This has been another few weeks of performance review and bonus talk in my office. The only way that we know to really motivate employees, in the long term, is to allow them to feel connected to the group they work with and to feel that the work they are doing is meaningful and towards a collective end goal. Over the past month I’ve seen two companies fully succeed in this area. They didn’t get there overnight, instead it took commitment, hard work and goals focused on managing oneself and their team in a way that utilizes skills most effectively.
As a boss, your focus needs to be not on what an employee isn’t doing to make you look good, but on what you can do to help your employee succeed, shine, and consequently, positively affect the entire team and hence, the bottom line. As managers, it’s often easy to get into the stronghold of feeling the pressure from above and taking that frustration out on your direct reports that you wish were different, in some way. Yet, none of that chatter is productive to anyone. The alternative? – simply put: collaboration. If the department is viewed as a collaborative whole, then no single person can take the blame, but rather, there is an understanding that the growth and output of the department is a result of the greater whole with contribution from all members. I began my own lesson in this process in the early 90’s when living in Japan and working for a company that coached Japanese nationals on interpersonal and verbal communication with the European employees of the European company they worked for. With Japanese teams, responsibility is not on the individual, but instead on the group. Thus, it is the goal of the entire team to create an environment where each team member is maximizing their potential and utilizing their unique skills as a compliment to those of the rest of the team. This may seem esoteric and insurmountable at times, but with simple steps and a specific focus of corporate culture, it’s rather simple. Think about the following concepts for your team members:
- Does the structure of the team highlight the employee’s skills
- Are there opportunities to grow skills & have those opportunities been discussed and offered (for example, at performance reviews)
- How do team member’s skills relate to their job requirements
- In what specific ways do team members add value to the team & the company
- How do team members envision adding greater value to the team & the company
- How does the manager envision adding greater value to their team & the company
If you’re having difficulty imagining specific ways to enable your team to be more cohesive and the daily practice it takes to get there, contact me about our Team Development Consulting. With a focused program of assessment, coaching, seminars, and team building groups – cohesiveness becomes corporate culture in a matter of weeks. We’ve got profound examples and experience in seeing this goal come to fruition.
Tags: area, corporate culture, department, employee, end, entire team, focus, japanese nationals, japanese teams, line, living in japan, performance, rath, relative term, shine, simple steps, stronghold, value, verbal communication, way