What do employees want to hear from their supervisors?

Employees want to hear from their supervisors and managers anything and everything to help with motivation. This is particularly true when change is happening within a company.

Change management and the process of change is high on the list of any manager involved in human resources.

- Employees want to know how they are getting on at work and also within the company
- Every employee wants to hear that they are appreciated.
- Employees want to be updated on any developments in the workplace and as human beings,
- Every employee wants to feel that they are a star in their own right and that they are part of a winning team.

Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics once said, “There are two things people want more than sex and money…..recognition and praise”.

HR managers are frequently told that the one motivating factor at the top of most employee lists is “appreciation for a job well done”. In performance reviews, management teams know it is the one thing requested more often than money.

A recent Gallup survey revealed:
- 61% of American workers received no praise at work last year and
- The #1 reason people leave their jobs is because they feel unappreciated

If you ask employees why they go to work, their first answer is usually “to get paid” but when you explore further, people will add that their main reason is “I feel I make a difference”. In most cases, that’s the reason why a contented employee decides to get out of bed each morning to go to their workplace.

What can managers do?
Watch out for something to praise – best practices – a task completed to a high standard, a task achieved faster than expected, meetings well run, someone looking particularly smart today or someone greeting a customer enthusiastically and personally, someone remembering a customer’s name.

Managers can also offer training to employees – training the manager undertakes to deliver – using business best practices and in-house resources.

Showing appreciation allows a supervisor or manager to invest in their team – without spending money. Appreciation doesn’t need to be financially costly. It could be a coffee and a cookie or it could be a quick hand-written note. It could be a simple “thank-you”.

The important thing for managers to realize is that employees need appreciation to give of their best, particularly if the supervisor or manager is managing change.

For more tips, articles and ideas take a look at:

- Giving Praise
- Motivate without spending a dime
- What motivates people

Why do some leadership styles work better than others?

The simple answer is that styles work when they are appropriate for the people being lead.

Leadership theory has a large number of names for styles of management – authoritarian, democratic, laisse- faire, participatory, directing, teamwork, autocratic, bureaucratic, charismatic, participative, people-oriented, relations-oriented, servant, task-oriented, transactional, and transformational.

The range of styles boils down to this:

• the level and degree of control a leader wants, prefers or feels she/he needs to have over the people being managed
• how much trust a leader has in the people being managed
• how much independence, freedom and influence over decision making and a leader is prepared to allow the people being managed

Every leader has their own natural style, the one they lean towards, prefer or will revert to in a crisis. That style is about the leader/manager/supervisor. It is about THEM – the leader and it defines THEM – the leader. A leader’s own style is what management theory is about.

However, those leaders who have extensive experience and practice in leading teams have proved that it is far more effective and therefore far more important to apply an appropriate leadership style to each employee – that may mean a different leadership style for each person being managed.

One leadership style does not fit all team members or employees. If a leader attempts to apply just his own one preferred style to a team of diverse people, he will fail to be an effective leader with a large proportion of the team.

It’s important for managers to know that in reality a manager should have as many styles of leadership as the types of employees they manage.

That’s very tough and demanding on the leaders/managers…but it’s a fact.

Ideally, each employee should be managed and lead according to their own particular aptitude, experience, abilities and personality.

Yes that’s right – if you’re a manager who manages and leads 12 people, you may need up to 12 adaptations of different leadership styles.

People work best within a leadership model which allows them to feel they have some power and control over their work. They also want to feel secure – that they have the support of their manager/leader when they want it and need it. People need appropriate goals to maintain motivation and sufficient success in their work to allow them to experience a feeling of challenge and achievement. People feel empowered by feeling they are in charge of their own development but secure in the back-up they have.

Let’s take 2 employees. The first, someone 43 years old, who has been with the company 8 years, a reliable worker, very experienced, has held similar jobs in 2 previous companies, an open-minded thinker with a positive attitude. The second an enthusiastic 21 year old, new graduate, been with the company one month, it’s their first job and they’ve shown great creativity and promise with their out-of-the-box thinking.

The leader/manager has a regular client who has approached the company for help on a new project which has to be planned and completed within 2 weeks.

A manager’s normal leadership style may be to give employees a job and say "just do it and come back to me when it’s all finished". What’s going to happen if a manager uses that style with both these employees?

One employee could really mess up and lose personal confidence.

With the older, experienced employee, a leadership style should allow them to use their skills and expertise – otherwise they will feel under-valued, frustrated and restricted. They are likely to want to bounce their ideas around with a leader/manager before making a suggestion to the client. Once a best option is agreed, a manager could then let the employee meet with the client, discuss the options, agree and formulate a plan. The leader may also be able to ask the employee to manage the project, checking in at pre-set, regular intervals and as the need arises.

The employee will feel valuable, appropriately stretched and will gain in confidence as the project unfolds. With a leader’s back up, the project will be successful and on time and the employee will feel pleased with the work. The leader/manager will have an employee who is fulfilled and highly motivated. Closely monitored and micro-managed, this employee with be stifled and will leave the company.

If a leader/manager asked the younger, less experience but imaginative employee to work unsupervised with the client without any checking in, there could be a disaster. The young employee may lose confidence and take months or years to recover it. However, a leader/manager could say "let’s think about some options together, then we’ll meet with and get agreement with the client. Then you can work with the client and report to me every afternoon on progress".

It’s likely that this employee will contribute great ideas, will gain in confidence, learn many skills in working alongside the leader with clients and quickly become a very valuable, creative thinking employee.

It’s argued that a leader’s role is to make a team of employees independent of the manager/leader – bring each person on according to ability, aptitude and personality. Only a leader or manager who is secure and confident in their own abilities and their own value to the company can do this. Over controlling leaders and managers may do well to examine their own insecurities and leadership style.

What is Strategic Management? Why it’s useful.

Strategic management is the highest level of management activity. Lower levels are called operational management.

Strategic implies that the role of a strategic manager is concerned with in the formulation; implementation and evaluation of the decisions which a company makes to achieve its long-term objectives.

Strategic management involves working on an organization’s mission, vision and objectives. That process is followed by developing policies, plans, projects and programs, which will further the organization’s objectives.

Later, in the planning process, resources will need to be allocated to implement the policies, plans, projects and programs.

Further strategic management functions will be to coordinate and will integrate the activities of all functional areas of a business in order to achieve long-term corporate objectives.

Strategic management is normally the province of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of an organization, approved/authorized by a Board of Directors and implemented under the supervision of the organization’s top management team or senior executives.

Strategic management is ongoing because continual evaluation is essential to maintain competitive advantage. Strategic managers control a business, are aware of competitors in the market and and monitor and assesses the competitors.

A strategic management team sets the goals and strategies for existing and potential competition and a strategic manager reassesses each strategy at agreed regular intervals. This is done to provide an analysis of the success of recent planning and implementation. This process will identify if there is a need for a new strategy to deal with a changed scenario or circumstances, new product, new technology, new competitors, a new economic environment or a new social, financial or political environment.

Excellent strategic management is of inestimable value to every company to inform all aspects of business planning and marketing.

“Have other managers asked..?”

“Real Managers’ Questions” is a collection of mini-case studies – actual questions we have been asked by our managers.

Everyone wants to hear what other managers in the same position are asking. Everyone wants to know about the problems other managers have encountered – hey, it might happen to you!

They also want to know the answers and where they can get more help and advice.

You could read 5 solutions to problems you’re likely to face this year.

You could see the pitfalls and how to avoid them and you could be reading some great advice on how to avoid burnout.

Find out in this free twenty page report. It’s real Practical Help for Managers and includes:

• work problems faced by other people and how they dealt with them
• how to avoid the same traps
• seeing problems from a different perspective
• real practical advice and solutions
• answers which go straight to the core to give a quick, easy to understand, “how to” solution

See for yourself !

“Taking over a manager position”

Whether it’s your first, second or third management job there are always new challenges.

Our Great Start Guide will help you through the process.

Did you get off to a “Great Start” in your current job?

Did you make mistakes?

Do you know exactly how to make a “Great Start”?

Are you sure you know everything you should do when you start a new job or take on new responsibilities?

What have you forgotten? Is it something obvious that you’ll kick yourself for forgetting somewhere down the line?

Lying awake is exhausting and wastes your valuable time. That’s time you should be spending sleeping and re-charging
your batteries.

Our “Great Start Guide” will stop you from wondering what you’ve forgotten.

It’s all there, like a check-list.

It’s a step-by-step “how to” guide.

It takes you from what you need to consider before you begin the job all the way through to the end of your first 3 months.

It’s great practical, focused information and it’s written in an easy-to-read practical style.

“I’m living and working in chaos!”

Getting organized is an essential step in managing. Our “Let’s Get Organized” Guide will help you out.

If you live and work in a mess, you can’t possibly be giving your best because everything will take longer than it needs to take and you’ll be more tired than is necessary.

Before you start managing, you have to be organized yourself. This 50+ page eBook is full of useful tips and techniques for organizing every aspect of your life – yourself, your work, your workspace and your home.