Surprisingly, when Fowler talks with leaders about what is motivating them on their current tasks and responsibilities, people recognize right away that much of it falls into a Disinterested, External, or Imposed Motivational Outlook.

• A Disinterested Motivational Outlook is where you just don’t care, and you are going through the motions.
• An External Motivational Outlook is where people justify their actions for an external reward—money, incentives, power, or status.
• An Imposed Motivational Outlook is where behavior is driven by fear, shame, or guilt.

But that comes at a cost, especially when people realize the amount of emotional labor they have been using to constantly self-regulate—finding ways to avoid feelings of pressure, stress, anger, disappointment, guilt, or shame.

As Fowler explains, “We spend inordinate amounts of time just overcoming our feelings of being imposed upon, or just overcoming the emptiness that comes from external motivation. It’s like we are using all of our emotional labor on low-level tasks just to muck around with low-level motivation.

“That might help us cope but it’s not helping us experience the energy, vitality, or sense of positive well-being that comes with higher levels of motivational outlook. Those come from mindfulness, developed values, and a noble purpose, for example.”

The search for a higher quality of motivation

In the Optimal Motivation program that Fowler has created with her co-authors David Facer and Drea Zigarmi, the focus is on teaching people a way to have a higher quality of life where they don’t have to use as much emotional labor.

“If you have clarity on what you value—for example, a life purpose, or a work purpose—and if you understand what brings you joy and what you love to do, then you have a higher quality of life and well-being. You may still require some emotional labor from time to time to self-regulate, but it is emotional labor that you’re willing to do because you see how it is related to higher quality motivation.”

That’s important says Fowler because people driven primarily by external motivators don’t achieve the sustainable flourishing and positive sense of well-being that you get with higher levels of motivation.

Fowler explains that as a leader, you need to think beyond imposed and external motivators. How could you invite choice? How could you help people build relationships? How can you increase competence?

“You never want to be the one encouraging a person’s need for external rewards.  Don’t settle for motivational models that try to find other ways to manipulate or trick people into giving more. Why not take the conversation to a different level? ”

To read more of Fowler’s thinking on cultivating a motivating work environment, check out her interview in the June issue of Ignite!, Don’t Settle for Less When It Comes to Personal Motivation.  You’ll also see information about a free webinar Fowler is conducting June 19 on The Business Case for Motivating Your Workforce.  It’s complimentary, courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

This is a dilemma for most managers according to Scott Blanchard in a recent blog post for Fast Company magazine.  Blanchard explains that it is only natural to assign tasks to the most accomplished people on your team. The challenge is to balance a short-term need for immediate results with a long-term view for the growth and development of your people.

Finding the perfect balance

Drawing on some of the core concepts from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Blanchard explains that managers need to balance routine work that is easily accomplished with challenging new tasks that provide variety.

How can managers find the right balance?  Here are three strategies that Blanchard recommends:

• Become more aware of your goal-setting habits.  Have you optimized the challenge inherent in each person’s goals or tasks, or have you fallen into the habit of overusing and under-challenging your best people? Have you focused more on your own needs instead of theirs by giving them routine work you know they can accomplish successfully with little intervention on your part?
• Focus on both the long and short term.  Manage the urge to assign a task to a proven winner to ensure quick completion versus assigning the same task to someone who is brand new and may require some direction and support. But don’t go overboard. You don’t want to focus solely on employee development and compromise organizational effectiveness. Balance is the key.
• Create variety for yourself and others. According to Warren Bennis, the most effective managers are the ones who actively engage in clear periods of reflection as well as action. Balancing task variety is one of those projects that requires some discipline and awareness to think through.

Blanchard also reminds readers that most people become bored because they’re doing boring tasks—not because of a character flaw. Instead of moving away from a person you might see as a complainer, see that person instead as someone who is not really “in flow” and work with him or her to find out what the right mix could be. It’s a management basic that creates the long and short term impact that works best.

PS: To read more of Blanchard’s thinking on creating the right mix in your work environment, check out, Helping Your Employees Find Their “Flow” at Fast Company.

In a new article for the November issue of Blanchard’s Ignite newsletter, best-selling business author and consultant Scott Blanchard identifies five ways that organizations can find and learn from these best practice managers. 

Step 1: Survey your organization. Use a reputable employee engagement assessment to survey your organization. Make sure that the instrument is valid and reliable and that it will provide you with actionable data. Also, be sure to set the demographics up carefully. You need to protect anonymity to ensure candid responses while still obtaining the smaller unit data that you are looking for. In Blanchard’s experience, a review at the department or function level will usually get the job done.

Step 2: Identify your personal pockets of excellence. Once you get your survey results back, study your organization at the department or functional level. Identify your own personal pockets of excellence. Find out which teams and departments are scoring significantly above the organizational average. Contact leaders in these departments to set up interviews to learn more about what is happening in their specific unit.

Step 3: Focus your conversation where it counts the most. Blanchard research has identified 12 factors that create a passionate work environment and account for most of the variance in employee perceptions. (See Blanchard’s white paper, Employee Work Passion: Connecting the Dots, for more information on this.) These factors are broken down into five organizational factors, five job factors, and two moderating factors.

• Organizational Factors—Growth, Procedural Justice, Distributive Justice, Collaboration, and Performance Expectations
• Job Factors—Meaningful Work, Task Variety, Workload Balance, Autonomy, and Feedback
• Moderating Factors—Connectedness to Colleagues and Connectedness to Leader

Use these factors as a structure for your conversations with unit leaders. Find out how they approach meeting each of these components of a passionate work environment. Discover what they are doing differently from leaders in other departments.

Step 4: Don’t go overboard with prescriptions—Understand the process instead. As you listen and learn about how individual managers and teams address each of the 12 Employee Work Passion factors, listen for the underlying reasons why they engage in those behaviors. Don’t fall into the trap of just mimicking the behavior. The relationship between managers and direct reports is complex. What works for one manager in creating positive feelings of Connectedness and Collaboration may not work for another. Each manager needs to find his or her own individual approach.

Step 5: Share best practices with others and ask your leaders to do the same. Once you’ve identified all of the different ways that people in your organization are approaching employee work passion in the company, start to share some of those practices. Conduct forums, post tips on internal Web sites, and share success stories.

Get started today!

In any organization, at least 20%, and often as much as 30% of the people coming to work each day report high engagement levels.  Do you know who they are in your organization?  If not, you’re missing a very practical way to identify, celebrate, and learn from people who intimately understand how to create an engaging environment within your unique culture.

To read more of Blanchard’s thoughts on bringing out the best from your own organization check out Employee Work Passion: Seek out your pockets of excellence.  Also be sure to see the information about a free November 16 webinar that Blanchard will be conducting on Cultivating Employee Work Passion: The New Rules of Engagement

The lingering economic slowdown has created a real motivational problem for today’s leaders.  A shortage of resources has limited the ability of organizations to provide raises, promotions, and other perks. It’s been just as bad for employees as the widespread scope of the problem has left them with few alternatives beyond their present organization.

The result has been a perfect storm where millions of workers have resigned themselves to their jobs and effectively “quit and stayed.”  These workers show up and do their job at a basic level, but they are sullen and unmotivated in a quiet way that is hard to get at. 

It’s not so much what these workers do, as much as it is what they don’t do.

Here are the five intentions that passionate employees embrace.  Wondering if your people have “quit and stayed?”  Ask yourself to what degree your people:

1. Actively endorse the organization as a good place to work?
2. Go above and beyond the basic requirements of the job in terms of performance?
3. Think beyond themselves and strive for win/win solutions?
4. Go the extra mile when it is necessary to get the job done?
5. Intend to stay with the organization long term?

If you can’t answer YES confidently to these five questions, here are a couple of additional questions to ask yourself to get at the cause of the problem. A lack of passion is usually caused by negative perceptions at a job, organizational, or relationship level.  Probe a little bit in each of these areas and you will likely find the problem area. 

• Job Factors: Do your employees see the importance of their work?  Are people empowered to make decisions about their work and tasks? Are workloads reasonably proportioned for the time people have to accomplish them?
• Organizational Factors: Does the organization still seem committed to growth? Have clear goals been set? Are decisions about resources being made fairly?
• Relationship Factors: Do people feel connected? Do employees have a supportive professional relationship with their leader? Are leaders checking in and providing feedback regarding employee performance?

No one wants to be the type of person who quits and stays, but sometimes people fall into that trap.  Help people up.  Open up a dialogue around these issues.  Just taking the time and asking how things are going in each of these areas will show people that you’re noticing, that you’re willing to help, and that you care.

PS: Do you have a “quit and stay” solution to share?

On January 25, The Ken Blanchard Companies will be hosting a Leadership Livecast on the problem of Quitting and Staying.  Have you successfully addressed quitting and staying in your organization? Can you share it in five minutes or less?  Videotape yourself and send it to us.  You could be a featured speaker!  Click here for details.

Individual Employees

For individual employees, Blanchard recommends first and foremost, to focus on doing a good job in your current role while you look for new opportunities inside the company.  As he explains, “Growth beyond your current job is a privilege usually reserved for people who perform in an exemplary fashion. When managers get requests for growth from people who are not performing at their best, it may feel to them like they are stepping on a treadmill with an employee who may never be satisfied in his or her current role.  Most managers will avoid this, because they suspect it will become a never-ending process.”

Managers

For managers, Blanchard advises facing growth conversations head-on—even when you don’t have traditional next steps up the corporate ladder to offer. As a manager, keep your eye out for new opportunities and new projects that may come up. Know which people on your team would consider it rewarding to get involved in a project that is different than their normal job.

This could potentially be a lateral move, or even a move to completely different part of the organization. Some of the greatest opportunities for growth are found in areas that integrate what’s happening between two departments. For example, a project following up on leads could bring the sales and marketing departments together, while refining and solving a business problem could integrate the engineering and sales departments.

Good managers look out for their people and think beyond the day-to-day. When they have someone who is really working hard for them, they go out of their way to help that person grow.

Senior Leaders

For senior leaders, Blanchard reminds executives that good people always have opportunities.  His recommendation?  Conduct an assessment to find out how employees view current growth opportunities in the organization. Make growth a priority. Your best people are not going to wait patiently for opportunities for advancement—even in a slow economy.  If you are not providing them with growth opportunities, they will go elsewhere and they will take what they learn from you and use that to build their career at another company.

You don’t want to be the person at a top employee’s exit interview who hears, “The headhunters seemed to care more about my career development and growth opportunities than this organization did.”

Learn More

Growth is just one of 12  important factors employees evaluate in their work environment. To see Blanchard’s latest research on the topic read Employee Work Passion Volume 3: Connecting the Dots.  To read more on Scott Blanchard’s specific strategies for creating an engaging work environment check out his other Fast Company articles.

Do Your People Really Know What You Expect From Them?

Feedback Usually Says More About the Giver than the Receiver

Managers: Set People Free to Promote Growth and Get Results

The Role Money Plays in Engaging Employees

The Just-Right Approach To Social Media And Transparency, And What It Says About Your Company

Maintain A Startup Attitude for a Passionate Office

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The three men are all doing the same work, but each with a different perception of its relative worth. Which man do you suppose is coming to work happier and more engaged?

The first man sees his work as a job, the second man sees his work as a task, but it’s the third man who sees his work as a worthy calling, because he is clear about the bigger picture and how his work connects and adds value.

And it is that man who, according to Blanchard employee work passion research, has more positive intentions about

• performing at an above-average level
• being a good organizational citizen
• using more discretionary effort on behalf of the organization
• remaining with the organization
• endorsing the organization and its leadership to others

In a new monthly column for Fast Company, Scott and Ken Blanchard look at the power of meaningful work and alignment. For leaders looking to rekindle a “cathedral” point of view in their people they suggest:

• First, remember why you got into business in the first place. Without an occasional reminder, sometimes it really can seem like the only reason the organization exists is to make money for shareholders.
• Second, connect the dots between an individual’s work and the organization’s overall goals. Make sure that individual tasks and roles are aligned to current initiatives by regularly reviewing what people are working on and how it is contributing to overall performance.

Helping people see and understand the meaningfulness of their work is one of the most powerful things you can do to create strong and powerfully motivated employees. To learn more about creating a sense of meaningful work in your organization, check out Scott and Ken’s new column at Fast Company here.  To learn more about Blanchard’s research into employee work passion, follow this link to Employee Passion: The New Rules of Engagement or From Engagement to Employee Work Passion: A Deeper Understanding of the Employee Work Passion Framework

Each year, the Super Bowl gives sports fans everywhere a chance to experience the process that employees go through when they are identifying whether a particular company is a good place to work or not.  That’s because most people, unless they happen to live in one of the two competing team’s home cities, have a decision to make.  Who to root for? 

Because most of the people who are watching the game are not necessarily fans of either team before the broadcast, people have to evaluate the environment, compare it against their beliefs and past experiences, and then make an emotional decision that wraps it all up.  For example:

• Big Ben and I both graduated from Miami of Ohio
• Because Mrs. Shumate, my second grade teacher liked the Packers
• Because Pittsburgh’s minor league baseball team plays here in Bradenton
• Because my daughter lives in Pittsburgh
• Because Packers are in same division as my team

And so everyone has to decide which team they’re going to root for. It’s the same process when an employee looks at a new work environment and decides whether it is a good place to work or not.  For example, at work, people look at a variety of different factors in deciding whether a particular company is a good fit for them including:

• Pay and benefits
• Growth opportunities
• Culture

It will typically be a combination factors, some logical and some emotional, but always individual and personalized because each individual looks at their work environment differently and makes a decision based on their own experiences.  What is motivating for one employee is not the same for another.

So what’s a manager to do? 

1. First, recognize that everyone is different.
2. Have conversations with your people.
3. Ask them what motivates them and what creates a personally engaging work environment.

You’ll find out that the answers are as diverse as the reasons people have for choosing which team to root for.

To learn more about the process that people go through in determining whether a particular work environment is engaging or not, check out the white paper, From Engagement to Work Passion.  It will show you eight of the factors that people typically look at and the process they use in deciding.

For many leaders, the first inclination is to think about what can be done on a corporate-wide basis. But this would be a step in the wrong direction. According to research from The Ken Blanchard Companies, employee engagement is a personal affair and people see their environment differently—even when they are experiencing the same thing.

Here’s an example:  All employees want a collaborative work environment to some degree.  But the degree of contact that satisfies that need varies widely from person to person.  For some employees, meeting on a quarterly basis feels like the right amount of interaction.  For others, anything less than daily interaction can feel isolating. 

How can you find out the right amount of collaboration your employees need to help feel connected?  Ask them.  Encourage your managers and supervisors to include a question about collaboration, or growth, or any other problem area that has come up on your survey in their next one-on-one conversation.  Adding an employee engagement question or two into the discussion is a great way for managers to discover the diversity of experience among their direct reports and also begin to open the door for strategies that can help to improve each employee’s work environment going forward.

PS: To learn more about the Blanchard approach to improving employee engagement in your organization, check out the white papers Employee Passion: The New Rules of Engagement and From Engagement to Employee Work Passion. They can help to shed some additional light on the individual appraisal process all employees go through and also show you some of the areas to focus on.

“There is more engagement level variation within companies, than between companies.”

This fact has largely been forgotten as leaders, consultants, and practitioners have focused more on measuring against industry benchmarks than on practical ways to create an engaging, high-performing work environment.

What Gallup found that bears repeating is that within any organization there are tremendous differences in the way people are experiencing their work environment.  Some units in any organization will rank as best-in-class examples of high engagement, while other units within the same organization will rank among the lowest. 

While identifying an engagement score at an organizational level is a good place to start, it is important to go beyond that initial number and look at what is happening within the organization at a department and individual level.  That is where the richness and opportunity for change will be found.  A systemic approach has a lot of merit for large organizational issues, but do not let that blind you to everything that can be accomplished at a department and individual level.

Systemically—senior leaders should focus on the areas that must be addressed organization-wide.  These will usually be issues related to fairness (such as compensation and benefits) or growth (job opportunities and career advancement).  What can be done at an organizational level to make sure that the company is treating employees fairly in both of these key areas?

Department level—unit leaders and managers should look at how they are implementing organizational objectives within their separate units.  What type of sub-culture is being created?  Also what can be done at a local level to connect employees to meaningful work, creating a collaborative work environment, or providing feedback and recognition? 

Individual level—individual employees should look at their current work environment and ask, “To what degree am I engaged at work?”  “What would create a more engaging work environment for me?” (For eight key components check out Employee Passion: The New Rules of Engagement.)

Everyone within an organization has a role in creating a high-performing, passionate work environment.  Senior leaders, mid-level managers, and front line supervisors shouldn’t get caught in the trap of averages.  Instead, think at a more local level when it comes to engagement. People are all experiencing the organization uniquely.  Find out what that individual experience is and how you can help.  And for senior leaders, check out Marcus Buckingham’s original piece on this concept from Fast Company —and be sure to check the date of publication.  I think you’ll see that we might have overlooked something important.

Fowler explains that “Relatedness” is a primary nutrient for individuals to thrive in the workplace.  In a complimentary webinar later this week, Fowler will show how a focus on strengthening relationships translates into higher morale, engagement and satisfaction at work.

Drawing on research from a wide variety of resources, Fowler will explore what managers and leaders can do to create stronger relationships. 

Over 1,200 people have already registered for this free October 20 online event, but space is still available if you would like to participate.  For more information see Creating Effective Work Relationships at The Ken Blanchard Companies web site.

Take, for example, the idea of Connectedness with Colleagues, one of twelve factors identified in the research as contributing to a motivating work environment.  For some team members, sharing updates on a monthly basis meets their needs for feeling informed and in the loop.  For others, meeting anything less than once a day leaves them feeling isolated.  If a group has a team norm of meeting once a week—a pretty standard practice—how do people from each camp feel about the team’s performance in staying connected?  Chances are that members of the first group feel that that the team is excellent at connectedness because it communicates four times more than they personally feel is necessary, while members from the second group rate the team low on this aspect because it only meets once a week, which is less than what they are expecting.

So how does a leader deal with all of the different expectations that people have in the workplace?  The answer is to see colleagues and direct reports as distinct, individual people with different needs and expectations.  Here are three tips for getting started:

1. Recognize that people have different needs, desires, and expectations.  There is a tendency to believe that everyone perceives the environment the same and has the same needs and desires.  The reality is that each of us sees things differently based on our beliefs and past experiences. 
2. Explore these differences.  Build some time into your next one-on-one discussion to discover the degree to which your people are personally experiencing growth, autonomy, connectedness, and collaboration in the organization.  For team members, include an agenda item to discuss these elements of an engaging workplace at an upcoming meeting.
3. Look for early wins.  While some factors will be best addressed at an organizational level, there are still many factors that can be addressed locally inside of a department or team.  Identify what those factors are and how they can be addressed.

Employee engagement is a hot topic these days and there are a lot of ways to approach it.  For leaders looking at improving overall engagement in their organizations, it’s important to keep in mind that the process is also intensely personal.  To learn more about the Blanchard research on this topic, be sure to check out Employee Work Passion: A New Look at Engagement in this month’s Chief Learning Officer magazine.

Sometimes organizations operate as though they’ve forgotten the human element of business, and that people have strong feelings about the way they are treated that translates into subsequent behavior. Zigarmi and Blanchard remind us that leaders need to see employees as more than just assets to be maximized.

5 Recommended Leadership Behaviors

For leaders looking to treat people right and provide employees with the direction and support they need to succeed, here are five ways the authors recommend getting started:

1. Provide strong strategic leadership that includes setting an overall vision for the organization, coordinating the efforts of employees toward that purpose, and keeping them prepared to adapt to changing conditions as necessary.
2. Identify and focus the organization on key strategic imperatives that have purpose for the customer or meaning for the greater community. People want to be a part of something bigger than themselves.
3. Send consistent messages based on a clear vision and the type of culture the organization wants to create. Behaviorally define the values that guide the way employees interact with customers and each other.
4. Identify employee needs and strive to meet them. Day-to-day leadership is the linchpin that drives the ways that employees engage with clients.
5. Don’t make profit your only goal. Profit is a byproduct of serving the customer, which can only be achieved by serving the employee. Don’t fall into a trap of thinking that an organization can’t focus on both people and results. Organizations can focus on both at the same time and should.

If leaders create the right environment and engage in the right behaviors, employees will give their best to the organization. This leads to a greater sense of excitement and passion at work that leads to better customer service and retention.

You can access the full text of The Leadership-Profit Chain article here.  Also be sure to check out the Key Factors Influencing Employee Passion which identifies 12 components of an engaging work environment.

The article focused on a concept that Ben Zander, the highly regarded conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra shared with our company a couple of years ago. Ben had spoken at our annual Week of Excellence all-company meeting and encouraged all of us to replace “downward spiral thinking” with “possibility thinking” instead.  Ben also cautioned us not to fall into the trap of thinking that leadership is just for those people at the top of the organization.  For an organization to truly move forward together, everyone has to be involved and feel that they play a role. 

To illustrate his point, Ben told the story of an accomplished cellist in his own orchestra who was disappointed when she found herself ranked as the 11th cellist among the twelve seats available.  It was the kind of position where it would be easy to get lost and feel insignificant.  Zander knew it was important not to let that happen and so he made a special effort to reach out to this woman. At Ben’s urging, she eventually volunteered an idea of how to play a certain section of a symphony the orchestra was scheduled to perform. 

“From then on,” he continued, “this cellist who sat in the 11th seat played like a completely different person.”  Instead of just being technically correct, her playing took on an added dimension that she hadn’t displayed before.  When Ben asked her about this, she explained that ever since that night when she first saw the possibility that she could influence the orchestra from her modest position in the 11th chair, she felt like she had been leading the orchestra every night since then. 

Would that type of attitude be helpful in your organization?  Is your company encouraging people to seek out and lead from their position in the company?  If not, you’re missing a great opportunity for innovation, alignment, and passion.  No matter where we sit in the organization, we all have an opportunity to contribute.

In his book, Punished By Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes author Alfie Kohn points out that when reward and recognition is conditionally based, it can actually undermine performance by: 

• Setting up a competitive atmosphere where some people win while other people lose 
• Discouraging risk taking when employees fall back on what has worked in the past instead of trying new things which may or may not work 
• Eroding natural interest by replacing intrinsic motivators with extrinsic ones

Perhaps most importantly, improper use of rewards and incentives can sometimes get in the way of good management.  This happens when managers rely to heavily on the use of rewards and incentives instead of drilling down on the reasons why employees may not be performing up to level. 

For organizations looking to improve the creativity, innovation, risk-taking and intrinsic motivation of their employees, Kohn recommends that leaders focus on three areas: 

1. Rethink financial incentives.  Instead of putting so much emphasis on pay-for-performance, pay people a little more than industry norms and then do everything in your power to help them put money out of their minds. 
2. Reevaluate evaluation. Make performance evaluation an ongoing process instead of a once-per-year event.  Make sure that it is a two-way conversation that is separate from conversations about compensation. 
3. Create the conditions for authentic motivation.  Kohn recommends focusing on collaboration—helping employees work together, content—design meaningful jobs and help people find the value in their work, and choice—wherever possible, give people the opportunity to determine how the task will be accomplished.

Kohn is a provocative thinker in this area. For leaders looking for the complete picture on the use of rewards and recognition in their organizations, he offers a great alternative viewpoint on the use of incentives.  I highly recommend him to you and invite your thoughts and comments here.

Silverthorne also reports that 27% of middle managers find their current roles less meaningful and exciting than before the economic crisis, according to a recent McKinsey poll.  The main reasons according to Silverthorne? 

• Job Insecurity. Middle managers don’t have the job security they need to perform at a high level.
• Kill the Messenger. When there are layoffs to be done, middle managers more than any other supervisor class are the ones who deliver the message to those being let go.
• Career Interrupted. Middle managers now have fewer opportunities at work to be promoted.
• Pay Squeeze. At home, middle managers are under mounting financial pressure as their employers scale back on pay raises.

These situations can take an emotional toll on your managers.  Job security, maintaining a connection with people, and growth opportunities are important needs that all employees have.  (To see other needs, check out Eight Employee Needs You Must Address to Create Passion at Work).

How are your managers holding up?  This might be a good time to check in with them.

We found out something really interesting to keep in mind as organization’s look at ways to create a more motivating environment for their employees.  It’s not necessarily what’s happening in the work environment that you need to focus on.  It’s how individual employees perceive it.

Let me give you an example.  Recognition is one of the eight factors that we have identified as a component of a motivating work environment.  (It’s also ranked notoriously low in the surveys we’ve conducted.)  How would you go about meeting the recognition needs of the people in your organization? 

You might decide the answer was to create some sort of company-wide recognition process culminating in an employee of the month award. You implement the program, but are later disappointed when you find out that the Recognition scores on the latest employee satisfaction survey haven’t budged at all. 

The problem? Recognition means different things to different people.  For some people, recognition means choice assignments, extra compensation, or maybe a small perk like movie tickets.  For others it just means some heartfelt thanks from an immediate supervisor for a job well done.

The same holds true for all of the eight factors, which in addition to Recognition include Meaningful Work, Autonomy, Collaboration, Connectedness to Colleagues and Leaders, Fairness, and Career Growth. 

As you think about ways to create a motivating work environment, don’t forget that the best approach is an individual approach. Make sure that any new policies, procedures, and strategies are the things that people really want. 

Their response?  Focus on your people first. 

52% said addressing employee motivation needs should be the first order of business, followed by customer needs (14%), and then financials (12%). 

How does this stack up with your priorities during these trying economic times? It’s important to have a strong strategic focus on financials when money is tight, but make sure that you are also paying attention to employee needs.  After all, you need their best ideas and their best work now, more than ever.

Great organizations know that focusing on people—both customers and employees—is just as important as measuring the success of the bottom line.

Are you taking care of the people who take care of your customers?

When people are not aligned behind a compelling vision there is a risk that people will “check out” or end up “spinning their wheels.” Checking out occurs when people do not see how their work contributes to anything larger. When work is perceived as having little significance, it is common for people to disengage and resign themselves to low impact work that requires just enough effort to get by.

Spinning your wheels happens when people double their effort but don’t get any traction. These people are working hard but it is unclear how their work is contributing to the direction the group is heading. When this occurs, people experience false starts, have to redo work, or discover that others have already done the same work.

A clear vision and goal setting helps in both of these cases. When people can see where the larger group is heading and why heading that way is important, they can begin to work in the same direction. Instead of wasting their time on low impact projects—or redoing work that misses the mark—they can focus on high impact areas that directly contribute to shared goals and subsequently improve the company’s bottom line.

That’s part of what I found out after finishing an interview with Chris Edmonds, a senior consulting partner here at The Ken Blanchard Companies. My interview with Chris will be featured in next week’s issue of Ignite!, our monthly e-newsletter and Chris will also be our featured presenter for an April 14 webinar on Revitalizing the Downsized Organization.   Both of these resources are free and you can find out more by clicking on the links above.  If you haven’t had a chance to hear Chris speak, here are a few of the ideas that Chris will be sharing: 

• Most leaders are more comfortable managing metrics like productivity but may not be as comfortable having the type of wide-open conversations about issues that you have to have if you are going to build the passion and commitment you need to move forward in trying times.  And because leaders don’t take the time to stop and get everyone involved, you can end up making a stupid short term decision that may look really good right now, but a month from now, or six months from now, continues to have really negative impact on your business.
• You want your people to be passionate and engaged in the work that they are doing. And you are only going to get the discretionary energy of your people is when they are feeling trusted and respected as a valued partner and stakeholder in the way that the business operates.   
• It’s the secret behind organizations like Southwest Airlines where even when times are tough they don’t have folks leaving, demonstrating, or picketing.  Instead, they’ve got folks constantly meeting together about how they can help the organization get through this economy.  It is a great example of how overall employee commitment and demonstrated discretionary energy is driven by clear communication of what is happening, open involvement in trying to influence the decisions that are being made, and what can happen when people are consistently cared for as a vital asset.

That’s what we found out in our new white paper From Engagement to Work Passion which takes a further look at the concept of employee passion.  This is a continuation of our research which identified eight basic components that all employees need in order to feel valued, focused, and productive at work.

Overall Sample—Aggregate Results

(1,212 responses, six-point scale with 6 representing “present to the fullest extent”)

1. Meaningful Work                               4.75
2. Autonomy                                         4.50
3. Collaboration                                     4.06
4. Connectedness to Colleagues            4.04
5. Connectedness to Leader                   3.91
6. Fairness                                            3.81
7. Recognition                                       3.74
8. Career Growth                                   3.63

According to the data, Meaningful Work and Autonomy are most present in today’s work environments while Recognition and Career Growth are least present.

You can access the complete report at Blanchard Perspectives and White Papers

A couple of us are doing presentations (including yours truly.)  I’ll be talking about engageable moments and specifically what rank and file employees can do to help maintain commitment and productivity during a down economic cycle.

My focus will be on what each of us can do individually to keep ourselves and others upbeat, focused, and positive.  That’s because all plans, no matter how well thought out, eventually work down to an individual level—to you and me.  And to a large extent, how you and I respond—and act on the initiatives that have been proposed will determine our company’s overall success.

Here’s the three points I’ll be making.  See what you think and how this matches up with your own experience.

Get clear on what you need to do

Today, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by bad economic news, become distracted, and lose focus. There are so many things that each of us want to do, what we need to do, and that the organization wants us to do. You need to sort through these competing priorities to create one list that you can focus on.

Ask for help

Don’t try to go it alone.  You don’t have to, no one expects you to, and it’s not going to generate the best results.  All of us are being asked to stretch ourselves, either in terms of doing more with less, or generating new and innovative ideas to help increase sales. Do you have the information, tools, equipment and resources to get the job done? You need to be able to ask for help.

Cheer each other on

Especially in tough times, we have to make sure that we take the time to pat each other on the back.  And don’t wait for big results before you praise.  Remember to recognize the small stuff too.

It all depends on how you look at it.

Findings from the 2008/2009 WorkUSA Survey Report recommend that employers capitalize on “engageable moments” to increase engagement and productivity.

An engageable moment is a critical juncture for maintaining and building engagement. It might occur during such programs as new employee orientation, feedback during a one-on-one or when the organization goes through particularly challenging economic times.

Let me give you an example.

I had the opportunity to work together with some long time employees in our company on a wonderful project to try and capture the heart and soul of our company.  We asked everyone in the company to contribute a story that best defined our corporate culture.  All of the stories would be compiled into a book that will be distributed at our 30-year anniversary celebration later this week. Over 200 people, out of the 300 who work here, contributed stories.  Do you know what people pointed to time and again as our defining moment?  Our response to 9/11. 

Why?  It was during that difficult time that we best pulled together to achieve a common goal. We have that opportunity again.

You have a choice.  We all have a choice.  How will we enter the day?  How will we respond to the world going on around us?  Will we remain hopeful, optimistic, confident, and resilient when things look tough?

What about you?  What are the strategies that you have in place for yourself to remain strong, confident, and hopeful going forward? 

It is not the events of the day that define us; it is how we react to them.

Ben had spoken at our company a couple of years ago at our annual Week of Excellence all-company meeting and encouraged all of us to replace “downward spiral thinking” with “possibility thinking” instead.  Ben also cautioned us not to fall into the trap of thinking that leadership is just for those people at the top of the organization.  For an organization to truly move forward together, everyone has to be involved and feel that they play a role.

To illustrate his point, Ben told the story of an accomplished cellist who joined the Boston Philharmonic but who was disappointed when she found herself ranked as the 11th cellist among the twelve seats available.  Still, she persevered and at Ben’s urging, she volunteered an idea of how to play a certain section of a symphony the Boston Philharmonic was scheduled to perform.

The piece was performed the following week to rave reviews.  After the performance, the cellist came up to Zander excitedly and asked, “You played the piece the way I suggested, didn’t you.”  Ben nodded in agreement and saw the woman’s whole attitude change. 

“From then on,” he continued, “this cellist who sat in the 11th seat played like a completely different person.”  Instead of just being technically correct, her playing took on an added dimension that she hadn’t displayed before.  When Ben asked her about this, she explained that ever since that night when she first saw the possibility that she could influence the orchestra from her modest position in the 11th chair, she felt like she had been leading the orchestra every night since then.

But can a person sitting in the 11th chair of your organization really make a difference?  You bet.

I found this out for myself when I talked with a co-worker who said Ben Zander touched her heart and reminded her that each one of us is important to the bigger goal.

“It creates a feeling in me of my worth in the workplace,” she said. “What I like about this idea is that it makes me feel like I might have an idea that would contribute and that I have value to the company,”

Colleen wasn’t worried.  Why? Because she knew that the power of what she was doing wasn’t in the concept—it was in the execution.  In Barrett’s case, she knew that most executives wouldn’t take the time to write 4,000 personal notes a year to employees like she did.  And that was why she wasn’t worried that they would duplicate the culture.

The idea of writing notes wasn’t the magic.  Actually doing it was.  What’s waiting in your idea queue?  Make the shift from knowing to doing.  That’s where the power is.

The most fascinating thing that I found in watching Kitchen Nightmares is all of the different human resource issues that are being addressed.  It’s almost like a series of Harvard business school case studies presented in a fun, entertaining format.  For example, in the first episode Ramsay works with a family-owned Italian restaurant.  The question?  How do you tell the manager of the restaurant, who also happens to be the son’s owner, that he is the biggest problem holding back the business?

In another episode Ramsay works with a downtown Manhattan restaurant that is absolutely filthy.  The problem here?  Apathetic employees and incompetent managers.  Ramsay’s solution?  Fire the general manager and instead turn to the floor manager to run the restaurant while he simultaneously brings in a new chef.

In all of the episodes you have the opportunity to watch a wide variety of real life human resource problems solved on a practical basis.  I was struck by the complicated nature of the problems that each of these businesses faced and how it ultimately fell back to a people problem in all cases.  Certainly, in some of the episodes the issue also turns out to be poor promotion, a too-complicated menu, or an unfocused business plan, but in the end you can always trace the problem back to an individual. An egotistical owner, an incompetent manager, or apathetic employees who just don’t care anymore.  The result?  A poor experience for the customer, and of course, poor results at the cash register.

The series gives you a chance to see the subtle people issues that managers have to deal with on a daily basis and how, if neglected, ultimately cause the business to suffer. 

If you have ever wondered whether good people management matters, tune in. You’ll see real life examples of the difference that good leadership makes. Look for it under popular TV shows at www.hulu.com.