AxTenk Blog

A manager’s direct actions toward his or her employees often have the strongest effect on their motivation. Here are some recommendations:
1) Share your expectations.
2) Be fair.
3) Involve employees in goal-setting.
4) Keep employees informed.
5) Listen to employees.
By listening actively, you not only communicate to the employee the fact that you care about him or her, but you also obtain new information. You discover what works or doesn’t work—and why. You locate problems and solicit suggestions for solving them. When you help spread helpful information to other levels of management, you improve the organization as a whole. Also, The listener can steer the conversation by interjecting, posing questions, stopping the speaker, ending the conversation, or allowing it to continue. Listeners have the power.
6) Consult employees about decisions that affect them.
7) Delegate appropriately.
Avoid over-supervising employees.
9) Conduct career-development sessions with the employees.
10) Provide honest ongoing recognition for tasks well done.

How To Be fair to Employees.
Keep in mind these basic principles:
    A leader simply cannot treat everybody the same. People are different and they have different needs. As manager, you should give each employee what he or she seems to need at the time, without playing favorites. Playing favorites to meet your needs is, in fact, discrimination.
    It’s usually good practice to communicate the rationale to the group when you are giving particular individuals what looks like preferential treatment. Don’t get trapped by the employee’s argument “Well, you did it for Mary. Why can’t you do it for me?” Mary has different needs, and different needs require different treatment.
    When resources are limited, rotate or use the laws of probability to determine who gets a desired resource. Flip a coin, draw straws, or pull slips of paper out of a box to find out who will receive a desired assignment, who must work overtime, or who has to cover the phones on Christmas or Hanukkah.
    Rules and policies are created to help make jobs easier, but sometimes you will have to change them in order to be truly fair in specific circumstances.

For All Directors or Managers of Managers,

If several managers report to you, how do you hold them accountable for the teams they lead and manage? Busy people do what is inspected, not necessarily what is expected. You can expect honest efforts to keep good talented people, because those people build the pillar of your business. Here are some options.

Develop a Retention Commitment Process:
 List all key strategies and let your team narrow down to just 10 strategies that are the most appropriate for your organizational culture. Ask each of your managers to commit to two Key Strategies they are willing to implement within the next six months.
 Six months later, ask them to report their implementation progress with a description of what they did for each of the strategies to which they have committed.
 Evaluate on your managers. Set a realistic performance goal of increasing retention by a specific percentage over the previous year.
 Rate your managers against those performance goal, and reward them appropriately.
Identify your top retention, most productive or innovative managers. And Exercise positive reinforcement throughout the process.

 Coach the managers who are poor in keeping talents within your organization. If they can’t change/improve, help them leave the job or the organization.
 Send a reply note to managers. Then, hold individual meeting with each managers in two weeks and talk about their responses.
 Model what you want them to do. Remember that your actions speak louder than your words. Tell your managers what retention strategies you’re working on (after you’ve asked what they want), and then really work on those strategies.

We often too haphazard about the way we approach the change process. Eager to implement, we fail to develop plans that provide staff members with clear, consistent direction and communication as a new order is established. Consequently, we only create a climate of confusion and frustration, which makes the change effort more difficult than is necessary.

A change management plan should be a written document that maps out the route for getting from the current state to the desired state in a well-coordinated manner. Think of it as an anchor that provides some stability for both manager and staff members in the midst of a transition. It is different from an operational plan, which outlines goals, strategies for achieving the goals, and action steps for implementing the strategies. A strong change management plan is about the process the manager will use to ensure good communication, involvement of staff, and reward and recognition.

The following six phases should be included in a good change management plan:
1.    Communicating the need for change
2.    Key Stakeholders Involvement in creating the change
3.    Communicating the change to all stakeholders
4.    Developing implementation plan
5.    Designing communication strategies
6.    Creating a reward/recognition for change

Here are Common Dysfunctional Team Behaviors demonstrated in Today’s work environments:
    The team dynamic is characterized by polarization, with cliques often forming.
    Expected outcomes for individuals and the team are ill-defined or ignored.
    The team experiences low productivity; individuals may be performing but not nearly as effectively as if the team were truly functional.
    Team members view and execute their roles rigidly, with little willingness to be flexible.
    Team members make excessive negative assumptions about the intent behind the behavior of others on the team.
    Interpersonal conflict between team members remains unresolved and/or exaggerated.
    Minimal communication occurs between team members, which results in hoarding of information.
    Mechanisms for individual and team accountability are few.
    Team members do not trust one another or the leader.

Today’s work environments require collaboration within and across division/work units in order to ensure smooth and efficient operations, yet many individuals seem to focus only on their own interests or needs, sometimes at the expense of overall group performance. So how does a leader harness the individualistic, competitive spirit of some and develop collaboration and teamwork in order to achieve greater collective outcomes?