Leadership: Lead with Passion. Progress with Purpose.

By Looi Qin En

Training Edge International is a leading corporate training consultancy with the goal of growing people and transforming organisations by using leading-edge knowledge to provide proven and tested solutions to improve productivity and performance.

Over the past 12 years, we have empowered thousands of professionals from Asia's top companies such as Hilton, Standard Chartered, Knight Frank, Gucci, Singapore Airlines, SAP, IBM, etc.

For the first-time ever, we have collected and condensed the advice from our world-leading experts on leadership - knowledge which corporations pay thousands of dollars for - to share with you, the professional. Presented in concise, easy-to-read articles, this book packs in actionable advice that you can immediately implement in your professional life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483536996

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ENGAGE YOUR STAFF TO DO BETTER

The workforce is changing rapidly, with baby boomers rapidly retiring and being replaced by younger workers. Many business owners and managers fail to recognize that improving the conditions within their teams is one of the best chances they have of retaining staff, improving the teams' performance and, in turn, the company's profit.

Engaging team members, creating an environment where they are appreciated and given recognition for their efforts and providing a pleasant and efficient work environment gives people a reason to come to work.

Employees should wake up on Monday mornings and say: Fantastic, it's Monday, I'm going to work today! If that sounds ridiculous, ask yourself what you are doing to become an employer of choice and engage your team members? If people are engaged at work, they work harder, produce more, have fewer sick days and have good old-fashioned fun.

Research by The Gallup Organization shows that less than 20 per cent of employees are engaged, 62 per cent are not engaged and the remaining 18 per cent are totally disengaged from their organizations. These figures reflect a worldwide trend.

This research further reveals that engaged team members are more likely to be loyal to their team, be more productive, and have less stress and higher safety statistics than team members who are not engaged. Not only that, customer loyalty is directly linked and rises along with the team member's loyalty.

Team members feel engaged if their team leader or manager takes the time to develop their strengths, understand the areas, which will improve with development and recognize that each member of the team is unique.

Organizations, small and large, can take simple steps to engage their employees.

Some organizations use profiling tools to better understand the preferences of their staff. One that is simple to use and easy to understand is the Team Management Profile.

This profile will give you a better understanding of staff preferences in the workplace. This information can then be used to better communicate with your staff, allocate work and even as a tool to form project teams for short-term projects. By understanding your staff better, you can give them work which is challenging and allows them to learn and grow.

The detailed 4,000-word report identifies people's preferences in the type of work they prefer to do and also supplies information around the following four dimensions:

• The way people relate to others at work;

• How people gather and use information;

• How people make decisions; and

• How people organize themselves and others.

Taking the time to understand your people, identifying areas for development and engaging the services of external organizations to provide team-building and skills training measurably increase engagement.

The office environment at work can also have an impact on staff. One city firm has taken advantage of the structure of its premises. The office is wrapped around an internal atrium that allows access to a garden area. This area has become the central gathering place for staff social functions and boasts a gas barbecue, a bar fridge that would rival most pubs and outdoor furniture to finish off the picture.

Managers encourage staff to gather there to relax and share what has happened over the previous month. It is a great place to let off steam and to build a great team atmosphere. This is one of the ways to show your staff that you value their contribution.

Engaging your team members can be as simple as asking the following questions:

• Do your people know or understand what you expect from them at work?

• Do they have the resources they need to do their jobs properly?

• Do you give praise when you notice someone doing a great job?

• Do you have a professional development program in place for every staff member?

• Do you sit down and talk with your staff about their work and their progress in the team?

• Do your staff members know what your vision is for the team and for them as individuals?

• Do your staff members look forward to coming to work to do their best in the team?

If you don't know the answer to these questions, you had better start talking to your people.

Communicate as frequently as you can with the people in your team. A healthy mix of all options including e-mail, written memos, team meetings and an old-fashioned chat over coffee will take employee engagement a long way.

A poll of employee attitudes in 14 countries has ranked Singapore bottom in terms of overall workplace happiness. The results place Singapore last in three major areas — Singaporeans least enjoy going to work, are the least loyal and have the least supportive workplaces.

Adding weight and significance to the last point, another recent poll on Singapore showed that of the top three things that people wanted at work, recognition and praise came in second, ahead of money and benefits.

Businesswoman Mary Kay Ash summarised the situation perfectly: There are two things people want more than sex and money — recognition and praise.

GIVE RECOGNITION WHERE IT'S DUE

Recognition and praise are indeed high-octane fuel. When you receive a genuine compliment, it makes you want to go the extra mile for the person who bestowed the compliment.

If this were not important to you, you would not treasure all the mementos of awards, plaques, appreciative notes and e-mails that you have received over the years.

Here are tips on how to make people feel more appreciated:

• Pay attention to people with common courtesy. Say Good morning. Ask people how their weekend turned out. Ask about other people's children.

• Listen to what your co-workers, peers and staff members have to say. Give your full attention to the person seeking your attention. You make people feel special when you listen to them without being distracted.

• Use powerful, positive language in your interaction with others. Say please and thank you and you're doing a good job. Say We couldn't have accomplished the goal without you. Powerful, positive recognition makes people feel important.

• Put praise in writing. A thank you note to the employee magnifies the impact of the recognition.

• Keep your commitments to staff members. Never promise that which you may not be able to deliver. Don't do it unless you know you can keep your promise.

• Give employees public credit for contributions. The rule is praise in public; criticise in private.

• Genuine appreciation is a key factor in your relationship with your staff yet many well-meaning and otherwise caring managers are reluctant to express their appreciation of others' talents and contributions.

Some people find giving praise a very difficult thing to do publicly and even harder privately. If you have difficulty praising others, analyse the root causes.

Sometimes, withholding praise is simply due to a lack of time. Praise has a limited best before date. Don't delay its expression or wait until performance review time — when you see something that is worthy of applauding, do so promptly.

Make your words memorable being specific about the achievement. Not many people remember the perfunctory job well done, but they would remember someone who tells them this was pure genius or I would have missed this if you hadn't picked it up. The praise does not have to be elaborate; it just needs to be genuine.

Practise these three steps to give praise and recognition successfully:

• Describe specifically the achievement or improvement. The employee needs to know exactly what he is being praised for. Avoid vague phrases like You've made a lot of progress.

Instead, say: Since our meeting last month about filing your reports, I have seen that you've cleared the backlog and are up to date at the end of each day.

• Explain why this is important to you, the team or the company. This emphasises the value of what the employee has done and makes the praise more effective.

• Give appropriate praise or recognition and thank the person. This may be a simple Thank you, or in the form of further recognition such as a note in the file or a commendation.

These simple steps all contribute in their own way to building a more supportive workplace that employees value so highly.

FIVE-STAR RATING

Appraisalis probably one of the least popular of all organisational processes. Yet it remains a key tool in the performance management cycle. Done well, it proves to be an invaluable service in enhancing organisational performance and individual development.

Central to performance managementis the annual performance review discussion. The appraisal is a comprehensive annual interview between a manager and his employees where successful collaboration is based on open and transparent communication between the two parties.

The interview provides an opportunity to take a step back from day-to-day business and establish an overall picture of the employee's performance expectations and potential. This includes a review of the employee's performance and development over the last working year as well as jointly agreeing on future expectations for his work and learning outcomes.

The success of the processes depends on the quality of personal interviews between the two parties. A particularly good illustration and effective general model for the interview procedure is the iceberg model. This easy-to-remember model illustrates how every interview has two levels of information exchange: the above water level which is the factual, spoken content; and the underwater non-verbalised level of both parties' feelings.

For example, the fears and concerns of appraises regarding a specific situation are frequently left unspoken. Resistance and indifference also often remain ignored initially. In the interview situation between supervisor and employee, the supervisor must assume that the employee will be reluctant to speak up and reveal negative feelings.

The starting point of the appraisal is obviously to discuss the past year's goal achievements with the employee. In every case, observing and discussing the following points is important for a fair interview on employee goal achievement:

• What goals and key tasks have been achieved or