Organisational encouragement good for work place

Whether you are an employee or manager, giving encouragement can be one of the best habits to get into from either. Employees raise the standards of management performance by reminding managers of what is important. An employee might say, “I love your management style. You are so in touch with the positive. The way you encourage us without criticism makes us all want to work harder.” What happened? A standard has been raised.

Every time a manager thinks about being critical and losing that positive slant, they don’t. They are reminded. So, you might think that your own encouragements as positive reminders that bear resemblance to higher standards.

Kaye and Jordan-Evans in their book Love’ Em or Lose ‘Em discusses some of these habits. They talk about these habits as being mentoring styles, but anyone can adopt them. For instance, they point out that you should model, encourage, nurture, and teach. Employees can do that for managers and vice versa.

• Model: Be aware of your own role modeling, and point out others who are good role models for your people.
• Encourage: Support your people in the risk-taking that is essential for their growth.
• Nurture: Get to know your people’s unique skills and capabilities. Work with them to do the most with their talents.

Teach: Tell it like it is. Help them to avoid those organizational minefields that are never written about in any policy manual. Also, it is very important to use what is referred to as just-in-time encouragement, not just when they were supposed, but when they didn’t have to. You never want to have an employee say that their manager never encouraged them. Clearly, attention and retention go hand in hand. It’s easier for those who have been encouraged.

According to Bob Nelson in his article A Dose of Positive Reinforcement Can Go a Long Way, he states, “In the workplace, praise is priceless, yet it costs nothing. In one recent poll, workers identified a personal praising from their managers for doing a good job as the number one most motivating incentive. However, almost 60 percent of employees say they seldom if ever receive such a praising from their managers. Although giving an effective praise may seem like common sense, many people have never learned how to do it”.

Tips on how to encourage

There are three steps to encouragement: (a) Recognize, notice something; (b) Verbalize, say something; (c) Mobilize, do something”. Here are some examples of these:

• Recognize. Manager: “Hmmm, looks great. I didn’t know you like this kind of stuff.” (Good).
• Recognize and Verbalize. Manager: “This is really good. Is this something you’d like to do more of?” (Better).
• Recognized, Verbalize, and Mobilize. Manager: “If you like this kind of work, why not let March in Graphics know, and while you’re there, find out when he’s offering his next graphics course.” (Best).

What makes these kinds of situations so impacting is the use of unplanned or impromptu comments! These are when employees feel best about receiving encouragement injections. They always expect some of this in a one-to-one meeting followed by the criticism. It just isn’t the same. Those managers who seize every opportunity to encourage their employees will be the managers who will be able to keep their employees.

This also can work in reverse too. An employee can mentor, as mentioned, the managers on the best ways to build a good team or help them grow as an employee. Many managers are put into management positions way before they have the experience to handle it. They need to learn from more experienced employees how best to act many times. Managers should therefore evoke and encourage their employees to give them feedback.

The author, David Pollitt is a well-known author in leadership and educational circles. His books and white papers can be viewed on smashwords.com.