Improve Employee Social Environment To Help Increase Employee Psychological Health

Today’s best managers know that they should spend a significant amount of time improving the quality of the social environment for their employees. Managers who would like to help improve the psychological health of their employees should pay attention to the quality of interpersonal relationships between employees and their supervisors. Managers should also focus on actions that enhance the interaction of team members and foster team work, such as helping employees bond through activities like common work breaks and offsite meetings and retreats.

Source: Rousseau, V., Aube, C., Chiocchio, F., Boudrias, J.-S., & Morin, E. M. 2008. Social interactions at work and psychological health: The role of leader-member exchange and work group integration. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38, 1755-1777.

Tribes: Why You Need To Lead Us.

This book examines tribes and how they need leaders. A tribe is a group of people who are connected to each other, who are connected to a leader, and who are connected to an idea. Tribes are all about faith, and belief about an idea and about a community. Lots of tribes now exist because of communication technology that connects the members. Tribes need leaders, so why don’t you lead one? Leaders of tribes help move shared interest to passion, provide tools for communication, and leverage the tribe to help it grow and gain new members.

Source: Tribes: Why You Need To Lead Us. By Seth Godin, 2008, Portfolio, NY, ISBN: 978-1-59184-233-0.

Tell Stories to Help Improve Employee Commitment To the Organization

Today’s best managers know that telling stories is an important indicator of employee commitment to the organization. There are two primary purposes for telling stories in organizations: grounding and instruction. Employees tell stories to point out and clarify key values, called grounding. Employees tell stories about how things are done, called instruction. Organizational commitment means that employees have strong feelings about and identify with the goals and values of the organization. The more frequently that employees tell stories about the organization, the more strongly committed they tend to be about that organization, and the better able to withstand turbulence at work.

Source: McCarthy, J. F. 2008, April. Short stories at work: Storytelling as an indicator of organizational commitment. Group & Organization Management, 33, 163-193.

Sales Volume And Customer Loyalty Can Make Small Businesses Profitable

Today’s best managers know the secrets for making a profit even when you are a small business with limited resources. The key is doing whatever it takes to build a loyal customer base. Use technology whenever you can to help cut costs and reduce errors. Standardize your process and practices, cut costs where possible, and train extensively. Work hard to develop relationships with your customers by immersing yourself in the lives of your customers. If you develop enough sales volume, then you can be successful, even if you don’t make much per item sold.

Source: Akula, V. 2008, June. Business basics at the base of the pyramid. Harvard Business Review, 53-57.

Mentoring Relationships Can Have Strengths As Well As Weaknesses

A mentor can be a great teacher for a protégé. However, today’s best managers are aware of potential problems that can occur between mentors and protégés. Three main categories of mentor-protégé problems have been identified: protégé performance problems, interpersonal relationship problems, and destructive relationships. Protégés have reported that their mentors neglected them, sabotaged them, and competed with them. On the other hand, mentors have reported that their protégés were: unwilling to learn, deceitful, jealous, and competitive. Today’s best managers balance the potential benefits with the potential weaknesses of mentor-protégé relationships.

Source: Eby, L. T., Durley, J. R., Evans, S. C., & Ragins, B. R. 2008. Mentors’ perceptions of negative mentoring experiences: Scale development and nomological validation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 358-373.

Motivation To Gather Information Results In Finding More and Better Information

Today’s best managers know the importance of information gathering for effective managerial performance. Managers who have access to more and better sources of information are better able to make sense of their environment, are more effective at spotting trends, and are more able to achieve higher levels of performance compared to managers without such information. The larger the social network, the more time managers spend looking for more information, and the more information they find. However, having a large social network is only helpful for managers who are motivated to take advantage of the information that is available from that network.

Source: Anderson, M. H. 2008. Social networks and the cognitive motivation to realize network opportunities: A study of managers’ information gathering behaviors. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 51-78.

Positively Coping With Change Can Lessen Employee Sick Time, Intentions to Quit, and Turnover

Today’s best managers know the importance of managing employees’ reactions to organizational changes. Sometimes employees view organizational changes as harmful and threatening. When employees have negative feelings about change, they can then have increased sick leave and higher intentions to quit, and can be more likely to leave organizations entirely. Today’s best managers discuss organizational changes with employees and that helps reduce uncertainty about change. They help employees to vent their feelings about the changes. They also show employees the positive side of changes, such as job security, and new opportunities for advancement, and that helps reduce negative employee reactions to change.

Source: Fugate, M., Kinicki, A. J., & Prussia, G. E. 2008. Employee coping with organizational change: An examination of alternative theoretical perspectives and models. Personnel Psychology, 61, 1-36.

The Six Characteristics of Great Executers

Today’s best managers know the six traits shared by people who are great at getting things done: 1) they carefully consider matters that come to them and make a decision, rather than avoid making decisions about difficult things, 2) they stay realistic about what they can and can’t accomplish with the time and money they have, 3) they set clear and accurate goals, 4) they reward people who perform well and don’t reward poor performers, 5) they coach and guide their employees, and 6) they know themselves well, such as what they can and can’t do.

Source: Bossidy, L. 2008. Executive orientation: Cultivate six characteristics. Leadership Excellence, 25/3, p. 9.

Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters.

This book explains how to create relevant brands and make your product matter. Relevance and success will come to those who listen more than talk, and who deliver more than just advertise their product. The author states that profit should not be your primary goal. Instead, make a relevant product and profit happens when you do everything else right. The book explains about relevant solutions, which are: insights, innovations, investment, design, experience, and value. The book describes how to control the conversation with customers, and provides an incredible amount of company examples.

Source: Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters. By Tim Manners, 2008, Portfolio, NY, ISBN: 978-1-59184-220-0.

Fair Processes and Focus on Others Can Motivate Employees to Take Charge at Work

Taking charge means to go beyond one’s job description and help bring about new and innovative change to an organization. Today’s best managers understand that employees who are more self-centered and strive to achieve tend not to take charge compared to employees who are less self-centered and less interested in striving to achieve. Also, when employees have a high sense of duty to help others, then they are more likely to take charge compared to employees with a low sense of duty. Employees may be more likely to take charge when they believe their organization uses fair processes to make employee decisions.

Source: Moon, H., Kamdar, D., Mayer, D. M., & Takeuchi, R. 2008. Me or we? The role of personality and justice as other-centered antecedents to innovative citizenship behaviors within organizations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 84-94.

Improving Perceived Customer Value Is The Key To Innovation

Managers used to believe that improving product value was the key to innovation. Today’s best managers know that altering value as defined by the customer is the new key to innovation. For example, recognize that when customers buy new software, they are taking home a CD, but what they are really getting is a new way to perform a desired task. Today’s best managers focus on improving customer value of performing the task and not on improving the value of the CD itself. Find new ways to identify and co-solve customer problems. Customer value is realized, or brought out, in the use of the product.

Source: Michel, S., Brown, S. W., & Gallan, A. S. 2008, Spring. Service-logic innovations: How to innovate customers, not products. California Management Review, 50, 49-64.

Employees Process Positive Information Faster Than Negative Information

Today’s best managers know that employees can process information at varying speeds. For example, employees will process, or think through and make conclusions about, information that is positive faster than they will process negative information. This happens because employees have much more positive information about themselves stored in their brains than they do negative information. When employees hear positive information, then this new positive information quickly matches up with the positive information that is already there. This employee tendency helps explain why employees rapidly absorb positive feedback, but then take more time to process negative feedback.

Source: Unkelbach, C., Fiedler, K., Bayer, M., Stegmueller, M., & Danner, D. 2008. Why positive information is processed faster: The density hypotheis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 36-49.

Sharing Expectations About Communication Can Improve Employee Satisfaction

Today’s best managers know that effective communication is important for employee satisfaction. When employees have similar expectations about the communication process, then they tend to have higher levels of satisfaction. For example, when employees understand how polite and how efficient communication should be, then they tend to be more satisfied on the job. Polite communication refers to being considerate and respectful of one’s co-workers. Efficient communication refers to how truthful, clear, and relevant someone is when they communicate.

Source: Park, H. S. 2008, February. Communication Research, 35, 88-108.

Establish a Plan That Measures Employee Performance

Today’s best managers understand the need for a plan that measures employee performance. The plan should help communicate the vision, mission, strategy and goals to employees. The plan should help define desired performance, motivate employees to perform, and help employees achieve their performance goals. An effective plan should: 1) identify and explain the performance criteria, 2) accurately measure actual employee performance, 3) be continually re-evaluated and updated, and 4) clearly let employees know what is expected of them.

Source: McCoy, J. 2008, July. Align performance with your strategy: Choosing the right team matters. Leadership Excellence, 25, p. 17.

Focusing On Implementation Activities Can Help Employees Make Sense Out Of Change

Today’s best managers want employees to react positively to organizational changes. One way to help make that happen is to involve employees in the change process. Letting employees participate in the change can help them make sense out of the chaos that can happen during large-scale changes. Having employees help create actions plans can get employees involved. However, limit the number of tasks to a few, such as helping with implementation activities, to keep employees focused, and to avoid creating even more chaos. Employee participation in plans that involve trial and error can be even more effective in helping employees make sense out of organizational changes.

Source: Stensaker, I., Falkenberg, J., & Gronhaug, K. 2008. Implementation activities and organizational sensemaking. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 44, 162-185.

Creating Magic: Ten Common Sense Leadership Strategies From A Life At Disney.

This book examines the leadership strategies that made Disney great. According to the author, creative leadership leads to employee excellence, which leads to customer satisfaction, which leads to a strong business. The book offers many excellent Disney strategies, such as RAVE, which stands for respect, appreciate, and value everyone. Managers should treat their employees as they want them to treat customers. Managers should live their values, make their people their brand, eliminate hassles, learn the truth from their employees, create magic through training, and stay ahead of the pack.

Source: Creating Magic: Ten Common Sense Leadership Strategies From A Life At Disney. By Lee Cockerell, 2008, Doubleday, NY, ISBN: 978-0385523868.

Build Teams That Can Better Withstand Downsizing

Unfortunately, in organizations today layoffs and downsizing are often everyday events. For example, team leaders may be laid off and teams are left to fend for themselves. Today’s best managers know that some teams can cope better than others when team leaders are let go. Teams that are emotionally stable where team members are typically calm and even-tempered will perform better after a team downsizing. Also, teams where members have positive interaction, exchange information, and cooperate with each other will survive a leader layoff better than teams that don’t behave. In other words, create teams that are emotionally stable and extroverted and they may better withstand the loss of a team leader.

Source: DeRue, D. S., Hollenbeck, J. R., Johnson, M. D., Ilgen, D. R., & Jundt, D.K. 2008. How different team downsizing approaches influence team-level adaptation and performance. Academy of Management Journal, 51, 182-196.

Problems Caused By Employee Generational Differences May Be More Hype Than Reality

Managers tend to believe that employees may have different views, values, and/or differences in behavior due to their generational differences. Today’s best managers know that employees of all ages have more in common than they do differences. For example, some managers believe that older employees tend to work harder, be more loyal, and are more willing to pay their dues to the company than are younger employees. However, employees of all ages tend to agree that working hard is how people get ahead in companies today. Also, employees of all generations tend to agree about what they want, think, and believe in the workplace.

Source: Renn, M. T. 2008, March/April. Debunking generational differences. Leader In Action, 28, 23-24.

Knowing Who Your Employees Are And What They Do Can Increase Desirable Job Behaviors.

Some employees feel that they have no identity at work. This means they believe that nobody at work really knows who they are and what they do. Today’s best managers know that knowing the identity of your employees can help increase their performance, their creativity, their satisfaction, and lower their absenteeism on the job. Getting to know an employee’s identity means knowing things like their ethnic background, where they grew up, and what they do when they are away from work, such as serve on the Parent Teacher Association at their child’s school.

Source: Thatcher, S. M. B., & Greer, L. L. 2008, February. Does it really matter if you recognize who I am? The implications of identity comprehension for individuals in work teams. Journal of Management, 34, 5-24.

Turn Your Posers and Paupers Into Performing Employees

Today’s best managers know the importance of having the right people in their organization. There may be many great employees out there, but they may not have the right knowledge, skills, and abilities for your organization. There tend to be three types of employees: 1) performers are employees who love their job, have the right skills, and are effective and engaged in their work, 2) posers are mediocre employees, but they are very skilled at looking like the employee that different managers want them to be, and 3) paupers are neglected employees who feel alienated, cynical, and rejected.

Source: Lakhani, A., & Gazzara, K. 2008. People alignment: Throw the seats off the bus. Leadership Excellence, 25/3, p. 8.