When someone asks your employees what they do for a living, how do they respond? With excitement and enthusiasm or with defeat and disillusionment?
Too many employees and too many workplaces fall into the second category. But it doesn’t have to be that way, if you apply the 8 secrets found in every positive, high performing organization.
Hire right – Train right
As you well know, one bad apple can spoil the whole cart. But you also know it can be very difficult to get rid of a bad apple or bad employee. So approach every hiring decision with the utmost discernment.
In particular, focus your energy on recruiting and retaining people who are technically skilled and emotionally competent. In fact, they had better have both characteristics or you will have a sick workplace.
When you’re in the position of having to hire someone, look for ANY signals that tell you the new job candidate may be a drag on the positive culture you’re trying to create. You cannot afford to hire those kinds of people … because they will cost you money, rather than make you money.
In fact, I’m sure you can think of several situations where you walked into a store to buy something, totally ready to spend your money there, but some employee’s behavior was so offensive that you walked out. And instead, you spent your money at a competitor’s place of business.
Hire right. And for heaven’s sake, if the people you hire don’t have all the people skills they need, then train them right … right now.
Protect your positive norms
If your organization has established certain norms of respectful behavior, reinforce those norms.
If, for example, employees are expected to acknowledge every customer within 10 seconds of entering the store, make sure they do it. Or if you have outlawed negative talk about customers, call someone on his violation of the norm if he is trashing a customer.
Don’t let your negative people dismiss your positive cultural elements by saying, “That’s just plain stupid … or … That’s just the way John is.”
Discover and share success stories
Even though your office, like every office, has some things that could be improved, you’re also doing a lot of things right. Charge everyone with the responsibility of looking for those success stories. And then share a few of those stories at every meeting. Celebrate the positive.
Surface and defuse negativity
No matter how positive, productive, and profitable your organization is, it is not perfect. There are problems and there will always be problems in your organization.
Don’t ignore them. And don’t pretend they don’t exist. As best-selling author and psychologist Dr. Sidney Simon says, “The greatest danger in any relationship is to pretend not to know what we know.”
In other words, you can’t expect to bury the problems and have them somehow magically disappear. When you bury problems, you bury them alive, and the rate of resurrection is almost 100%.
Instead, create a forum where people can safely share their concerns. Take their feelings seriously. Listen intently. And decide on one or two things that can be done to address their concerns.
Conquer one energy-zapping issue at a time
Have everyone write down the specific tasks or job situations that drain them. Some people may not feel supported by the boss, and others may feel betrayed by a team mate who is not doing her share of the work.
Then brainstorm small immediate steps that can be taken to maintain or recapture the energy at work. And then baby-step it.
Start with a simple issue … where an easy victory is likely … such as greeting one another respectfully and professionally when passing one another, rather than ignore the people around you.
Once you’ve built some confidence and skill in one area, move on to a more challenging issue — such as having to do ten projects at once, with no sense of their priority.
Assign energy as a personal responsibility
Whatever the situation at work, you’ve only got two choices: to produce results or make excuses. Make it clear that it is everyone’s responsibility to bring the right attitude and the right amount of energy to every task.
Even if your workplace is somewhat de-energizing, everyone there can still choose to focus on the good, to fill their minds with positive, powerful sayings that will inspire them. It’s not silly. Every gold-medal winner in the Olympics does it every day.
About the author, Dr. Alan Zimmerman
At the age of 7, Dr. Alan Zimmerman was selling greeting cards door-to-door. By age 14 he owned a small international import business. By age 21 he was teaching at the University of Minnesota, and during the next 15 years, he was selected as the Outstanding Faculty Member by two different universities.
At age 36, Alan had retired from teaching and opened his own speaking and training company. That position has allowed him to deliver more than 3000 programs, to more than a million people, in 49 states and 22 countries. The National Speakers Association has named him a Certified Speaking Professional and inducted him into the Speaker Hall of Fame, which places him in the top 1% of speakers worldwide.