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You have more than me! Thoughts on fairness and 4 ways to make it better.

by Timblair

My four year old son was playing trains downstairs with two of his friends last week.  It was going great until one of the friends somehow ended up with 5 train cars while my son only had 4.  This sent my four year old into a tizzy in which he stomped out of the room and sulked on the floor in the kitchen.

“He has more than me.” was the response I got when I asked him what was wrong.

So trying to think quickly and forgetting that I was dealing with a four year old, I asked him if he had been having fun playing with four trains before he realized that his friend had five?  “Yes…but it’s not fair.  He won’t share and he has more.

My equally “way-too-old” for a four year old response was, “but right now you have none – which is more fun, playing with four or playing with none?” I thought I had him here….

He looked at me with a quizzical stare and held up his hand with all five fingers out – “Five!” he said in response with 100% conviction.  Ahh yes, I’m dealing with a four year old mind.

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A New Motivational Model Using the 4-Drives: Upcoming in 2011

Ok, this is a little bit of a teaser…we are in the process of doing a major overhaul of how we look at the 4-Drive Model.  We’ve talked about the need to update this model before (see here and here).  We are underway in getting that developed and should be launching it the first quarter of 2011.

Here is a sneak peak…the four main motivations as we’ve defined them are now renamed and constitute different elements:

1.  Personal Motivation- focus on the intrinsic motivators that we have and encompasses the Drive to Challenge & Comprehend

2. Reward Motivation- focus is on the extrinsic motivators that we have and encompasses the Drive to Acquire & Achieve

3. Social Motivation- focus is on the social drives that motivate us and includes the Drive to Bond & Belong

4. Passion Motivation (this name is still being hotly debated – but for now its what we are running with)… – focus is on the motivational element of purpose and passion – including defending one’s honor and tribe

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Rethinking the 4-Drive Model of Employee Motivation

I have been touting the 4-Drive Model of Employee Motivation since I first read the 2008 Harvard Business Review article “Employee Motivation: A Powerful New Model” by  Nohria, , Groysberg, and Lee.   It is a powerful theory on human motivation in general, and in particular, employee motivation.  First presented in the 2002 book, “Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices” by Lawrence and Nohria, the model outlines four main drives of motivation.

At the Lantern Group, we’ve been working with this model for almost three years now.  We’ve posted on it several times in this blog (see 4-Drive Model here, Impact on Leaders here, and other info here, here, here, here and here for just a few examples).

It’s  good – but not perfect.

Right away we realized that it needed to be tweaked.

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How Well Does Your Organization Stack Up? Guest blog by Paul Schoening

As the hiring outlook improves with anticipation of the new calendar year on the horizon, election dust settling and corporate tax liability gaining clarity, the talent exodus will begin in next few months.

Are you ready?

If your organization has not installed proactive mitigation efforts, you could lose your best talent over the next 2 quarters (in other words, if your not doing something now, you’re going to pay for it later).  Successful recession recovery strategy should not ignore the critical variable of having the best talent on-board as well as engaging the “survivors”, lest ye not forget;

“High-commitment organizations outperform low-commitment organizations by 47%”

Watson Wyatt

“Engaged  employees are 43% more productive.”

The Hay Group

Our research shows that engaged employees can increase your financial position by almost 200% while disengaged employees can decrease your financial position by almost 25%.

http://www.globalstrategicmgmt.com/engaged- employees.

“In high-growth organizations, 84% of employees know where the organization is headed. In low-growth organizations, only 52% do.”

In Momentum

“Dependence  on remote forms of communication has left many younger workers bereft of interpersonal skills.:

Fast Company

“Camaraderie  between co-workers fuels much more than new business leads – relationships are also key drivers for recruiting, engagement and retention.”

Talent Management Magazine

Must we go on with the quotes? These are some pretty credible sources I might add.

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Empowered or Entitled? guest blog by Paul Schoening

Increasingly we are seeing data that engaged employees drive business success.   As the economy recovers at the current snail’s pace, companies are also looking at their employee engagement scores deciding they’d better do something about it now before wholesale exodus occurs by their greatest resource.

Proactive talent managers planned for this factor 3 years ago.

Where are your engagement planning efforts at currently?

Emotional Engagement

Just this week, another study was released by The Brand Union, a brand strategy and design consultancy. This recent study surveyed 680 U.S. professionals revealing emotional engagement outweighs other forms of employee interaction, offering critical insights for executives who want to improve employee engagement health and create business efficiencies during lean times. 

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Survivor: Corporate America edition – Guest blog by Paul Schoening

Survivor “Damn Lucky”

Counter-intuitively, organizations tend to find difficulty prioritizing their employee engagement efforts during challenging environments. In fact, during this recession many have executed a status quo strategy, which communicates to their single greatest resource that you are “damn lucky to still be here”. Take a moment to think about this – has this been your organizations approach to engagement?

Therein lies the issue! If we tell our recession survivors they’re lucky to have a job and yet we label them our greatest remaining resource, we are sending mixed messages.

My Story

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Myths on communicating compensation plans…

Olivia Mitchell is one of the best experts on the web when it comes to presentations and public speaking.

She gets it.

I have been following her for over a year now and have been constantly amazed at the quality of her posts and her use of research to back up her statements.  In this post, she talks about three myths of public speaking – read it and let me know if you don’t change your mind after reading this.

After reading it, I started to think about how these myths often get in the way of effectively communicating incentive and compensation plans to people as well…

Myth #1: It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it

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You mean showing appreciation is a bad thing?

I’m linking to this blog as it has a great post that highlights some of the “old school” thinking that is still out there.  It amazes me that in this day and age there are still managers that believe that showing appreciation is a bad thing….

Employees: Do you take them for granted?

Let me know what you think…

Leadership lessons from a dying Raccoon

RaccoonWe had three very cute  baby Raccoons in our yard last Thursday night.  They were fearless, lost, adorable and wondering around lost without a mother.  Kind of like employees without a good leader…but more on that later.

We went out and watched them as the toddled around the yard and gardens.  They were obviously hungry.  The smallest one could not keep up with its siblings and kept cooing out to them (that’s the only way I could describe it, like a mix between a cat’s “meow” and and owl’s “who”).  The siblings would circle back and rub noses with the smallest one.  They would try to get it to climb the rock wall to the garden or move under the table.  The smallest Raccoon would waddle slowly after them and try to keep up.

But the siblings were hungry and cold themselves and soon enough – they left the smallest one by itself.

The next morning, the smallest one was almost dead by the side of the garage.

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What Drives Meaning?

What is it that drives meaning in work?  True, real meaning that goes beyond the obvious “completed this project” or “achieved that goal”?  I have some ideas, but would love to hear what other people have to say first.  I’ll keep a track of the responses we get and put up another post on this with some ideas at a later time.

So please, leave a thought in the comment section!

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