Motivating Proficiency

**Posts:** 225 · by **fathom** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 10:08 pm

I find this topical area fascinating.

Having jumped around to 16 new location and different jobs in 20 years I've had an opporunity to view many different ways to promote proficiency in the workplace. Some extremely innovative, well others I just can't repeat.

If I had to voice two of the very best:

1. Always praise in public, and always criticize in private, and

2. Promote the team when success is acheived (even if the achievement was solely your), and assume total accountability in failure (even if not of your own doing).

Both are extremely difficult practices to manage - but each time you do -- you raise the bar to the next higher standard.

**Posts:** 285 · by **Lyndsay Swinton** » Fri Sep 05, 2003 7:41 am

I would agree with these straightforward rules of thumb as a good way to motivate people in the workplace. The small print that I would add is that you always need to consider the person that you are trying to motivate and figure out the best way to praise/criticise them. If you publicly praise a person who is extremely shy the emotional response to the attention overshadows your good intention. In this case you may want to consider doing the praise in private, and if you still feel the need, do a low key praise in public later. Equally, someone who is bursting with the need to be acknowledged has to be praised in public - they would be gutted at the missed opportunity otherwise.

You also need to consider the message you are giving when you praise someone. It always pays to be sincere, and best of all, if you can be specific about what it is that the person has done that is so great and what that means to you/the company, you might find that the praisee does it again and some of their colleauges figure out how to please the boss and do it too.

With respect to criticism, it ALWAYS ALWAYS has to be done in private (unless you are a power hungry boss :twisted:

) As with the praise, this needs to be very clear. I normally start with a brief objective summary of what they did, what consequence that behavior/action had, and a request for how they should approach a similar situation in future. This is never a one way monologue, and I aim to check with the person that they understood what I was talking about and try to get their side of the story too. Sometimes people have a blind spot and can't figure out how what they did may have been less than great, and it pays to help them come up with some alternative solutions to how they could have done this better. This gives a nod to the "black or white thinking style" model, by helping people see the shades of grey that exist between these extremes.

Argh - I've just looked at my watch and I'm late for work! :shock:

Gotta run or my boss will give me a beating with a big stick!

Lynds

**Posts:** 2821 · by **Roger Elliott** » Fri Sep 05, 2003 7:47 am

Some workplace behaviour is just unbelievable. I once worked on a call centre floor and witnessed the director bawling out one of the head supervisors in front of 50 callers and other staff.

Admittedly she also later punched another member of staff - really quite unstable - shouldn't have been in the post, but that fact did nothing to ameliorate the effect on those who felt her wrath.

Motivation by fear not good.

**Posts:** 225 · by **fathom** » Fri Sep 05, 2003 11:44 am

LyndsaySwinton wrote:If you publicly praise a person who is extremely shy the emotional response to the attention overshadows your good intention. In this case you may want to consider doing the praise in private, and if you still feel the need, do a low key praise in public later.

You also need to consider the message you are giving when you praise someone. It always pays to be sincere, and best of all, if you can be specific about what it is that the person has done that is so great and what that means to you/the company, you might find that the praisee does it again and some of their colleauges figure out how to please the boss and do it too.

With respect to criticism, it ALWAYS ALWAYS has to be done in private (unless you are a power hungry boss ) As with the praise, this needs to be very clear... Sometimes people have a blind spot and can't figure out how what they did may have been less than great, and it pays to help them come up with some alternative solutions to how they could have done this better. This gives a nod to the "black or white thinking style" model, by helping people see the shades of grey that exist between these extremes.

Now here's a person I want on my team!

Yes - agree wholeheartedly - you really need to be "personable", as if you don't know the people you work with, you can do more damage than good. Good intentions is not a substitute for good leadership.

<added>pardon my manners LyndsaySwinton - welcome to Uncommon Forums!

</added>

**Posts:** 2821 · by **Roger Elliott** » Fri Sep 05, 2003 12:12 pm

She's good isn't she?

That's why she's my wife; great taste :wink:

by **gymosphere** » Mon Dec 15, 2003 7:24 am

Greetings everyone, I hope that you are all well.

I would like to ask 2 questions:

1. What are the motivational needs for the corporate world?

2. How can we find out and determine the corporate needs and wants in terms of motivation and self-help(e.g. by doing surveys, etc.)?

**Posts:** 225 · by **fathom** » Mon Dec 15, 2003 7:24 pm

gymosphere wrote:Greetings everyone, I hope that you are all well.

I would like to ask 2 questions:

1. What are the motivational needs for the corporate world?

2. How can we find out and determine the corporate needs and wants in terms of motivation and self-help(e.g. by doing surveys, etc.)?

Question #1 is a really broad topic and cannot be so easily define. Each company that has a few employees to 100's or 1000's must uniquely develop their own set of motivational, self help and mental well-being tools, programs, etc.

Some might say that the weekly lottery pool is as "good as it gets", others might provide free incentive or upgrade training, medical, dental or life insurance plans, or investment opportunities, shares, stocks or bonds.

Within my own world I develop sub-contractors to do alot of the physical online work and realized soon after that there were special needs within the group of sub-contractors.

All work requires mental capacity (not physical) thus long hours at a computer (and at home) meant strange eating practices (never having 3 meals a day -- just one big snack) and most including myself added on the pounds.

As part of our motivation/self help etc. plan -- two necessities arouse:

1. free daily passes to a local gym, swiimming pool, weight training center etc. that they must use, and

2. bi-weekly entertainment for managing their contracts on time.

**Posts:** 285 · by **Lyndsay Swinton** » Wed Dec 17, 2003 8:04 pm

Hi there,

There are many theories about motivation in the workplace that are taught on management courses, and here are a couple to get you started. I've put the URL's for some articles that I found, and you can do some more research using Google.

Maslow's hierarchies of needs....http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/regsys/maslow.html

Frederick Herzberg's hygiene and motivating factors.....http://www.theworkingmanager.com/articles/detail.asp?ArticleNo=181

As to surveys etc. why not try http://www.cipd.co.uk which is the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development website for the UK. There are heaps of resources and contacts in there.

Lyndsay

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