There is No Maximum to Human Potential

What Matters Most to Mature Workers

•Comprehensive retirement package  (16%)

•Comprehensive benefits package  (14%)

•Work that enables me to learn & grow  (13%)

•Work that is personally stimulating  (12%)

•Workplace that is enjoyable  (11%) 

•Flexible work schedule  (8%)

•10% more in total compensation  (8%)

•Work that is worthwhile to society  (7%)

•Flexible workplace  (6%)

•Two additional weeks of paid vacation  (5%)

Source: The New Employee/Employer Equation Survey

Amy Hedin is Interviewed by Better Process Podcast.com

Listen to the interview by Key Rayment of Better Process Podcast.com discussing how People Performance Solutions helps manufacturing companies solve some of their greatest people challenges.  (6 minutes)

Ignoring People can be Worse than Criticizing

From my years of working as a consutant, trainer and coach I am a firm believer in positive reinforcement.  I have guestimated many positive comments it would take for a manager to offset one negative or critical comment to be 5.  I constantly encourage executives that I coach to keep this ratio in mind in their day to day interactions.  This is not breaking news and we have all heard this all before.  So why am I writing about something so obvious? 

It hit me like a ton of bricks on page 51 of Tom Rath's bestselling book, How Full is Your Bucket.  Here is a guy who is the grandson of the late Dr. Donald Clifton, Ph.D--cited by the American Psychological Association as the "Grandfather of Positive Psychology."   Instead of studying what was wrong with people, Dr. Clifton studied what was right. 

Anyways, back to the main point.  Tom Rath's book, How Full is your Bucket, clearly quantifies the impact positive reinforcement has on people based on 50 years of Dr. Clifton's research.  On pages 50-51 he reports on a study conducted by Dr. Elizabeth Hurlock with students in a 6th grade math class and how the students who were praised solved more math problems than the students who were criticized.  Again, we have all heard this before....but here is where the story takes an unexpected turn...

The fact is, there were actually 3 groups of students in this study---the praised, the criticized, and the ignored! This graph from page 51 shows that students that were ignored actually showed the lowest level of improvement and solved the lowest number of problems--even lower than the criticized group.

 

This fact hit me like a ton of bricks.  I have been told countless times by executives that they are not critical of their employees and are not able to understand why productivity is down.  The truth is they are not praising, they are not criticizing---they are ignoring---which based on this study yields the lowest return. 

I am not trying to send the message that if we are ignoring now we should kick it up a notch and start criticizing to yield a higher return.  What I am saying is not critizing does not equal praise but rather it equals ignoring.  Not praising does not equal criticizing but rather it equals ignoring.  The only way to win here is to praise.  I have never had one single person complain about an executive giving too much praise so it shows most of us have room to maximize our potential in this area.

I had a dentist tell me once that one of the secrets to the success of his practice is that he takes the time every day to make small talk with his staff.  He explained that when he does this his staff is more happy and productive.  He also looks for daily events to praise them for both individually and at staff meetings.  When he gets busy or sidetracked from this habit he starts to realize it because his office productivity goes down and members of his staff start to beg for his attention in various ways.  In the end, it costs him more time and wasted productivity not to take the few minutes a day to acknowledge and praise. 

Let's all keep this in mind as we go throughout our day. If we notice a drop in productivity, we need to ask ourselves, has my lack of praise, too much critisizm or ignoring people contributed to this decline?  For some of us this is a non-issue becuase we naturally praise.  For others of us, it is not natural and more like sticking to a strict diet---it is easy to backslide.  Let's make praising a habit and a natural part of our company's cuture. 

It would be interesting for our readers to hear, what are some ways you acknowledge and show praise to people? 

Go here to hear Tom Rath , an excellent communicator, talk more about interaction ratios or how every interaction counts

A recent visit to the land of lack

Many productivity challenges that companies are facing today are caused by management not seeing the big picture.  Recently I was meeting with an organization to discuss how to improve productivity in their office.  Their directors and managers had build little fiefdoms and would not collaborate with one another regarding work flow, coaching employees, or anything for that matter.  In talking with them, what stood out immediately was the fact that this culture had developed through a “land of lack” mentality.  This mentality is based upon the belief that resources are scarce and that we need to protect what we have.  Because of the fear of losing headcount or getting employees transferred to other divisions these managers felt they had to protect their scarce resources and not let out any of their secrets.  They would instead be on purpose not to help anyone else on other teams, and would withhold information even if the act would impact the customer.  In talking to the person in charge of these division directors, my curiousity got the best of me when I asked her how she held her directors accountable.  She said that she believes in the “hands off” approach and to let each manager lead in their own way.  The bottom line is she knew it was a mess and had not a clue that her “head in the sand” approach had cultivated the soil for the “land of lack” culture to run abundant in this division. These problems would not exist in any of these divisions if the directors could view their world and see the big picture.  What I am saying is that their participation in not helping has hurt the group overall which they are a part of.  They live in the poor envioronment they created along with their employees which makes everybody's jobs less productive and enjoyable. 

Overall, these directors have small picture thinking.  They think they are somehow gaining advantage trying to put one another at a disadvantage.  The truth is, in the end they are all impacted negatively. After a while, these type of behaviors take on a life of their own and it becomes the “normal” way of doing things. 

The head of this department needs to first pull her head out of the sand.  She needs to lead the team to exchange their small picture thinking for big picture thinking.  These directors need to see evidence of how there is a cause and effect taking place and how working together would actually give everyone a more competitive advantage and a more positive productive work environment. 

This type of behavior is common today in many companies.  These symptoms of poor teamwork, lack of collaboration among departments and managers, all stem from executive management not framing things around the big picture.  If we can work the top levels to frame their ideas and communications on the big picture way of looking at situations people will become accustomed to the big picture thinking.  As a result, they will begin to collaborate, share ideas and information with the intent to help themselves---not to help the others of course.  Who really cares why they do it as long as they do it.  This will counteract the culture of lack and create a culture of striving towards abundance. 

Land of lack

In a sky called economy existed the planet Business.  Business was separated into the northern and southern hemispheres.  The northern hemisphere had the “lack” atmosphere where the southern hemisphere had the “abundance” atmosphere.  People worked in business and based on their atmosphere determined their behavior.  Those living in the "land of abundance" breathed in air everyday that reminded them of the abundance of resources that exist in their land.  They realize that there is more than enough for everyone and that when one person raises up it can cause others to benefit.  Farther south on the other side of the equator existed the “land of lack” where people constantly lived in fear that someone else would take their resources.  They spent most of their energy trying to protect their small amount of resources while trying to think of ways to step on others to gain more ground.  This constant fear and stealing from one another caused everyone in the land of lack to fret and fight constantly.   

In which land does your company habitate?