For managers, success is measured by the performance of their team, and this depends on motivation. Motivation, argues Alan Austin-Smith, is all about communication.
What is our job? It?s simple really. Whatever the title ? manager, leader, trainer ? all of us have the same job: getting results out of people. We are coaches, looking to train people to achieve gold medal performances ? and fantastic communication is the tool that we use. The way you communicate with your team will be the key motivator (or de-motivator!) in the way that team performs.
There is a great saying: ?Where you put your focus, is where you get your results?. We have all experienced how true that is many times in life. If you go to a car showroom to look at a new car ? in other words, you put your focus on that car ? what happens? You start to see that car everywhere! So, where is your focus with your team? I find that one of the biggest and easiest mistakes we can make is to focus on what people don?t do well and seemingly manage to ignore the stuff they do well. Well, it doesn?t take a rocket scientist to realise that if people only ever hear about what they can?t do, or don?t do well, they will not be motivated.
Imagine you were a PE teacher at school, watching a youngster run. You might think, ?Wow, that kid can run fast?. Then what would you do? Get them to spend more time practising the high jump because they were not very good at that? Or spend time helping them to run faster? We all have strengths and we all have things that need to be improved. Start with yourself. If we don?t do this for ourselves, we will never do it for our teams. Do you spend time beating yourself up for all the things that you don?t do well? How will you ever have the motivation, self-esteem and confidence to grow, if all you are doing is looking at what you don?t do well? Take some time and make a note of your strengths.
Now ask yourself what you can do to develop those strengths. For example, you may have a natural ability to communicate but don?t do enough to develop that skill. Now start to notice the interesting part: as you begin to focus on what you are good at, your motivation to improve the things you aren?t good at will increase. The same thing will happen with your team ? focus on strengths and they will be more likely to improve their weaknesses.
List your team. Jot down three strengths for each member. Open your eyes wide. Remember, it may not be job-specific but they will still have strengths. In fact, the person who is not performing may just be in the wrong job. As you look at what your team is good at and then look at the skills required, you may see what is going wrong. Ever heard of a square peg in a round hole?
If you continue to focus only on people?s weaknesses, all you will ever see is what they are doing wrong ? it?s obvious that all this will do is de-motivate people and produce worse results.
Alan Austin-Smith is Managing Director of Take Control TV Ltd. t: 020 8996 1644;
w: http://www.takecontrol.tv
Alan Austin-Smith is speaking at the Europe Talks Tickets 2005 Conference at Novotel London West, Hammersmith next February. Focusing on the opportunities presented by globalisation and advanced technologies, the conference themes range from training and staff motivation to customer relationship management and venue resource management. w: http://www.ett.eu.com