How to Create Positive Emotions for Your Employees

As leaders, we should want to aspire to create positive emotions in employees. The more positive employees feel about work the more likely they are to stay and be dedicated to the tasks they want to accomplish. As you read this, think of ways to inspire your employees to feel these powerful positive emotions while in the work place.

I recently performed an informal survey about what experiences people have which causes them to feel these twelve different emotions. I’ve compiled the results and found significant trends in almost every category.

Joyful

People seem to find the most joy in their lives from watching other people have a good experience. From listen to a virtuoso performance to children playing, to watching friends and colleagues have a wonderful experience. Joy comes from being in the proximity of someone having a great time.

Are you employees joyful at work? Are they getting the chance to experience a friend or colleague delivering a virtuoso performance? How are you providing an environment that encourages joy?

Excitement

People describe being excited when being involved in a winning accomplishment. Either a team victory or a personal “win” gets people pumped up and excited. It’s why people follow sports teams, why they enjoy competition, and why they enjoy trying new tasks because they get the opportunity to demonstrate a winning skill or talent.

How are you giving your employees a chance to experience victory? Do they feel a sense of team and understand what constitutes a win? Are you giving people the opportunity to feel excited about what they do? As rabid as fans are for their sports teams, imagine if you could create that same excitement for their work team?

Pleasure

Experiencing pleasure is simply doing what we love to do. People described pleasure coming from performing their hobbies, to spending time at a favorite location, to experiencing a high in their occupation. Nailing a speech, closing a deal, being recognized for an outstanding performance are all ways people experience pleasure in the workplace.

What opportunities are you creating for your employees to truly feel pleasure from their employment? What culture have you established in your work environment that encourages and fuels the opportunities for people to experience pleasure from a job they love to do?

Anticipation

For children, anticipation is huge the day before Christmas, before a birthday, just before entering into Disney for the first time. For adults anticipation is the same: the preamble to excitement. The preparation for a wonderful time is a type of high energy people enjoy just before “going for it.” It’s why players are jumping around just before storming the football field. It’s the racing of the heart as the speaker is being introduced, it’s the thrill of what positive moment is about to happen.

Great leaders are eager to get to work and get the excitement started. Top attorneys can’t wait to get in the court room to perform, and employees who love what they do are eager to get to the jobs they find exciting. How excited are your employees to get to work? How much positive anticipation do you feel on Sunday night getting prepared for your Monday morning? What model are you demonstrating?

Contentment

Overwhelmingly, people described contentment as something they experienced at the conclusion of a good day. Many tasks accomplished, success achieved, family tucked warm in bed, and a reflection on the positive accomplishments of the day.

What are your final thoughts before sleeping? Are you going over the positives of the day or are you watching televised news about all the negative things going on? Are you recapping your smiles from the day, or are you rehashing that argument you had in the morning meeting? Contentment is a choice we make. It’s also a choice leaders can influence in his or her staff. What last thoughts of the day are you choosing to have? What choices are you encouraging in your employees?

Invigorated

Almost every response to the question of what makes a person feel invigorated came from a physical activity. A gym workout, bike ride, a swim, working in the garden, weekend projects, doing something that makes a person sweat and gets the heart rate up were common in the physical exertion of energy.

As our employment becomes more office, white collar type of jobs, we are not experiencing the physical exertion of labor. (Although we all feel tired at the end of the day, don’t we?) Do you have a workout facility on your grounds? Do you encourage people to take a workout lunch break? Does your wellness program promote some type of invigorating activity during the work day? An invigorated employee doesn’t get the afternoon sleepies and is alive and alert throughout the day. How are you invigorating your employees?

The next blog on Friday will cover the next six positive emotions people experience. True leaders will recognize the benefits to having a consistency of these behaviors in the workplace, and work to find ways to create that type of positive working atmosphere. Give your employees the opportunity experience these emotions while working for you. They will be appreciative and you will benefit as well from the improved results.

Dealing with Helicopter Parents in the Workplace

Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach and University of South Florida’s football coach Jim Leavitt were both recently fired because of stories brought to the respective schools by upset parents about treatment their sons had been receiving. The truth in these allegations is murky at best, yet both universities took swift and decisive action without knowing complete facts.

Parent involvement in children’s sports is no surprise, but reaching the college level and having impact on the employment of coaches is new. Emboldened helicopter parents (hovering overhead trying to control outcomes) are now extending their impact beyond the home and grade schools and into the workplace.

How do you handle parents who refuse to cut “the apron strings” on their children even when they become adults?

Handle with care

Parents who feel it is their obligation to get involved in employment matters of their offspring are not to be brushed off or handled lightly. These are people who believe they have a right to be there to defend their children. Already, I am hearing stories of parents demanding meetings with their adult child’s boss to talk about non-raises, disciplinary action, opportunity, and workplace complaints.

To not return their calls, tell them gruffly they have no business dealing with the issue, or flat out telling them to get lost only creates a nightmare of confrontation that very well could lead to litigation.

The best approach is to give them the opportunity to be heard. This is the most important desire they have. Secondly, take notes of the conversation to ensure you are getting all the details as they see them. This also lets the parent know you are listening to what they have to say. Lastly, let them know you will look into the matter and set a time for you to get back in touch with them. They want to know you took them serious.

Get the details

It would appear that the universities may have had alternative motives in firing these football coaches because the facts in the complaints brought by parents appear to have many errors and counter opinions from witnesses including the “child” involved in one case.

Before taking rash decisions, be sure you take the time to gather facts, speak with eye witnesses, and review reports and records until you have the details. Then make your decisions. It would be wrong to act on the words of the complaining parents and alienate your staff. It would also be wrong to cast aside the parent’s complaint and ignore it. Always gather information until you believe you have a firm understanding of the situation before taking action. The last thing you want to be dealing with is a legitimate sexual harassment case you never bothered to check the facts on.

Create a case file

As absurd as this may have sounded not very many years ago, managers are going to have to accept the meddlesome nature of parents wanting to get involved in every perceived slight of their children. The best approach is to create a case file of the complaint, what you found out, and the decision you chose to make. This is as much for self preservation as it is to demonstrate you took the complaint seriously.

If children’s sports and school experiences are any indication of manipulative parental involvement, this behavior is on the increase and will not be going away. The better prepared you are to handle it, the quicker you can reach resolution and get back to managing the workforce that only exists within your walls, the better you can focus on developing and growing your business..

How Your Business Can Avoid a Death by 1000 Cuts

2009 was a season executives performed cut, cut, cut type of economic measures and hopefully your business wasn’t one of the many that died from self-inflicted 1000 cuts. Gruesome? Many businesses went under more because of their arbitrary across the board cuts bleeding them to death than the actually down economy. This year will also be an economic challenge as we all need to get more for less out of our businesses. Be a leader and don’t die at your own hand. Remember, you must avoid cutting your own throat when trying to get more for less.

Look into the details

The easy road is to do the simple stuff many companies do. Across the board cuts, wage freezes and slice and dice the budget. This is where you can cut your own throat. What if you need more personnel to properly run your department? What if cutting your marketing dollars removes more revenue than you saved by not advertising? What if you best talent decides to bail because of a second year of wage freeze?

Study the details of your organization looking for cost saving opportunities. What services are you outsourcing you could bring back in house using your staff? What tasks can be streamlined? Are you getting your employees involved in finding better and more cost effective ways to perform tasks? Could you do a better job of scheduling people for peak customer times?

Take each department of your organization and explore ways to make improvements without cutting deeply into profit-producing opportunities.

Have a plan

During difficult economic times a tight strategic plan is more critical than ever before because every meeting, every dollar, even step must be made in the positive direction toward accomplishing goals. When I see organizations missing the marks they set to achieve for the year and then use the excuses of the economy, how hard they worked to get what they did get, or how they did the best they can under the circumstances, I see an organization that is off the path.

Define your targets, your action items to reach those targets and set a timeline for each step along the way. Accountability is the easiest choice to get more for less. How accountable are you holding your executives to their responsibility of reaching their targets?

Put away the knife

Why do companies cut budgets instead of focusing on finding the additional revenue to meet the budgets? Because reducing costs is always easier than finding more revenue. Who said it was supposed to be easy? The job of every company is to make profits and grow the business to extend the longevity of the organization.

Stop the cutting mentality and spend more time finding additional opportunities to grow your business. Are you looking for more for less this year? I suggest you focus on the more and dedicating fewer days to figuring out the less.

4 Ways to Energize Yourself and Your Business

At the start of this decade no one was waiting around the office at midnight dreading to see if the electric grid crashed, if computer-based machinery stopped, or society fell into chaos due to Y2K as we did ten years ago. Yet, I still witnessed people dreading returning from their four day weekend to the daily grind that chewed up many businesses and their leaders last year.

To revitalize a company the leader must first be revitalized. How can you revitalize yourself when the economy is still down, people still seem to be in a negative mindset, and the future is quite unclear? With these four action items you can reenergize your vitality as a leader and once again set a positive tone for your staff to follow and vicariously become more energized themselves.

1. Get a reality check

I’ve heard it said many times; things are never as good as they seem and never as bad as they seem. 2009 seemed to be a pretty bad year for most organizations. Many executives just gave up in the fourth quarter and started focusing on 2010. In retrospect, 2009 was filled with lessons. Step back from the pain and frustration of 2009 and make a list of lessons learned that can help you in the future. We all learned last year, in some cases it could be what not to do. However, aren’t those some of the best lessons to have?

2. Make a plan

Free-wheeling is no longer an option for leadership; nor is sticking directly on a plan. Flexibility within a plan is different than free-wheeling in that you have a clear understanding of destination and the ability to make adjustments. Do you have a written plan for this year? Do you have a written plan for your personal life? I’m not being pollyanna here, I know you don’t suddenly wake up one day and life is all rosy. The business side of life is still going to be a climb up the mountain, but your personal life can be a great source of energy fueling that climb. Have a personal plan as well as a business plan.

3. Find inspiration in your personal life

People are still going to reject some of your sales efforts, companies are still tight with budgets, and the country still has a ways to go before we are into positive growth. In other words, business is still going to be a challenging environment. That is why I set 50 personal goals for the year (to go with my 50 professional goals for the year) because I know I get inspired in my personal life. Who inspires you? What inspirational friends do you need to spend more time with? What friends do you need to avoid/drop/move on from? If you aren’t being positively impacted by your friends, you are losing energy that is needed to fight the business battle. Find inspiration.

4. Try something completely different

How many times last year, did you ask people to give you more, hammer them for not doing their jobs correctly, and generally focused on the negative aspects of the business. Try something different this year. Become solution-focused instead of blame-focused. Be proactive instead of reactive. Look for innovative approaches instead of cutting budgets and doing less of the same that wasn’t working in the first place!!!

Pushing an elevator button repeatedly does not make the elevator arrive any quicker. I think we fall into this type of behavior frequently when times are tough. Get real about the positives, find solutions for the negatives and get energized to lead. Because it is the beginning of a new year, now is a great opportunity to refocus, reinvent, and reenergize yourself and your staff. Get pumped to make a difference this year.

Is Your Business GPS Programmed?

Isn't it great how we can climb in the car enter our destination address into the GPS and have basically worry free travel knowing we won't get lost and will reach our destination? What does your business GPS look like? Since executives don't have a Garmin gadget sitting on their desk for them to enter where they want to be in 12 months and expect basically worry free travel, we have to do it the old fashioned way. We do that by answering some questions to help us determine the focus of the trip. Such as, do you know your destination you desire to reach by January 1st, 2011?

What is the address?

Having a clear picture of where you want your business to be is no different than the clear definition of where you want your car to be at the end of the trip. Instead of entering a street number into your GPS, enter in the "address" you want your business to reach. The address looks like, revenue dollars, on market share street in the town of profits in the state of celebration.

What is guiding your path to reach your destination?

A strategic plan is the best map for getting from Point A to Point B. Have you mapped out your route to your desired destination? Just being filled with desire and hope today isn't going to get you there. I know lots of hard working people who are struggling. Your mapped out plan keeps you on task even when you have to take unexpected detours. The more detailed the directions the better defined the route. Imagine the GPS lady's voice tell you, "It one mile, turn left" as opposed to your VP telling you at the last minute, "We should’ve turned one mile back."

What obstacles do you anticipate?

Rarely does a year happen with smooth sailing the entire way. In fact, if your seas are that calm, you probably never left the harbor. Obstacles are part of every journey and anticipated obstacles are easily navigated when you are prepared for their inevitability. Make a list of the potential obstacles you will face this year and make a plan to render them non-events, just part of the landscape of reaching your destination.

What are your contingency plans?

To journey the path to great destinations requires fore-thought as I've mentioned but also necessary to achieve greatness is the ability to think on your feet and be decisive. Every great leader is comfortable and ready with contingency plans when the unexpected happens. Unless you want to be stopped dead in your tracks well short of your destination, be ready to make choices quickly to keep your business progressing forward.

Time to Think

Between now and January 4th I will not be posting to my blog because every year I use the week between Christmas and New Year's Day to think. In today's world to simply sit and think has become so difficult for most of us because we feel the need to be in constant motion. To sit, think and contemplate at length about decisions, directions and desires for one's business doesn't often happen but I've found the wisdom that comes out of my week has contributed more to my personal and professional success than any other time.

I hope you enjoy your holidays and I implore you to take some time to think about important decisions you will face in the coming year.