Leadership Archives - Page 11 of 13

Create Positive Emotions At The Workplace. It Raises Productivity

Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Mindfulness, Positive Psychology, Productivity, Workplace Culture / My Holland

A lot of men say that the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is that the pessimist, sees women as naughty and bad. An optimist HOPES women are naughty and bad! Seriously though, you know the big difference between these two points of view: Optimism being one that can have a great impact not only on your career or profession but also on your health and life, in general. What Research Studies Say In fact, research studies have shown that optimism helps to keep depression away, improve your social ties, boost job performance and raise the chances of success in any undertaking. And when you come face to face with setbacks, optimism can make you more resilient. Pessimism, on the other hand undermines work, friendships and health. It increases your stress when you dwell on the negative too much. It actually is the recipe for depression and failure. Given these, wouldn’t you rather work with the optimist who can lighten up the day and who you can count on for support? Of course you would!, unless you’re “The Voice of Doom” who loves to hang around people who do nothing but complain, point blame at co-workers and see the whole world as nearing its end. High Performance Emanates from Optimistic Employees If you look closely at your people in the workplace, you may notice (as studies in actual work setting reflect) that your high performing teams tend to have a 6-to-1 ratio of positive to negative viewpoints. The low performing groups have an under 1-to-1 ratio. This gap generally makes a tremendous difference in your business, organizational set-up and the people who comprise them. Your best performers typically produce the top scores on profits, customer service ratings and other value measurements. Have no doubt about it. Positive emotions play a key role in a company’s daily operations. It broadens. Negative emotions hold you back. What You Can Do So, on your one-on-ones with the negative guys help them out. Persuade them to distract themselves. Help them find healthy distractions like music, exercises, meditation, etc. Short of getting them to take up bullfighting lessons, get them to learn new things.These will help put their focus somewhere else. Get them to reappraise problems and see them in a different perspective. Is it half-full or half-empty? Is it really that complex or do they just see it as such? Teach them to regard a thought as simply that: a thought. No need for them to make any judgments. The only real thing is experience. With the foregoing, you should be able to lend a hand in raising the optimism levels in your company and shoo away all forms of negativism. This is key to productivity that leads to business success.

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The Importance Of Well-Being At The Workplace

Emotional Intelligence, Engagement, Leadership, Mindfulness, Positive Psychology, Wellbeing / My Holland

Well-being is about people feeling highly valued and supported in the job they do in their place of work. It’s also about their health, productivity and performance which can usually lead to good bottom line numbers for companies. Business organizations that are well-structured and well-managed generally play an essential role in the promotion of employees’ health and over-all well-being. The benefits they bring result in the reduction of absenteeism and malingering illnesses and facilitates ease and speed of recovery and return to work after either a serious injury or illness. At its simplest definition, well-being is about personal happiness, feeling good and doing one’s job in a safe and healthy environment. Why Is Well-Being Important To A Company? Experts in the corporate world say the cost of replacement of employees who resign can go as high as one hundred fifty percent (150%) of the departing employee’s salary, given the collateral costs of recruitment, hiring and training. On the other hand, business organizations which have a workforce that is highly engaged can reduce employee turnover by eighty seven percent (87%). You don’t have to be a rocket engineer to figure out its impact not only on a company’s net profits, but on the productivity, culture and over-all output of the business, as well. And so, if you haven’t as yet taken employees’ well-being seriously in your company, now’s a good time. Work out a wellness program with a system that’ll increase productivity and bring in good figures for your company profits. Even more importantly, develop a wellness package for your staff that will result in over-all happiness and health. Here are 5 easy-to-implement guides your company can adopt to create a well-designed wellness program to, not only raise your employees’ engagement level but as well, build a pervasive, positive culture in the workplace. Link your program to the company’s strategic direction. Get this running parallel with your company’s vision and values. This way everybody wins. Make sure you have a yardstick to measure your ROI. Launching a wellness program will naturally entail some investments. Put it all together with specific objectives and how success is to be measured. Check your rate of absenteeism, cost of employees’ wages and your company’s engagement scores. They’ll serve as an index against which you can compare performance after the program has been put in place. Get your top management to buy into the idea of a sound and well-grounded well-being program. It never hurts to have the support of everybody, especially the head honchos you might have to run too should problems crop up. Work out some quick wins. Provide initiatives that will help your staff to quickly jump in and level up. Don’t forget to have fun! The subject of wellness and health doesn’t have to be boring. Make sure your message is intriguing, trendy and to the point. It should inspire a change in behavior of your guys. Inject some lightheartedness into it or even some fun from time to time. With something like this in place in your company, don’t be surprised to see your people with smiles on their faces Monday to Friday!

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Help Your Employees Set And Define Better Goals

Compassion, Engagement, Leadership, Mindfulness / My Holland / Defining goals, Help your employees define their goals, Helping employees

It oftentimes happens that with the start of a calendar new year or a fiscal year among business companies, employers set up their employees to develop and achieve goals. Left to their own devices, these guys could pretty well be writing down traditional new year’s resolutions as in reducing weight or refraining from going to sleazy girlie bars or, they may simply go through the motion of listing down objectives as nonchalantly as doing the grocery list. Of course, it’s got to be a little more serious than that. Reason enough why employers should play a role in their staff’s goal setting. Here are several ways you (as a business owner or entrepreneur with employees) can help your guys set better goals: Reiterate the company’s mission. It’s funny. In a survey of three thousand US workers, only about four in ten know what their organization stands for and what makes their brand different from the rest. You have got to help employees better understand the over-all mission . Redefining this and sharing the company-wide goals will get your guys working towards goals that will run parallel to your company’s. Make the employee goal-setting a two-way affair. You can’t let this be the employee’s sole responsibility. You, as a manager have got to jump in and make it a collaborative process. Why? Because it’ll help to get those objectives more aligned with your company’s mission. Ensure you help make those goals as specific as possible as to include the who’s, what’s, when’s, where’s and why’s of it. And, use concrete numbers so you can quantify and measure the results in realistic terms. Set your employees up for success. Work out goals that are within reach or, you may want to break down long-term goals and set up timelines for what has to be done and when. This will make short-term, smaller goals more achievable which should provide the motivation to push on. Map out an achievement plan. Don’t stop at simply setting and defining goals with your employees. A goal achievement plan is essential as well. This is where you need to have control points as you get to know what needs to be accomplished for the quarter and how all concerned should actively work to address any issues that may have risen. This should also help to keep your guys on track. So you’ve been the conscientious manager who assisted the team members in the setting of goals. Now take a step back and review what you’ve collaboratively put down. Honestly, ask yourself the question … “Are these the goals that will inspire passion among my team members? Will these drive them to go the extra mile?” If you’re getting affirmative answers, give yourself a pat on the back and treat yourself to the biggest ice cream cone at Dairy Queen. If not, I don’t have to tell you… it’s back to the drawing boards till you’ve got something that’ll fly!

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Get Your People Motivated! get the right motivation…

Compassion, Leadership, Positive Psychology / My Holland

No question about it. The driving force that gets employees towards achieving their goal is motivation. Of course, we talk about motivation among company personnel, and the first thing that comes to mind is either money or promotion or both. Sure, that helps a whole lot. But, that’s just extrinsic motivation. That’s when you set goals, measure results and reward the achievers with various kinds of incentives. Obviously, those who didn’t perform too well will have to undergo moretraining. Or, it’s probably the right time for you to understand, appreciate and adopt intrinsic motivation as part of your company’s working policy. Intrinsic Motivation. While extrinsic motivation deals with those dangled rewards that could get employees to put in the extra mile, those who are intrinsically motivated won’t need them as much. These guys simply get turned on by the actual work they do. It’s the “high” or the “rush” they get from doing the tasks involved and the deep-down, self-fulfilled feeling when the job gets done, that truly motivate them. The experts say employees are more likely to be intrinsically motivated when a company’s vision is strongly compelling, when its objectives are specific and clear, and when the corporate culture is one that is friendly andsupportive of all its employees. The Downside Of Extrinsic Motivation The goal-setting and getting the employees motivated and rewarding them with different kinds of incentives for what they’ve done and achieved is one of the best examples of extrinsic motivation. What happens here though, is that little attention, if ever, goes to the other inputs such as hard work, collaboration, cooperation and teamwork. It’s a situation where the top performers are motivated and the average guys get de-motivated. The Best Solution: Combine Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation You can see it makes sense to get these two types of motivation in place in your company. Now, that may be easier said than done, but getting these two elements in, should lead to unprecedented productivity and realisation of those corporate goals. These two suggestions should help: Create a powerful, compelling corporate vision, map out a clear set of specific goals and develop a more employee-centered culture with improved working conditions. Recognize your employees for great outputs and achievement (extrinsic)and for their inputs like can-do attitude and close collaboration (intrinsic) that runs alongside your company values. As a good leader, you should understand and appreciate the difference between these two motivations and use them to get your people really moving. Forget your whip! These work better!

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Gratitude in the workplace

Compassion, Emotional Intelligence, Engagement, Leadership, Mindfulness, Positive Psychology, Productivity / My Holland

Gratitude in the workplace Everybody wants to feel appreciated. Gratitude is a crucial engagement factor in the workplace and often the biggest motivator, ahead of money. So how can you get this right as an employer and employee and what difference can it make? When ‘thanks’ in the workplace becomes solely the wage pack at the end of the month, employees can begin to feel undervalued and demotivated on a day-to-day basis. According to the John Templeton Foundation study of 2,000 respondents, people are less likely to feel or express gratitude at work than any other place. In turn, they did not rank their jobs as something they feel grateful for. Having said that, 93% of respondents agreed that a grateful employers makes a much more successful person to work for. Hearing praise makes somebody feel better. Positive psychology confirms that giving and receiving gratitude helps boost our self-worth, as well as our productivity. One study in Harvard Medical School by Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) divided university fundraisers in two groups. Half were awarded gratitude and thanked for their efforts from the director, while the other half were not. Those who received gratitude produced more funds through fundraising than those who did not. A thank you costs nothing Gratitude does not involve the transaction of money, in the same way as a pay check does. Science Director Emiliana Simon-Thomas from the Greater Good Science Center conducted research that found that on days when someone gives or receives gratitude (or has experiences of gratitude), they feel happier. This is a cheap and effective way to improve workplace morale and productivity. Prolonged gratitude Dr Simon-Thomas also found that the people who prolonged their gratitude experiences were happier in their job, less stressed and reported better health. How to start giving and receiving more gratitude at work Gratitude works best from the ‘top down,’ in other words from hearing thanks from the boss. Those in a position of power have a greater impact in shifting workplace attitudes. A thank you needs to be clear, consistent and authentic Gratitude can be expressed in a number of ways, from throwing an office party or staff treat/gift, to complimenting the work somebody has done or built into performance reviews and appraisal meetings. Don’t take anybody for granted and remember those who, generally, do their job without looking for thanks. Sometimes these people tend to be at the bottom of the workplace pyramid and do jobs such as cleaning, filing or making a cup of tea. Make them feel valued. Quality, not quantity is key. If you say thank you, in a throwaway style, several times a day, it is less meaningful than a well thought-out expression of thanks that is justified and authentic. Cultivate a culture of gratitude in the workplace over time, so when an unsettled period arises or conflict, employees feel part of a team. Psychologist Robert Emmons says this process “builds up a psychological immune system.” Gratitude is a key word in the world of positive psychology and this article shows how developing it in the workplace will breed a culture of employees who feel valued and have higher self-esteem, therefore, work more efficiently and feel empowered by their jobs.

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Leadership

Create Positive Emotions At The Workplace. It Raises Productivity

The Importance Of Well-Being At The Workplace

Help Your Employees Set And Define Better Goals

Get Your People Motivated! get the right motivation…

Gratitude in the workplace

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