Leadership Blog
United Way would like to show our appreciation for our company sponsors, donors, employee campaign managers, volunteers, and advocates. As a thank you for their support, below are articles from Through Eagles Eyes, written by Diane Winn and Tom Searcy, which will be posted monthly. These inspirational articles will discuss today's management and leadership hot topics.
Diane Winn and Thomas Searcy co-founded Through Eagles Eyes, Inc. in 2006. Through Eagles Eyes, Inc. is a talent management organization. It works with medium sized companies to drive profit growth through their people development. Improved productivity throughout an organization is its goal. Both Diane and Tom have extensive background in the financial consulting field (over 50 years combined) which gave them extensive experience in understanding the challenges business leaders face, as well as gaining expertise in coaching them through those challenges. Diane is a Professional Certified Coach, one of only a few in Indiana, and Tom is certified in neuro-linguistic programming, the basic science of communication that forms the basis for coaching practice. Also, Eagle Eyes' ability to support performance excellence for its clients took a giant step forward with its alliance with Kerry Garman, SPHR, a highly skilled professional in training, coaching and organizational development.
Visit www.througheagleseyes.com to learn more about how Eagles Eyes can help your organization.
November 2011
We recently attended a seminar in Indianapolis presented by best-selling author and business researcher Daniel Pink. To spend an entire day listening to a two hour presentation is quite a commitment, but we found it worth every minute.
Daniel Pink drew most of his comments from his latest book Drive. For those of us attempting to help our employees be as productive as possible, he had a lot to say in a short amount of time.
We've written before that most "common sense" motivational efforts by businesses large and small are useless at best, and many are quite harmful to motivation and productivity. Aubrey Daniels, world class occupational development expert, has lectured extensively on this topic along with Daniel Pink's latest contributions.
First, we find that traditional thinking about compensation is outdated. Less than 10% of the jobs in the United States are of the type where incentive pay increases productivity. In fact, research shows exactly the opposite is true. Incentive pay actually lowers productivity most of the time.
In order for pay to be a positive, it must be considered fair and adequate by all employees. If the compensation system is seen as unfairly skewed in favor of top management, nothing else an employer might implement will successfully motivate its workforce, ever! Fair compensation, then, might be considered an employer's "price of admittance" into the motivation and productivity enhancing game.
Once the issue of fair compensation is settled to everyone's agreement, three other issues become paramount in raising the level of employee engagement and productivity. While they fit together synergistically, let's look at them individually.
Employees want autonomy in their work. They want to be thoroughly trained with complete understanding of their job and responsibilities. After that, they want management to get out of their way and let them use their full abilities and creativity to complete their work.
Employees want mastery in their work. They want to be the very best they can be at their work, and they expect their employer to help them develop their skills fully.
Employees want purpose in their work. They want to come to work knowing their purpose and knowing that their contribution helps their employer accomplish its mission. They want to know exactly how their effort plays into organizational success.
Wait a minute! We all have seen plenty of employees who show no interest in any of these higher order principles of character. In fact we've all seen the exact opposite in people showing up for work. How does Daniel Pink respond?
The truth is that the right employees always show up the first day with these personal traits in full expression. That means hardly anything is more important than hiring the right employees. Too few employers take the time to thoroughly screen for that "right" employee.
In many cases, an employer gets the right employee and simply squeezes the optimism and motivation right out of him or her. Fault-finding and a punitive work environment will quickly turn off an otherwise valuable employee.
Finally, the pay issue we discussed earlier will eliminate from the start any hope of motivating an otherwise excellent employee. It is no coincidence that our largest corporations, with CEO pay packages that average three hundred times the average workers' pay scale, show terrible employee engagement numbers and equally poor performance statistics.
Where will you find the employers who understand and incorporate these four key motivational generators? Just look for your most profitable, productive and stable companies. Profits and these motivators always go hand in hand.
Tom Searcy
Diane Winn, PCC
Through Eagles Eyes, Inc.
