Goals and Motivation

Is one of your goals to improve your relationships with family and coworkers? Perhaps one of your goals should be to improve how you motivate and support those around you.

Five Top Tips to Becoming a Motivational Manager.

A manager has a tough job. It is the lot of the manager to rally the troops, inspire the teams and motivate the individuals that they lead. And managers aren't just people in business. A mother is a manager. A teacher is a manager. All of us are managers in some part of our lives.

There are hundreds of facets to being a good at managing people and motivating them to be their best, but the most effective, and easiest to put into practice is the simple act of recognition. This article
lists five top tips that can help you to motivate others in whatever management role you are involved in by recognizing what they are doing.

As you'll see, helping people to do their jobs better is often as simple as giving them a hand.

I don't mean help, I mean applause!

Everybody works, behaves or learns better when they receive positive feedback. It's human nature to work harder for someone who takes the trouble to notice and to tell you that you've done a great job.

As a manager of people, make that your first priority - find something good to say about the people you lead and they'll follow you anywhere. If you don't, they'll pretty soon decide to follow someone else. Statistics show that 79% give 'lack of recognition' as a primary reason for changing jobs.

Dale Denton said, "Nine tenths of wisdom is appreciation. Go find somebody's hand and squeeze it ... while there's still time."

Tip #1:

Remember the little things.

People like to be treated as human beings. We tend to react badly when we are numbered, classified and dehumanized. As The Prisoner said, "I am not a number!"

Remembering the small things about a person is the easiest way to show that you respect them as a person. The names of their children mean the world to them.

Remembering what they like to drink or hate to eat shows that to you, they are important. And how hard is it to write all your employee's birthdays and anniversaries into your diary?

When you remember the small things about a person, what you are really saying is 'you are an important part of what we are doing, and you are appreciated.'

Tip #2:

Give them their just desserts.

A little treat, like an ice cream on a hot day, or a box of chocolates for the office to share on a Friday afternoon, when delivered with the implied message that you've done well, this is to say thank you can often be far more effective than an award at the annual conference. Small but frequent acts of thanks lead directly to greater acts of excellence.

Tip #3:

Respect where it is due.

Swearing and course behavior may be part of 21st century life in many places, but as a manager, there is no place for it. Whether you are teacher, parent or boss, showing respect to the people you lead is the only way to get respect back from them.

And believe me, if they lose respect for you, nothing you can do will get the best out of them again!

Respect goes deeper than just refraining from cussing. Respect is about being interested in a person because they are an interesting human being and treating them accordingly regardless of their age, gender, color or creed. Even if you don't initially find someone interesting, pretend for five minutes that you do. You may soon be surprised to learn that you stopped pretending without even noticing.

Tip #4:

Don't spoil positive reinforcement with negatives.

I used to know a company who took a great idea and turned it into a massive demoralizer.

They started a reward scheme that the best employee each month would be given the chairman's chauffeur-driven limousine for one day. They could use it for anything they liked - for a whole day.

That was a great positive reinforcer.

But they threw away most of the positive effect by running a 'lousy employee of the month' scheme alongside it. In that competition, the person nominated as the worst employee had their company car exchanged for the rattiest, nastiest old heap of a car imaginable for a week.

Talk about giving with one hand and taking away with the other!

The management never understood where they were going wrong and staff turnover soared.

Tip #5:

Even children need to be treated like adults.

Good managers explain what they want and why they want it. It isn't enough to simply issue orders ... it is human nature to ask the question why. Most people will be far happier carrying out their tasks, and far more effective at them, if they understand what they are doing them for.

So as a manager, always try to include reasons alongside your demands. Whether the people you are there to motivate are children or adults, treat them like intelligent human beings and explain what you want them to do, and give them honest reasons as to why they should do it.

It it another form of respect, but it is one that so many of us forget.

Once you start to put these five tips into practice you'll soon notice that some things work better with some people than others. That's okay . We are all individuals and we all respond to stimuli, however positive, in different ways. Just keep on practicing and noticing what works for you and what doesn't.

Pretty soon, if you keep trying to be a positive, motivational manager, you'll have fifty tips of your own under your belt ready to enthuse, inspire and motivate your world.

Martin Avis is a motivational writer who publishes Kickstart Today, a free online newsletter that starts your day off on the right foot. http://www.kickstartdaily.com