existing employees find their motivation.
Flickr Photo courtesy of †OnlyByGrace
1. Commit with all thy heart so others might follow
Before you ask your employees to commit, you must be fully committed yourself as a manager and leader of your organization. Throw your heart over the bar, make that complete commitment and others will follow.
2. Declare a zero-tolerance policy for dysfunctional behaviors
These behaviors include people saying one thing and meaning another, giving lip service, gossiping and backstabbing. Enlist a company-wide commitment to stop every one of these workplace dysfunctions that lead to conflicts and lower employee productivity.
3. Show that you care, in every way
Show your team members that you care, not just about their productivity, but also about them. A kind word or a “good job,” a pat on the back or a question about someone’s health can go a long way toward motivating your employees.
4. Celebrate every victory
Recognition of achievements is high on the list of employee motivators. Every big project consists of scores of little victories along the way. Celebration builds confidence, and confident people are open to feedback. This means your employees will be more willing to grow with your company.
5. Clean up thy messes
As a manager and leader, you WILL inevitably make mistakes. It is critical to clean up your messes as you make them. Acknowledge the mistake then make a commitment to make things right and prevent a recurrence.
6. Use powerful and positive language
Say what you mean and communicate your position in a clear, powerful and positive manner. Your ability to motivate employees will be INCREDIBLE when people know what is expected of them and why.
7. Be unreasonable with thyself
Being “reasonable” doesn’t bring out the best of who you are. Show that you are willing to forego the excuses and happily do what needs doing, regardless of how “unreasonable” it seems. Your employees will then rise to the unreasonable themselves.
8. Reprogram thy limiting beliefs
We all come equipped with self-doubting mechanisms. Begin living “as if” you are smart enough, good enough and up to the challenge, and guess what—suddenly you will be. Once those limiting beliefs fall away, your actual competence increases, which further reduces self-doubt … and places you in a happy feedback loop of motivation.
9. Choose joy
When you develop a habit of interpreting things as good instead of bad, it actually alters the neural pathways in your brain. Your brain will find it easier to interpret things as good. You’ve rewired your brain for happiness—and happy people are MUCH more likely to be motivated and engaged than unhappy ones.
10. Give, Give, GIVE
Life gives to the givers and takes from the takers, and life has a perfect accounting system. If you want your employees to shower your company with success, it’s time for you to dig in and give like crazy to your employees.
Give them your committed heart. Give them a functional environment. Give them care, celebration, integrity, clarity and a vision of the impossible made possible. Give them a model of life without limiting beliefs. Most of all, show them the way by choosing joy.
Do these things and you will motivate your employees and end up in the Promised Land together.
About the Author:
Roxanne Emmerich is renowned for her ability to transform “ho-hum” workplaces into massive results-oriented “bring-it-on” environments. To discover how you can motivate employees, ignite their passion and catapult performance to new levels, subscribe to Roxanne’s FREE “Thank God It’s Monday” e-zine at http://www.ThankGodItsMonday.com.
10 Workplace Motivation Commandments That All Leaders MUST Follow
February 8th, 2010
Unmotivated employees have rightly been called “the black holes of the business universe.” Fortunately, motivation is not something a person is born with or without. Applying these Ten Commandments can go a long way to helping existing employees find their motivation.
1. Commit with all thy heart so others might follow
Before you ask your employees to commit, you must be fully committed yourself as a manager and leader of your organization. Throw your heart over the bar, make that complete commitment, and others will follow.
2. Declare a zero-tolerance policy for dysfunctional behaviors
These behaviors include people saying one thing and meaning another, giving lip service, gossiping and backstabbing. Enlist a company-wide commitment to stop every one of these workplace dysfunctions that lead to conflicts and lower employee productivity.
3. Show that you care, in every way
Show your team members that you care, not just about their productivity, but also about them. A kind word or a “good job,” a pat on the back or a question about someone’s health can go a long way toward motivating your employees.
4. Celebrate every victory
Recognition of achievements is high on the list of employee motivators. Every Big Project consists of scores of little victories along the way. Celebration builds confidence, and confident people are open to feedback. This means your employees will be more willing to grow with your company.
5. Clean up thy messes
As a manager and leader, you WILL inevitably make mistakes. It is critical to clean up your messes as you make them. Acknowledge the mistake then make a commitment to make things right and prevent a recurrence.
6. Use powerful and positive language
Say what you mean and communicate your position in a clear and powerful and positive manner. Your ability to motivate employees will be INCREDIBLE when people know what is expected of them and why.
7. Be unreasonable with thyself
Being “reasonable” doesn’t bring out the best of who you are. Show that you are willing to forego the excuses and happily do what needs doing, regardless of how “unreasonable” it seems. Your employees will then rise to the unreasonable themselves.
8. Reprogram thy limiting beliefs
We all come equipped with self-doubting mechanisms. Begin living “as if” you are smart enough, good enough, and up to the challenge, and guess what—suddenly you will be. Once those limiting beliefs fall away, your actual competence increases, which further reduces self-doubt…and places you in a happy feedback loop of motivation.
9. Choose joy
When you develop a habit of interpreting things as good instead of bad, it actually alters the neural pathways in your brain. Your brain will find it easier to interpret things as good. You’ve rewired your brain for happiness—and happy people are MUCH more likely to be motivated and engaged than unhappy ones.
10. Give, Give, GIVE
Life gives to the givers and takes from the takers, and life has a perfect accounting system. If you want your employees to shower your company with success, it’s time for you to dig in and give like crazy to your employees.
Give them your committed heart. Give them a functional environment. Give them care, celebration, integrity, clarity, and a vision of the impossible made possible. Give them a model of life without limiting beliefs. Most of all, show them the way by choosing joy.
Do these things and you will motivate your employees and end up in the Promised Land together.
Top 10 Workplace Dysfunctions — And How to TERMINATE Them
September 7th, 2009The dysfunctional workplace is a killer.
Untreated, it will kill off your customer base, your profits, and your joy for living as surely as anything.
As managers, leaders and top executives within your organization – what to do?
You’ve got to kill the conflicts in your workplace first before dysfunction takes hold.
The Top Ten Workplace Conflicts That Disrupt Organizations—and the Cure for Each
No. 1: No teamwork
The best managers lead a team – not just a group of individual employees. If you have employees at odds and you show no desire to fix it then you are leading your organization to a disaster.
So, make sure that the most direct supervisor meets with those involved in a workplace conflict to learn what it will take to resolve it and to secure a firm commitment to do so. Don’t forget to spell out immediate consequences in the event of failure.
No. 2: Saying one thing and meaning another.
If you have an employee with a pattern of saying, “But what I meant was…”, call them on it. Requiring the offender to have all communications checked for clarity for a period of time usually nips this in the bud fast.
No. 3: Giving lip service to new ideas then undercutting them in private.
You’ll want to enlist everyone’s help in keeping this workplace conflict out. Make it clear that dissenting opinions are welcome during decision making, but that once a decision is made, undercutting will not be tolerated.
No. 4: Defensiveness at reasonable suggestions.
As a manager, it is your responsibility to let your team know that you consider a willingness to improve to be one of the hallmarks of a person with a bright future in your company. Defensiveness should be viewed as what it is—an unwillingness to improve one’s self.
No. 5: Attraction to chaos.
Pot stirring is a violation of principles and a threat to productivity. Counterbalance the pleasure they get from drama with a greater measure of negative consequences.
No. 6: Not following through on commitments.
Let your team know that they are expected to acknowledge errors and make a commitment to clean up every last bit of the resulting mess.
No. 7: Deflecting blame.
Deflecting blame equals deflecting responsibility. Make it clear that the only acceptable behavior is acceptance of responsibility and (as above) quick work to clean up the mess.
No. 8: People pretending like they “never got the memo.”
If there was no breakdown in the actual system, make it clear that the employee is responsible for consistently accessing internal communications like memos and emails so that he is never again “out of the loop.”
No. 9: Refusing to deal with conflict directly.
Conflict resolution is an essential part of a manager’s job. Performance reviews can and should count disruptive interpersonal conflicts against managers on whose watch they occur.
No. 10: Gossiping and backstabbing.
Once you establish a zero-tolerance policy for talking behind another person’s back, give your people permission to address conflict head-on, out loud, courageously and honestly. And make it clear that giving or receiving gossip is not acceptable.
You may have noticed a refrain coming back again and again in this advice: Make it clear. Once you’ve made the determination to purge your workplace of dysfunctional behavior, your greatest ally and most powerful tool will be clarity.
Follow the advice in this article and in my new book “Thank God It’s Monday” and you will terminate all workplace conflicts and improve your organization’s productivity.
Eight Ways to Engage Employees and Power-Up Performance During a Recession
August 21st, 2009If you’ve seen the movie Jerry Maguire, you’ll remember the scene where Tom Cruise asks Cuba Gooding, Jr., “What can I do for you?” Gooding says, “Show me the money.”
Many employers think that’s the key to employee engagement. But any company that THINKS you have to pour money on employees to get them engaged will write off employee engagement efforts during tough economic times. “We just can’t afford to do it right now,” they say.
In fact, you can’t afford NOT to pay attention to engagement, especially during a recession when sales are soft. Employee engagement scores regularly account for up to 50 percent of the variance in customer service scores. A disengaged employee can cost you 30 TIMES as much in safety-related incidents. And disengaged employees are over 85 percent more likely to leave.
Engagement comes not from dollars but from more personal factors.
Eight Ways to Keep Your Employees Engaged for the Long Term
1. Listen to your employees.
Most people want to work for an employer who cares enough to listen. The best way to know what your employees need and expect is to ask them—and to listen carefully to their answers.
2. Provide clear, consistent expectations.
Vague policies and unclear expectations can make employees feel irritated, unsafe and even paranoid. This leads to your employees becoming disengaged. They click into survival mode instead of focusing on how to help the company succeed.
3. Give employees a sense of importance.
This has a greater impact on loyalty and customer service than all other factors COMBINED.
4. Develop opportunities for advancement.
The chance to work your way up the ladder is a tremendous incentive for productivity, bonding, and employee engagement.
5. Create good relationships with others in the workplace.
If you have a toxic relationship with your employees, you can forget about asking them to put their shoulder to the wheel for the company.
6. Offer regular feedback.
If you want to keep your employees moving forward, give them the occasional rudder report. And don’t forget positive feedback, which should ideally outnumber the negative by about 5 to 1.
7. Celebrate and reward for successes.
Set realistic targets, then reward and celebrate when they are reached. And don’t wait for the end of a big project to celebrate. Pick landmarks along the way and go nuts when you hit them.
8. Move from “the company” to “our company.”
The heart and soul of engagement is ownership. As long as your employees feel they are working to help YOU make YOUR company succeed, engagement will be low. Once you get them to see themselves as partners in the endeavor—making decisions, staying informed, sharing in the company’s ups and downs—everything changes. Engagement soars.
Just imagine a workplace in which employees feel important and listened to, in which expectations are clear and feedback consistent, in which relationships and shared ownership are cultivated, advancement is available, and success is celebrated.
Now stop imagining it and CREATE it!
Thank God It’s Monday – 7 Secrets To Feel Happy at Work
July 21st, 2009
What accounts for the difference between “Oh crap, it’s Monday” and “Thank God it’s Monday”?
It’s your happiness. And, for your own emotional and mental health, you need to feel happy at work.
It all boils down to seven habits that can change everything about the culture of your workplace.
At work, we think of home. At home, we think of work. Time to stop that. The first step toward a TGIM workplace is being present and accounted for at work. Thinking about being elsewhere leads to resenting where you are.
While you are at work, commit to work with all your heart. This is what I call throwing your heart over the bar—committing 100 percent to the moment and task before you.
2. Communicate clearly
Use powerful and positive language about what you will do and the attitude you expect from others. If a TGIM workplace is your goal, take the time to make your communications clear on every level.
3. Go beyond the job description
Going beyond the job description happens when you pitch in and help others at work without expecting reward. Willingly share the load. If you’re caught up on your tasks, help someone else who is crunching for a deadline. Instead of feeling like it’s an extra burden, you will actually feel like you play a bigger role in your company than you ever did before.
4. Don’t tolerate dysfunctional behaviors
Establish a zero-tolerance policy for talking behind another person’s back. Then give each other permission to address conflict head-on, out loud, courageously and honestly. Create a trusting and open environment and watch the dysfunction ebb away.
5. Clean up your messes
Relationships are built on trust. Without that foundation, there is no basis for a relationship. We breach the trust each time we don’t do what we said we would do. But here’s the thing — that breach can be healed quickly IF you come back and clean up the mess. Acknowledge that the results are not okay then make a commitment to make things right and prevent a recurrence.
6. Live a life of profound service
Once you place yourself in the service of those around you — your family, your colleagues and your customers — every moment becomes imbued with purpose and significance. You will feel GOOD.
As you drive to work, begin thinking about how the work you do is serving others and contributing to their success and happiness. This is the essence of true service, and the key to a workplace that draws you happily back, Monday after Monday after Monday.
7. Celebrate
Every project consists of little steps and little victories along the way. Recognize and celebrate them in both large and small ways. Build a system of celebrations and rewards — quarterly, weekly, daily — and follow through like your company’s life depends on it. Because, (psst) it does.
Acquire these seven habits and spread them through your workplace. Then be sure to notice the first Monday your hand reaches for the alarm — and you smile. You can love your job and feel happy at work if you follow these 7 secrets.