Who wouldn’t want their team to exhibit excellent work? The main reason I see managers complain about the quality of work produced by their teams is because we rarely talk about what excellence looks like and how we would know if it actually occurred.

People make individual choices about what to do and how to do it based on two things; their understanding of expectations of quality and their intrinsic motivations.

So how do we define ‘excellence’? Imagine that your team is performing at the top of its game, to its true potential. What would you see people doing? What communication is taking place? What time issues are people dealing with? What happens when they confront problems? How are they showing creativity? What does it look like when projects exceed expectations to clients and customers? How are people learning from their experiences?

You could put answers to these questions down on paper, and then ask your team to add to it so you all create a vision of excellence, one that can be agreed and committed to by all.

Here are some examples of excellence that you can build on:

• Teams are focused on what’s most important, clear on priorities and know how their work ties into corporate and departmental goals

• Team members feel challenges and important. Communication is focused and open. They are driven by their internal drivers of excellence and accomplishment

• Time is used wisely. Meetings are held only when necessary, not because it’s a certain time of the day or week. People want to contribute ideas and are encouraged to be creative

• You make sure your people aren’t buried beneath tons of projects and they have time to devote to quality rather than quantity

• Your department knows how to serve the best interests of internal as well as external customers

• Everyone recognises that change is the only constant. You recognise your role involves helping the team become comfortable with changing environments driven by progress and customer needs

• You model excellence in all you do, not allowing prejudices and favouritism to bounce you off course. People respect you for your integrity and you don’t say things behind people’s backs that you wouldn’t say to their face. You are trustworthy and reliable.

As you see, this is a journey. Imagine what it will feel like when you reach the destination. Imagine the impact on your team and its results as they all follow the example of excellence. Gone will be the lame excuses. No more ‘it-will-do’ attitudes. Less time spent moaning and groaning about things out of their control.

The possibilities and potential results are many-fold. It just takes one person to make the decision that ‘excellence will be the norm round here’. Let that person be you.

Many thanks

Mark Williams

Head of Training

MTD Management Training Course

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The article Four Levels of Employee Engagement evoked a lot of response from people, especially on the subject ‘how do you get people to level 4?’.

A typical question came from Henry, who asks, “Getting people to operate at level four is very difficult. Most people in my experience have too many other things going on in their lives to get total commitment from them. How do you get them to level four?”

Great point. Most people do not have the incentive or will to devote the kind of passion or enthusiasm that you would like at work. Their real passion lies outside of the working environment. They work to live, not the other way round.

The enthusiasm, loyalty and commitment you would like from team members can’t be forced on them. It only happens through a ‘culture of commitment’, where customer-facing staff reflect to the outside world the intense pride and ownership they are experiencing on the inside.

It’s what Vanderbilt professor Roland Rust calls ‘service climate’. He calls those attributes of overall workplace climate those that characterise how well-equipped employees are to deliver excellence at the point of contact with external or internal customers, such as adequacy of resources and equipment and job skills development.

Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration found that employees’ emotional commitment and sense of identity with the company is a key factor in providing excellent service.

And Henry Mintzberg, a key writer on all-things management, is quoted as saying, “Managers should function so that people can be naturally empowered. If someone is doing their job to an excellent standard, they should know their job better than anyone else, and so they don’t need to be ‘empowered’ but encouraged and left alone to be able to do what they know best.” (Italics ours)

This means creating a Performance Partnership with your team. It means you are all in it together. And it starts with you.

As manager/leader of your team, you need to show the commitment to the business that you would like others to show. This commitment doesn’t mean you work all hours of the day and night; it means that when you are actually at work (whether it’s nine-to-five or beyond), you bring your enthusiasm and commitment to every minute of that time.

You should communicate openly as much as possible with your partners. The more they know, the more they will understand. The more they understand, the more they will care. The more they care, the more you can trust them. If you’re serious about forming a Performance Partnership, then you’ll share information that is relevant and also some that is ‘nice to know’.

You should appreciate everything your team does for the business. Giving a salary is the base level of appreciation. However, building praise and recognition into the way that you lead will enhance your relationships and build pride in what people do and bring to the business.

Listening to what is being said may seem a strange way to gain commitment; but, if you take on board others’ requests, identify why they feel the way they do, endeavour to change processes so they support the teams’ activities and create a climate of change that emphasises the attention to results, you stand a far greater chance of people offering their hearts and minds to the cause.

All this isn’t easy. As we said before, engaging employees so they bring their hearts to work as well as their minds, is not something that an increased salary or better perks will bring. No, they need to be encouraged to commit to bring excellence to everything they do. You can’t buy commitment; but you can provide the conditions and environment and atmosphere that encourages people to support the purpose and objectives of the business. Becoming Performance Partners together is the first step on that journey.

Many thanks

Mark Williams

Head of Training

MTD Management Training Course

(Image by Ambro)

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I’m in Sweden at the moment, running a fascinating Management Program for an International company, and the question came up concerning the ideal manager for a multi-cultural organisation. They were discussing whether there is such a thing as an ideal manager in their situation.

I started an exercise where they were to identify the key components of a manager working in this kind of environment. The four groups came up with some interesting ideas concerning remote team management and application of cultural awareness training. The combined group interaction and feedback showed that it was possible to manage the scenarios they were exposed to, but there wouldn’t be such a thing as an ‘ideal’ answer.

The groups ascertained that, whatever situations they were placed in, the personalities of the managers would dictate the processes and procedures that would eventually get the best results. Although there are global concepts that will work effectively, they concluded there were no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solutions and they would have to recruit on the basis of awareness of the cultures that drive performance within their own specific markets.

This may sound a bit of a cop-out, but I could understand their reasoning. Having worked in the Middle-East, Far-East, Africa, Europe and the USA, I have seen my fair share of cultural anomalies and lack of understanding of them by management teams. I have also seen the adaptation of particular roles that have supported and maintained a terrific work ethic within teams as diverse as Malaysia and Mexico.

What were the common factors? The ability to bring out the best in people, no matter what their cultural background, based on the assumption that the individuals concerned want to contribute and want to make a difference.

The key point here is ‘support’. I have yet to meet a team member in organisations I’ve worked with who would not choose to be in an environment where they can grow, advance and contribute to the success of the business. And by identifying how that growth and advancement can actually take place and be nurtured is the common link between all managers, no matter where they originate.

The teams I’m working with here in Sweden recognised that and came up with some excellent ideas on how they can support and build on the diverse management skills that their team leaders from other continents can display. It was great to be a part of a successful outcome.

Many thanks

Mark Williams

Head of Training

MTD Management Training Course

(Image Renjith Krishnan)

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In many companies, salary increases happen at certain times of the year and are given to every employee, regardless of their performance.

If salary increases actually do improve employee morale, you would expect to see performance and productivity go up in line with the increases, wouldn’t you? Mmm. Well, you probably know the answer to that one.

Frederick Hertzberg took a look at the factors that bring job satisfaction and dis-satisfaction. He identifies two sets or groups of factors that affected employee motivation, and called them hygiene factors and motivators. Hygiene factors included things like working conditions, pay, status and security. When these are poor, work is dis-satisfying, said Hertzberg. When they are acceptable, work is not dis-satisfying. Adding more hygiene factors does not increase employee motivation.

However, the motivators are things that influence employee satisfaction based on the fulfilment of intrinsic, or higher-level, needs. These needs include opportunities for growth, recognition, achievement, and the quality of the work itself. Motivators, says Hertzberg, improve worker satisfaction and motivation much more than hygiene factors alone ever could.

Top performance employees want to be appreciated for the quality of the work done and recognised for the efforts and abilities that they show. It’s only the poor performers who think that extra pay will produce actual motivation. Actually, I believe the extra pay only attempts to make up for the poor opportunities or the boring work they have to continually carry out. It mutes the pain for a while, until the effect wears off and the money loses its meaning.

So our second myth is “Employees are Motivated by Salary Increases”

If you have increased salaries recently and expected an improvement in performance or productivity and it didn’t materialise, Hertzberg explains why.

Increased pay will never deal with intrinsic motivation. Recognising what specifically motivates people working for you, and tapping into their motivational instincts, are the only ways that you are going to get to the real essence of what makes people turn themselves on at work.

Thanks again

Sean

When we run programs on team work, many managers comment that their people don’t act as team members, and some actively work against their colleagues because of hidden agendas or personality differences.

Many of the activities we carry out show that managers have little idea of what makes the difference between having a proper team working together in harmony, and a group of people who just happen to be working in the same department.

The truth is, people can work together without having a ‘team’ ethic. But how do you create the environment for all persons in the department to pull together and be a team? Well, let’s first see what a successful team actually does.

A successful team is one in which the team members not only achieve something worthwhile, but feel that they have contributed to and participated in a project with a purpose.

Teams create various levels of deep working relationships within them. Just because people happen to be in the same office doesn’t necessarily mean they get the best out of each other. The relationships that real teams build provide that firm foundation for growth.

Teams have an emotional connection with each other so that they all ‘stand for’ something. If you asked each team member why the team exists, would everyone come up with the same answer, or totally different ideas? This connection will either drive the performance forward or drag it down.

Real teams develop their own internal motivation and stimulus to perform. If your team are dragging their feet or bickering with each other, or showing negative signals, you have to question their real motivations for being there.

Teams build their qualities through synergistic interactions. This involves each person contributing their strengths, opinions, talents and ideas to the team and building on their ideas with each other. Knowledge is shared and made openly available at meetings and on projects.

Teams always know they need to develop, perform and improve. In real teams, they contribute to each other’s’ skills and talents, learning and researching while growing together.

Without each of these traits, people tend to be looking for reasons to stand out in teams for their own motives, and the team ethic falls apart as they just work within the group they have been assigned to.

So, work with your team to help them analyse what level they are at as a team. Get them to formulate plans to improve the connections within the team. Identify individuals who are natural team builders and help others to model their mind-sets so the group you have working with you feel they have the skills and qualities to turn themselves into a committed and special team, growing with every opportunity.

Thanks again

Sean

(Image by David Castillo Dominici)

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training Course

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