Motivate Employees By Helping Them Fulfill Four Drives

Today’s best managers know that employees have four main drives and employees rely on their managers to help them fulfill those drives. First, rewards should differentiate levels of employee performance from one another. Second, the culture should help create collaborative and sharing relationships and teamwork. Third, jobs should be meaningful and enable employees to contribute to the organization. Fourth, be fair in your processes and outcomes, and be transparent in your decisions. Employees will tend to rate a manager poorly if that manager does not help fulfill all four of the drives, even if three of the drives are fulfilled.

Source: Nohria, N., Groysberg, B., & Lee, L.-E. 2008. Employee motivation: A powerful new model. Harvard Business Review, 78-84.

Setting Goals Can Influence Employee Beliefs About the Reason For Their Success Or Failure

Today’s best managers know that employee participation in setting goals can influence employee beliefs about their own performance. Employees who participate in setting goals for their performance tend to believe that the cause of their performance is something outside of themselves, such as task difficulty, when they are successful. However, they tend to blame themselves when they are not successful at reaching their performance goals. On the other hand, employees who don’t help set their own goals tend to believe the opposite. They believe that success was their own fault and failure was the fault of something outside of them.

Source: Karakowsky, L., & Mann, S. L. 2008, February. Setting goals and taking ownership: Understanding the implications of participatively set goals from a causal attribution perspective. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 14, 260-270.

A Sense Of Urgency.

This book examines the importance of creating a sense of urgency in your employees. Something is urgent when it is critically important and is central to the success or failure of the organization. Identify critical issues and form strong teams. Teams with a sense of urgency feel the need to communicate relentlessly with other team members. Employees who feel the urgency will feel empowered to remove obstacles and find solutions. Some employees are urgency killers, and are more than just skeptics. Don’t waste time trying to win them over, but don’t ignore them. Instead, use peer pressure to immobilize them.



Source: A Sense Of Urgency.By John P. Kotter, 2008, Harvard Business Press, Boston, MA, ISBN: 978-1-4221-5230-0.

Help Employees Avoid The Four Main Types Of Negative Perfectionist Behavior

Today’s best managers know that employee perfectionist behavior can be positive or negative for organizations. Negative perfectionism results in employee behaviors that are compulsive and excessive and lower organizational performance. There are four main types of negative perfectionism: 1) compulsive behavior—repeats behaviors over and over because the performance doesn’t meet excessive standards set by the employee, 2) narcissistic behavior—attempts to reach impossible goals set by others and looks for constant positive feedback from others, 3) imposters—despite lots of evidence don’t believe that they caused their own success and continually have to prove themselves, and 4) neurotics—adopt impossible goals set by others and hold themselves accountable when they can’t reach the impossible goals.

Source: Leonard, N. H., & Harvey, M. 2008. Negative perfectionism: Examining negative excessive behavior in the workplace. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38, 585-610.

Help Your Employees Feel Less Miserable About Their Job

Today’s best managers want their employees to be happy about their work. Unfortunately, many employees feel miserable on the job. Some of the main causes of employee misery are feeling anonymous, irrelevant, and as if their work can’t be measured. Typical managers don’t help employees because they: 1) keep employees at arm’s length and don’t get to know them, 2) worry about being too touchy-feely, so avoid human issues, and 3) stay too busy to take an interest and invest in helping their employees. Today’s best managers try not to make these mistakes and work hard to lessen the misery of their employees.

Source: Lencioni, P. 2008. Job anonymity: It’s a leading cause of misery. Leadership Excellence, 25, p.4.

Help Employees Recognize and Avoid Burnout Before It Sets In

Burnout means feeling exhausted, overextended, and depleted. Employees who feel burnt out tend to have low job satisfaction, low organizational commitment, high absenteeism, high intentions to leave, and are more likely to quit their job. Today’s best managers know the warning signs of burnout. When employees start feeling hostile and angry about unfair organizational practices, and begin to lack faith that the organization will solve their problems, then employee burnout can set in. Today’s best managers help stop burnout from happening before it takes hold of employees.

Source: Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. 2008. Early predictors of job burnout and engagement. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 498-512.

The Three Most Important Questions That Managers Ask

Today’s best managers know the importance of not squandering company resources, such as time and money. They avoid squandering by asking three important questions. First, what are we talking about? Everyone should know exactly and clearly the issue at hand that must be solved. Second, what are the stakes and does anyone care? Everyone should know the relevancy and urgency of important issues. Third, what are we going to do? Everyone should know the plan of attack that we are taking to solve the issue. Today’s best managers also demand that every employee ask these three questions as well.

Source: Call, D. M. 2008. Effective leadership: Learn to ask and answer three questions. Leadership Excellence, 25/4, p. 8.

Today’s Multicommunicating Employees Commonly Have Multiple Conversations At Once

Managers used to want total and undivided attention when communicating with employees. Today’s best managers know that employees are increasingly multicommunicating, rather than having one communication at a time. Multicommunicating means to have multiple overlapping and competing communications at the same time. Employees today may be talking, texting, and emailing, or more, all at once. Today’s goals for productivity and efficiency encourage employees to multicommunicate. Today’s best managers expect employees to multicommunicate, and know that employees may have divided attention and delayed responses during communications. However, managers may want to limit some multicommunications, such as when communicating with customers.

Source: Reinsch, N. L., Jr., Turner, J. W., & Tinsley, C. H. 2008. Multicommunicating: A practice whose time has come? Academy of Management Review, 33, 391-403.

Having Tacit Knowledge Can Be The Difference Between Success and Failure

Knowledge is important for managerial success. There are two kinds of knowledge: tacit and explicit. Tacit knowledge is learned from experience and helps managers succeed with real-world problems. Tacit knowledge is believed to be more important for managerial results than is explicit knowledge. Even if managers have similar skills and abilities, they can have different levels of tacit knowledge. Today’s best managers can help employees build tacit knowledge by exposing employees to a wide range of learning situations that may be out of their regular norm for employees.

Source: Armstrong, S. J., & Mahmud, A. 2008. Experiential learning and the acquisition of managerial tacit knowledge. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 7, 189-208.

Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers From Everybody Else.

This book thoroughly examines why some people are world-class performers and the rest are not. The book refutes the idea that natural talent and hard work are required for people to be the best. The book offers the idea of deliberate practice as the way to become a world-class performer for any performance area. Deliberate performance requires a tremendous amount of repetitive practice to develop one’s skills and improve one’s technique. The best performers practice much, much more than lesser performers. The book continuously stresses how much hard work and lack of fun are involved in deliberate practice.

Source: Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers From Everybody Else.By Geoff Colvin, 2008, Penguin Books, London, ISBN: 978-1-59184-224-8.

Team Role Knowledge Helps Team Members Be More Effective

Today’s best managers understand that team role knowledge is an important component of effective team performance. Team role knowledge means that team members know the different roles that they need to play for their team to be effective, plus they know when and where to play those roles. For example, a team member might play the role of coordinator when a team first starts, but then the team member shifts over to critic once the team starts designing a new product. Today’s best managers help team members understand and play the right roles when needed.

Source: Mumford, T. V., Iddekinge, . H. V., Morgeson, F. P., & Campion, M. 2008. The team role test: Development and validation of a team role knowledge situational judgment test. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 250-267.

Positive Employees Tend To Have Positive Emotions That Increase Attitudes And Performance

Today’s best managers constantly look for ways to improve employee attitudes and performance. Positive employee emotions can influence employee attitudes and behaviors. Four traits help determine whether an employee is positive or not: hope, efficacy, optimism, and resilience. Hopeful employees find multiple pathways to success. Employees with efficacy believe in their abilities to get the job done. Optimistic employees expect good things to happen to them. Resilient employees can recover easily from adversities. Being positive can influence positive employee emotions, and that can increase employee attitudes and behaviors.

Source: Avey, J. B., Wernsing, T. S., & Luthans, F. 2008. Can positive employees help positive organizational change?: Impact of psychological capital and emotions on relevant attitudes and behaviors. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 44, 48-70.

Simple Steps to Help Employees Cope With Organizational Changes

Today’s best managers know that they need to manage change so that employee attitudes and behaviors don’t suffer as a result of the change. Employees who believe that they have been involved in a change process and who feel that they have been included in decision-making will cope more effectively with change than will employees who don’t feel this way. Keeping employees informed and consulted during changes helps create social pressure among employees, and that influences employees to support each other. Giving employees accurate and timely information helps them have a sense of predictability, which gives them more control, and helps them feel more capable during changes.

Source: Jimmieson, N. L., Peach, M., & White, K. M. 2008. Utilizing the theory of planned behavior to inform change management: An investigation of employee intention to support organizational change. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 44, 237-262.

Expressing Emotions In Constructive, Productive Ways Can Improve Employee Performance.

Organizations typically have unwritten rules about when, where, and how much employees can display their feelings and emotions. Some organizations specially require employees to suppress, hide, or manipulate their emotions at work, in order to maintain a machine-like atmosphere. Managers used to believe that emotions got in the way of rational, logical business thinking and behavior. Today’s best managers know that such strict workplace regulations can hurt employee attitudes and performance. Instead, they adopt healthy and supportive rules that help employees share how they feel with each other in constructive and productive ways.

Source: Coupland, C., Brown, A. D., Daniels, K., & Humphreys, M. 2008. Saying it with feeling: Analyzing speakable emotions. Human Relations, 61, 327-353.

Conflict May Only Be Helpful Under Certain Organizational Conditions

Managers used to believe that conflict in the workplace would help employees make better decisions. It was thought that moderate conflict would help employees discuss options and not make decisions too quickly. Today’s best managers know that conflict is only helpful under a very narrow set of conditions. More specifically, the conflict is work-related, does not involve personal or political matters, should be moderate, and the team members feel safe and trust each other. In other types of situations, the benefits of conflict may not outweigh the negatives, so managers should lessen the level of conflict among employees.

Source: De Drue, C. K. W. 2008. The virtue and vice of workplace conflict: Food for (pessimistic) thought. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 5-18.

How To Delegate Effectively

Today’s best managers know how to delegate effectively to people who work for them. First, tell the employee exactly what it is that you would like them to do. Second, give them appropriate resources, guidelines, and expectations to get the job done. Third, tell employees exactly when the work must be finished. Fourth, if the due date is a long time away, then periodically follow up on the employee’s progress toward completing the assignment. Following up lets you see that work is being done correctly, and gives the employee opportunities to ask you questions.

Source: Berman, E. L. 2007, July/August. Know how to delegate. Industrial Management, 6-7.

The New Gold Standard: Five Leadership Principles For Creating A Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy Of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.

This book explains the five main leadership principles successfully used by the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company. Employees should define and refine. Be sure that employees always smile and escort guests to locations rather than just point, and think safety first. Employees should empower through trust. They should create exceptional memories for customers. Employees should deliver a “WOW” for customers. Employees should also leave a lasting footprint. Customers might forget what an employee said, but they won’t forget how that employee made them feel.

Source: The New Gold Standard: Five Leadership Principles For Creating A Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy Of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. By Joseph A. Michelli, 2008, McGraw-Hill, NY, ISBN: 978-0-07-154833-5.

Positive Employee Moods in Groups Can Be Self-Reinforcing

When employees have positive moods and feelings (called positive affect) in the workplace, they tend to be better at helping others, solving-problems, and taking risks. When a group of employees has positive group affect, they tend to have more cooperation, less conflict, less absenteeism, and higher individual well-being than groups with low positive affect. Today’s best managers know that group positive affect can be contagious. Group members share their positive emotions and that leads other employees to feel more positive in return. Unfortunately, the positive mood can get much higher than it should, and that can hurt performance, so today’s best managers help employees keep a healthy level of positive affect.

Source: Walter, F., & Bruch, H. 2008. The positive group affect spiral: A dynamic model of the emergence of positive affective similarity in work groups. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 239-261.

Employees Who Help Others and Are Internally Motivated Tend To Have High Performance Levels

Managers want employees to be motivated to perform on the job. Today’s best managers know that some employees go above and beyond their typical job description and help others at work. Employees have higher levels of persistence, performance, and productivity when they desire to help others and when they have an internal drive to succeed. An internal desire to be successful can result in employees helping others more, and that enables higher performance in the organization. Today’s best managers can influence internal motivation levels by selecting applicants who have a passion for their line of work and a passion to work hard on the job.Grant,

Source: A. M. 2008. Does intrinsic motivation fuel the prosocial fire? Motivational synergy in predicting persistence, performance, and productivity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 48-58.

Reputations May Have A Weak Relationship To Actual Employee Behaviors

Managers know the importance of employee reputations. Reputations allow employees to find out about other employees’ performance, and help to reward good behavior and lessen bad behavior. However, today’s best managers know that there is often only a weak relationship between an employee’s reputation and his or her actual behavior. Reputations can be more accurate for employees who are more well-known and receive more social attention. However, reputations tend to be less accurate for less well-known individuals and those relatively unknown by others. Today’s best managers get to know employees personally rather than rely on possibly faulty reputation-based information.

Source: Anderson, C., Shirako, A. 2008. Are individuals’ reputations related to their history of behavior? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 320-333.