Today thousands of managers are sitting at their desks both puzzled and annoyed at the three-letter-word that keeps getting thrown at them by their young workers. Baby Boomer and Traditionalist leaders describe this word as sounding, as one manager told us, “like nails on a chalkboard.” What, you might ask, is this word? And, if you’re a Generation Y-er, you might ask, “Why is it driving you crazy?”

“Why.” It seems like such a small, innocent word. However, it is actually a loaded term that has different meanings depending on which generation you belong to. In this article, we’ll spell out what “why” means to both the older, seasoned managers, and the young, new workers. And, we’ll give you the tools to overcome your distaste for “why” and embrace it to your managerial advantage.

For those of us raised before the era of “free love” or even “disco”, we were taught not to question our elders. As children we were to be seen and not heard. As school-age children we were taught to take what we were given and not complain about it. And, as adults we were supposed to do our tasks solely because they needed to be done. We understood that we were cogs in a wheel, and if we just did our job, everything would work out fine. So, to us, the word “Why?” denotes challenging of authority, thumbing your nose at the rules, and general disruptiveness. Even in its mildest interpretation, we see at as annoying. When we tell one of our young workers, “finished documents must be printed in triplicate on blue paper,” we want them to say, “Yes, of course! Consider it done!” Not, “Why?”

However, for Generation Y workers, “why” is not a dirty word. They were raised in different times. These adults grew up in a period where parents not only focused on their children, but set them on a pedestal, told them they were unique and important, and fought for them to be not just seen, but heard as well. Generation Y children were also taught that there is learning value in everything they do – so that every job that must be done has a reason, meaning, or significance. They were taught to look at the “big picture” and how their contribution fits in with everything around them. So instead of just being content with knowing they are a cog in the wheel, they need to know, “Why am I this cog instead of that one? Why are we turning slowly? Why, why, why?”

Overall, our research found that there are two big reasons Generation Y asks “Why?”

Reason #1: Big Picture “Why?”
Generation Y workers want to know how they, as well as their work, fit into the whole. They want to know how the tasks they do affect the department, organization, field, or world as a whole. They’ve grown up wanting their lives and work to be meaningful, and they want to see how meaningful it will actually be. Generation Y workers have little patience for tasks that are rote and, as they see it, meaningless. So, as a manager, you need to make their work fit into the big picture. The clearer you make it, the more productive they will be. Pre-empting the “why?” question by assigning tasks AND giving the big picture up front is a trick that top managers have learned.

Darren Griffith, a top sales manager at an auto insurance agency tells it this way, “When I give my Gen-Y sales reps a task, I let them know how it affects everyone of us here. For instance, I asked two of my reps to read through about 200 surveys and pull out all the written comments. I knew they’d ask why because it is such a boring task. So I just said right away – I told them ‘we need to find out if any of our customers are unhappy with anything we’ve done in our sales process. We need to go through those surveys to get those negative comments so that later we can all sit down as a team and figure out what we need to do better.’ That was just what they needed, and they got right on with the task.”

Reason #2: Significance “Why?”
Employees from Generation Y are typically more than enthusiastic to do something when they know the reason behind why they need to do what they need to do. Their parents taught them that rules and instructions are important and good, but only if they make sense and fit the situation. They also taught them that every rule and instruction is an opportunity to learn more. For example, if one of their parents said to them, “Bedtime is at 9:00 P.M.” and, the kid asked “Why?” – they would not typically get the response (as most of us non-Gen Y-ers would have), “Because I said so.” They would more likely get an explanation of how the parent came up with the rule and why it is important. Further, the parent would actually have a “good” reason much of the time (from reading all of those research studies and parenting books and magazines that were so popular at the time). For example, the parent might say, “Because kids your age need at least 9 hours of sleep, and you have to get up at 6:00 A.M. – so 9 P.M. is the latest you can go to bed and get the required amount of sleep.”

That’s the reason this particular “Why?” can be more of a challenge. It forces us, as managers, to question the reasoning and significance behind what we want our workers to do and how we want them to do it. It becomes tricky when there are procedures or policies in our companies that we have absolutely no idea why they are in place and they don’t make a lot of sense to us either.

For example, it might be easy to discuss company dress codes if they make sense. Ricki Archer, the director of a tutoring company, told us, “I discuss dress code with my tutors right away. I tell them that we have a strict white collared shirt, khaki pants, and closed toe shoe policy. I explain that the white collared shirt and khakis identify our tutors no matter what school we go into, and the closed toe shoe means that we are teachers and not students. We have to look professional and separate ourselves from the kids that we teach. Our tutors are young- but they ‘get it’. After we talk about it, they understand that they need to look like grown-ups to get the respect of the parents, teachers, and students. I’ve never had to discuss it further with any of them.”

What is more difficult is when it makes less sense. However, we did find one manager that handled the “why?” particularly well. David Kim, a department manager at a research firm, had many employees question their dress code. “We have a ‘no shorts, no sandals, no jeans, and no t-shirts’ rule at our company. And some of our new hires asked me about why that policy was in place because they all work at computers in cubicles all day and clients don’t see them. I told them that, in all honesty, I had no idea. Realistically, we are isolated from the rest of the company physically – we are in a different building. And, it is just me, my assistant, and eighteen associates who crunch numbers and write reports all day. So, I told them that they had my blessing in trying to get the policy changed if that is what they wanted. They could research it, draft a new policy, and get a petition and signatures – whatever they needed. And I would take a representative with me and bring it up to corporate. But they couldn’t do it during work time. I had to stress that! I haven’t heard about it in a few weeks, but I know there are a bunch of them working on it.”

Unlike the Big Picture “Why?”, the Significance “Why?” can’t always be pre-empted. This is because this type of “Why?” often takes us by surprise. Things we wouldn’t naturally question get questioned. This type of questioning, as you may notice, is not always a bad thing. In fact, employees asking, “Why?” can bring about significant change and growth and help us to look beyond where we might normally look. In fact, where would Microsoft be without Bill Gates asking “Why?” Or where would Nike, or Apple, or Starbucks be? These companies did not just allow “Why?”, they embraced “Why?”

Summing up the Techniques
In short, Generation Y asks “Why?” for two main reasons. And, as our top managers have shown, there are two good ways to turn the “Why?” to your advantage. First and foremost, anticipate that your Generation Y employees are going to want the Big Picture. By knowing this, you can pre-empt questions by providing details of how their work fits in with the work of other workers, the department, organization, or outside world. Make what they are doing meaningful and relevant. Creative managers have a knack for making every job important.

Second, understand that Generation Y workers want to know the Significance of what they are doing. If you can anticipate their questions, then certainly pre-empt them by providing the reason. But, because these are often unanticipated questions, give yourself time to respond or put the work back on them. If you don’t know the answer, it is fine to say, “I don’t know, but I can find out.” It is also more than OK to give them permission to search for the answer themselves, or to try to change things (with you guiding the process, of course).

With this knowledge in hand, maybe we can reduce our annoyance at that little three-letter word. It is not there to usurp your authority. It is not there to make your life miserable. “Why?” is being thrown at you because you have curious, inquisitive, and intelligent young workers who want to learn and grow through their work with you. You may not love it, but with these tools you can turn it to your advantage.
]]> http://www.leadershipiq.com/thought-leadership/articles/managing-generation-why/feed 0 http://www.leadershipiq.com/thought-leadership/articles/motivating-middle-performers http://www.leadershipiq.com/thought-leadership/articles/motivating-middle-performers#comments Sat, 15 Aug 2009 01:52:33 +0000 Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ http://staging.leadershipiq.com/?p=266 by Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ

Most leaders assume that middle performers are already doing the best they can, and so dismiss taking any action to improve their performance. Middle performers, in turn, internalize this assumption and stop trying to be anything more than what they already are.

Employees need feedback, both good and bad, in order to succeed. Middle performers typically account for 70 percent of the workforce. This translates to two-thirds of your employee base that, if you are like most leaders, by the very merit of not being told whether they are doing “good” or “bad,” are being encouraged to tread water at only average performance levels.

While it is likely that a few of your middle performers simply do not have any more to give, most of them, for reasons we will explore, have substantial unrecognized potential. In other words, middle performers absolutely have the ability to tip the scales of success in your favor. As a leader, it is your job to uncover this hidden talent and motivate middle performers to reach towards higher performance.

It sends a powerful message when you tell a middle performer, “You’ve got what it takes. Go ahead and run with this. I trust you.” When you can say these words with conviction, and a middle performer suddenly realizes they can be more than what they currently are, it’s a powerful moment for them, for you as a leader, and for the organization as a whole. You may even find that when given a little time and attention, middle performers will rise considerably on the performance curve and become high performers.

Middle performers are not some amorphous group that can be lumped into a single category and uniformly addressed. There are five critical reasons why middle performers remain middle performers, and we’ve created a grouping for each. In the course of working day-to-day with these folks, you should be able to pick out the patterns and key elements that assign them to one of these five groups. If not, it’s time to get out there and get to know your middle performers. Most of them are eager to be noticed and heard, and with just a little prompting, they’ll probably tell you exactly what you need to know. Let’s take a look at these middle performer groups and explore what can be done to maximize their hidden potential.

Maxed Out
The first group consists of employees that are simply maxed out. These are the folks who are perfectly competent at doing what they’ve always done, but who are consistently unable to produce when given more challenging tasks. There may have been a time when those in the “maxed out” group had a desire to be high performers, but they’ve since reached a pinnacle of performance they’re unable to eclipse. Most leaders mistakenly assume that all middle performers belong to this group; however, only 10 to 15 percent of those in the middle are truly maxed out.

It’s a poor use of a leader’s time to try and develop those in the “maxed out” group. This is not to say this group of middle performers is incapable of bringing value to an organization. Not everyone can run a four-minute mile, but this does not mean that those who can’t should give up running. If this were the case, Mark, by his own admission, would never have started running, let alone plodded his way through a marathon! The “maxed out” are steady, reliable employees that meet expectations and tend to be generally happy where they are. They may not win the race, but they definitely know the way to the finish line. Investing time to develop “maxed out” employees may be unwise, but remember, these folks still have Shoves and Tugs that need to be recognized and acknowledged if you hope to retain them.

Don’t Know How
The employees that make up the second group are those that just don’t know how to reach high performer status. They seem to be going full steam ahead, but somehow always fall short of distinguished performance. The “don’t know how” middle performers are often stuck in this performance rut due to working for leaders that don’t take the time to clearly state high performance expectations—or any expectations at all. This is often a result of the afore mentioned misconception that middle performers have no more to give, hence the belief that it is a poor use of time to try and develop any of them. And so the cycle of middle performance begins.

As discussed in our other articles, a leader will never successfully create a high performance workplace if he or she does not clearly communicate expectations. Even a high performer is going to be at a loss for how to meet the mark if told, “Sales are just not good enough. I need to see improvement.” Without knowing how much improvement and by when, the “don’t know how” middle performer may give what he or she thinks is high performer effort, only to be met by dissatisfaction from the boss. Ongoing, this situation becomes a confusing hit or miss scenario where the employee is never sure whether or not they are on target. They start viewing their leaders as capricious, and making the effort to try and please them becomes obsolete.

No Confidence
Middle performers that lack confidence in their ability to achieve high performer status make up the third group. By and large, this situation exists due to an erroneous notion of what defines a high performer. When a leader’s time and attention is primarily focused on combating low performers and praising high performers, a very clear, although often inaccurate, message of “good” and “bad” is absorbed by those in the middle. By merit of the positive attention they receive; high performers can appear to be perched on a pedestal that seems impossible to reach. Even though many middle performers possess the skills and attitude of a high performer, they simply do not see themselves as having what it takes to make the climb to the top.
As a leader, there is much you can do to induce “no confidence” middle performers to make the climb to higher performance. If employees don’t get regular feedback from the boss, they are left to their own devices to figure out how they are doing with respect to performance. And if communicating displeasure over negative performance seems to come easier to you than giving positive feedback over a job well done (as is the case with many leaders), you are actually promoting negative reinforcement that will have an equally negative effect on getting middle performers to shoot higher.

Because middle performers tend to discount their own accomplishments, it is especially important to take the time to comment on the good work being done by this group of employees. Granted, their efforts may not be in the same realm as high performers, but their positive actions warrant your attention nonetheless. This is your opportunity to set the record straight that middle performers are of value to the company, and to start turning their confidence levels around.

Costs Are too High
A common misconception among some middle performers is that being a high performer goes hand-in-hand with being a chronic workaholic. The fourth group of middle performers refrains from giving their all as they foresee that the costs of being a high performer are just too high. It may be that they have been witness to a few high performers that compulsively feel the need to work, and who, in doing so, embrace long hours and weekends at the office. It may also be that this group of middle performers does not fully understand what the expectations of high performance are, and so imagine that the only way to move to the next level of performance is to trade personal life and outside interests for increased work time.

The “costs are too high” middle performers are blocked from becoming high performers by their apprehension over the Shoves they think accompany the role. It may be that these Shoves are only hypothetical, and that you can easily assuage these concerns by talking these middle performers through their incorrect assumptions. However, there is always the chance that these high performer Shoves are in fact quite real. Once again, employees can provide a clear view to organizational problems of which you may not be aware. It is worth your while to ask your high performers, during your monthly or quarterly Shoves and Tugs conversation, if any of these shove factors are factual. You may uncover valuable information by which you can instigate some changes that not only will help you motivate middle performers to a higher level of production, but will have the added bonus of working to retain high performers.

Benefits Are Too Low
The fifth group of middle performers is comprised of those employees that believe the benefits of being a high performer are just too low. These are the folks that have the skills and attitude of a high performer, and who would be happy to do what it takes to move up to the next level, if only they could see the tangible benefit of doing so. They question each possibility of advancement, and if they foresee no favorable return, suspecting instead that the “rewards” will be factors such as a minimal pay increase, added hassle, and little to no promise of promotion, they turn away from making high performer efforts.

Not unlike the “costs are too high” middle performers, those in the “benefits are too low” group may simply be reacting to hypothetical conditions. In this situation, middle performers will be demotived by what they perceive to be a lack of Tugs. Once again, this may be valuable information that should be investigated with your high performers during Shoves and Tugs conversations. If you find that the suspicions of the “benefits are too low” middle performers are not valid, you will need to reinforce the actual benefits of high performance. And if they are valid, you will need to address that factor.

Make sure that high performer benefits are things that will work to motivate all your employees. If some or all of your high performers concur that the benefits really are not all that great, it’s time to consider making some changes that will retain your current high performers and induce middle performers to make the jump.
]]> http://www.leadershipiq.com/thought-leadership/articles/motivating-middle-performers/feed 0 http://www.leadershipiq.com/thought-leadership/articles/developing-passionate-followers http://www.leadershipiq.com/thought-leadership/articles/developing-passionate-followers#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:50:54 +0000 Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ http://staging.leadershipiq.com/?p=38 by Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ

Recently, I was training a room full of leaders at Microsoft (you know, the company that makes the software you’re probably using to read this email). On this particular visit, I was teaching them about “Developing Passionate Followers.” Microsoft dominates in an industry populated by the hyper-analytical and numerically inclined. So why would Microsoft hire Leadership IQ to address an issue as “soft and fuzzy” as developing passionate followers?

Here’s why: When employees are passionate about their job and their leader, they work better, faster and smarter. And you don’t have to be Bill Gates to realize that when employees are energized, they produce more work and better work with fewer errors.

What makes Microsoft so smart (and so enjoyable to work with) is that not only do they realize the value of having passionate employees, they also recognize the core truth about developing passionate followers: Policies don’t produce passionate employees, leaders do. You’ve probably heard the old adage “you join a company, but you quit a manager.” Well, that old adage is true. You can create all the policies and global initiatives you want, but ultimately an employee will only be truly passionate if they’re working for someone who inspires them.

So here’s the $64,000 question: How do you train leaders to inspire passionate followers?

I’m going to show you by giving you the 2 most important lessons from all of our years of teaching leaders how to develop passionate followers. Obviously we cover a lot more in our training courses than I can describe in an article like this, but if you can master these 2 lessons, you’ll be light-years ahead of your competitors.

Lesson #1: Distinguish between Management and Leadership

The first thing we need to clarify is the difference between management and leadership. In its simplest form, management is concerned with “getting the trains to run on time.” Management involves Defining the actions people need to take, Diagnosing whether they’re performing effectively, Developing them through effective feedback and then Reinforcing everything with robust accountability. Management lives in the realm of extrinsic motivation.

Leadership, by contrast, lives in the world of intrinsic motivation. Leadership involves Aspiration (giving people a sense that their work makes a difference in the world), Inspiration (instilling confidence that all challenges are surmountable), Stimulation (challenging people to exceed their own expectations) and Idealization (creating a bond of trust and respect between leaders and followers).

Management directs and improves what people do and how they do it. Leadership influences how passionate and inspired people feel about doing that work.

Distinguishing between management and leadership in this way should lead you to one inescapable conclusion: You need BOTH management and leadership to be successful. Executives that only employ management (without any leadership) are labeled as Marchers. They get the trains to run on time, but their people do it without passion (and without much loyalty). Executives that only employ leadership (without doing any management) are labeled as Dreamers. Their people are passionate, but they may not get the financial & operational results they need.

Executives that successfully perform BOTH management and leadership activities are Maestros. And this is the label you’re really aiming for. This is the executive that doesn’t need to coerce or bribe their people to get the trains to run on time, but rather does it by inspiring them and unleashing their inner passion.

When we train leaders on this topic, we always begin with an assessment that tells them whether they’re a Marcher, a Dreamer or a Maestro. Because depending on your particular challenge, and your unique mix of Marchers and Dreamers, you may need to customize your curriculum. If your challenge is getting employees to execute without excuses or better managing low performers, you need to develop management skills. If it’s developing more innovation or more passionate followers, you need leadership skills.

So my advice to you is this: Really think about what challenge you’re trying to address, and carefully decide whether you need more management or more leadership.

Lesson #2: Learn from Peak Experiences (Not Negative Experiences)

Because I’m writing about developing passionate followers, we’re really talking about leadership rather than management. And when you’re teaching leadership, it’s a good idea to give your lessons a positive frame (how can we do more of what went right) rather than a negative frame (what went wrong and how do we fix it). Just think about it: Can you really teach how to be inspiring when you’re asking people to spend all day wallowing in deeply negative issues?

When we’re training our numbers-driven Fortune 500 clients, where the managers have seen it all, done it all, and may be a little crusty and hardened from the experience, we’ve got to soften them up a bit. What that really means is that we need them to understand that this “soft leadership stuff” actually delivers bottom line value.

So here’s an exercise that we call Leadership Peak Experiences. This exercise gets people to recognize the profound bottom-line impact of great leadership, while at the same time helping them recognize that leadership is a definable and trainable set of skills.

To conduct this exercise, ask your managers to pair up and interview each other using the following 8 questions.

Leadership Peak Experiences Exercise

Remember a time from any period in your life that a leader (boss, teacher, mentor, friend, etc.) inspired you to achieve something that was both significant and difficult.

Vividly describe that experience (who was involved, when did it occur, where did it occur, what was the achievement, etc.)

Describe what made the achievement significant.

Describe what made the achievement difficult.

Imagine that naysayers were observing this situation. Describe the doubts that they might have expressed about your ability to achieve what you achieved.

Describe how the leader helped you overcome those doubts and difficulties.

What specifically did the leader do or say that inspired you? Be as specific as possible. (As a starting point, try to answer these questions: What words did they use, what did they teach you, how did they support you, how did they challenge you, how did they make you feel, etc.?)

What was it about your particular personality that made the leader’s words/actions so impactful?

Once you’ve completed the interviews and you debrief their conversations, your managers will make some significant discoveries. Here a just a few.

Leaders will recognize the powerful impact that a leader had on their performance. Just ask them whether they worked better, faster and harder because of this leader (the answer is always YES). You’ve now just demonstrated the business value of inspired employees.

Leaders will recognize the elegant simplicity of inspirational leadership. When you debrief the specific actions their leaders took to make them passionately tackle significant challenges, you will hear about some very repeatable techniques, like.

Listening in a way that communicates your understanding

Serving as a sounding board for employees without jumping in and taking over

Giving them targets that capture a “moral high ground”

Giving them “perfectly difficult” targets that weren’t doomed to failure or guaranteed to succeed

Eliminating certain dispiriting roadblocks

Leaders will recognize that anyone can elicit more passion from their employees. By learning from their peak experiences and dissecting what really made those experiences so powerful, they develop a roadmap to inspire their own employees.

Leaders will also recognize that they need to adapt their leadership techniques to certain types of employees. What worked to inspire them personally may not work to inspire someone else. And as they learn about why they responded in a particular way, they start to learn about how their employees will respond.

Once again, if we’re camped-out in your conference room training your leaders, we’ll be covering a lot more than I can put into an article like this. But Microsoft didn’t hire us to dryly recite an encyclopedia of leadership techniques. They hired us to transform how they think about leadership. Oh don’t worry, we gave them specific techniques. But before we could give them a toolbox of leadership techniques, we had to change their minds. And the 2 lessons I gave you above, will help you do just that.

Listen, we can teach leadership skills all day long (to any type or size organization). We can teach you how to speak to employees to inspire them, set inspirational goals, eliminate the demotivators that hold them back, and much more. That’s actually the easy part. The challenge that requires a little more work involves helping leaders understand the importance of passionate employees and recognizing that there are very specific actions that they can take to help their employees be more passionate.

Don’t ever let your leaders throw up their hands and say “we’ve got employees that just can’t be inspired” or “getting employees inspired is too hard” or “it’s too lofty a goal” or “I don’t have time.” It doesn’t take more time to inspire your folks. It just takes making some changes to the actions you’re already taking. You’re going to set goals for your employees. Why not just set more inspirational goals and communicate them in a more inspirational way? The net time required is exactly the same, but the results are exponentially better.

When people think about motivating employees, they’re usually thinking about ways to reward them. What carrots can be offered to get employees to work harder, what can we dangle in front of them to incent them to take the actions we desire? There are whole books written on ways to reward our employees, and multi-million dollar consulting engagements built on those books.

They include issues big and small, like money, pay-for-performance plans, flexible shifts, thank-you notes, gift cards, extra days off, promotions, educational opportunities, public recognition or a private pat-on-the-back.

But while rewarding employees is important, it misses a hugely important point. If someone is hitting your foot with a hammer, you can’t stop the pain with a backrub. This is an odd bit of folk wisdom, but here’s the lesson. In one of our recent studies, 76% of employees said that in the past 12 months, their manager has done something that made them want to quit. And 89% of employees said that their organization has done something that made them want to quit.

Every day, employees face various demotivators, things that cause them to lose their passion for their jobs and even cause them to consider quitting. And before we can try to “motivate” them, we’ve got to stop “demotivating” them. To make this concept a little easier, instead of talking about demotivators and motivators, we’re going to talk about Shoves and Tugs. Shoves are those issues that cause people to lose their passion, enthusiasm and even consider quitting. Tugs are those issues that get people excited, ignite their passion, and make them committed to staying with an organization or boss.

This tends to be a radical concept for most leaders, so let’s walk through an example. Pat is a nurse at a major teaching hospital. She’s worked there for 8 years and thinks it’s a great place to work. She loves doing research and this organization has hundreds of ongoing studies on which she can participate, and even publish. Her major Tug is doing intellectually challenging work with really smart people. But two weeks ago, the hospital instituted flexible work schedules and they changed all the shifts. This is causing Pat serious difficulty because she had timed her kids’ schedules around her old shift start/end times, and this change disrupts everything. For Pat, this scheduling change is a Shove.

Now, here’s the radical part. Before Pat’s manager can address her Tugs, they will have to fix her Shoves. When you see Pat’s issues described separately as Shoves and Tugs, it becomes pretty clear that she’s going to be much less excited about the opportunity to publish as long as her schedule is causing her problems. But because most leaders don’t initially separate Shoves and Tugs into two distinct issues, the typical leader will ignore the scheduling issue and just try to give Pat more research work. Or try to buy her compliance with money.

Shoves are often focused on basic issues like working conditions, schedules, compensation, acceptable relationship with the boss, etc. Tugs often encompass higher-order issues like enjoying the work, career advancement, working with interesting people, organizational culture, etc.

If we had only asked Pat what excited her about her job, what really made her love this hospital, we’d have gotten an answer about doing intellectually stimulating work. And if we had only asked Pat what could make her life sufficiently miserable to cause her resignation, we’d have gotten an answer about her schedule and her outside-of-work obligations. It’s only when we ask about both issues that we get the complete picture.

When you’re working with low performers, when you’re working terrible hours, or you’ve got a terrible working environment, you could be so frustrated that you feel like you’re being Shoved out the door. You could feel so frustrated that you no longer notice all of the other good things about your job that Tug at you to stay – the autonomy, the ability to have control over an entire process, the ability to work on innovative projects and teams. If your organization is like the organizations in our studies, as much as 35% of your workforce could feel this way. And these people are huge retention risks.

On the other hand, you could have a working environment that is free from Shoves, but also lacking in any significant Tugs. You’re not being Shoved out the door by frustration, but neither are you being Tugged to remain at the company. And once again, if yours is anything like the organizations in our studies, as much as 50% of your workforce could feel this way. The good news is that these people probably aren’t spending their days on Monster.com actively applying for jobs. The bad news is that if the economy changes, or one of your competitors makes a play for them, or they just happen across another opportunity, they will leave.
To get someone really truly committed to your organization, you must first eliminate any Shoves and fulfill at least some of their Tugs. In essence, you’ve got to meet their basic needs and afford some opportunity to address their higher-order needs.
]]> http://www.leadershipiq.com/thought-leadership/articles/stop-demotivating-before-you-start-motivating/feed 0