MightyRecruiterLearn to Motivate Employees and Create Self-Starters
Especially if you own a small business without a lot of management positions, it is important to have motivated employees who are self-starters. Employees who can attend to their jobs without having to be led by the hand leave you free to take care of other business-related tasks such as growing the company profit, expanding products or services and building a solid company culture. If your employees aren’t yet as self-sufficient as you’d like, you have to learn to motivate them. Often, that means looking at your own habits.
You Need a Productive Management Style
Have you ever worked for an employer whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to make everyone who worked for him or her miserable It was miserable, right It’s important you don’t become that type of employer yourself, which is all too easy to do if you have a naturally critical personality. One of the biggest mistakes a manager can make is to base his or her management style on pointing out the flaws in his or her employees, but never expressing appreciation for a job well done.
When employees constantly expect to be reprimanded, it creates a fear-based company culture. The result is less motivated and less productive employees who do the absolute minimum because they live in fear of receiving public criticism. The lack of motivation in turn affects your bottom line. If you want to be a good manager, you need to allow your employees to make mistakes. This is, after all, how people learn and gain experience in their field. Learn to motivate them by providing constructive criticism that focuses on what they did right before focusing on what they did wrong. If you let your employees learn from their mistakes, they will be more willing to take the initiative and move beyond the limitations they’ve set for themselves.
You Must Learn How to Speak to People
To learn to motivate, you first must learn to speak. You can speak from a place of authority without speaking from a place of rudeness. Naturally, you will sometimes have to correct employees’ mistakes, but if you’d like to ensure they truly hear you, begin by pointing out the things about the task or project that they did correctly. However, keep in mind it is important to compliment your employees outside of using it as a lead-in to correct something. If you only point out good to follow it with criticism, it conditions employees to expect criticism any time you say something nice. Express your appreciation for your employees and the great work they provide on a regular basis. Providing recognition breeds motivation and leads to the ability to self-start. Consider providing incentives for a job well done and always express your appreciation when you see that an employee has corrected his or her mistakes.
Stop Making Everything Your Business
Of course, this suggestion shouldn’t be taken literally ï after all, the business is yours. However, if you want to learn to motivate your employees, you cannot insert yourself into every decision, task or project. To do so makes your employees feel as if you don’t think they can handle their jobs alone. If you convince yourself ï and by extension, convince your employees ï that you can do their jobs better than they can, they will likely only do the very minimum. Not only will they neglect to take the initiative to go above and beyond, but they might even begin asking you to sign off on the work they do, causing time constraints for you.
If necessary, you can provide pointers to new employees who may not be quite up to par with your expectations. In some cases, you might realize you made a hiring mistake, in which case you should quietly let the person go and fill the position with someone new. In neither situation should you take the time to do the work yourself every day. Doing so keeps you from being able to do the other tasks you have to complete in order to ensure your business runs smoothly. Meddling in every task doesn’t motivate anyone and leaves managers and employees alike exhausted, overwhelmed and unproductive.
Taking the time to reflect on how you do your own job is likely to help your employees do better jobs themselves. Of course, these ideas are not an exhaustive list. If you’d like to learn to motivate your employees even further, be sure to read the other articles and use the tools available on Mighty Recruiter.