
Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation - caustic
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/5289.html
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tobtoh
One of the things I was taught was that when leading/managing a team, the six
things (in order of importance) you should focus on for ensuring a high
performing satisfied team are:

1\. Clarity - ensure your team understands the end goal and what they are
trying to achieve

2\. Standards - ensure standards are set (standard for quality of work,
behaviour etc)

3\. Responsibility - give employees responsibility, trust and hold them
accountable for their actions

4\. Flexibility - give employees control over their work day, don't spoonfeed
or straitjacket them

5\. Recognition & Rewards - positive feedback etc

6\. Teaming - ensure a team spirit is developed

As someone who has managed technial teams from 4 to 90 people, I've found
these 6 factors are a pretty good guide. Most people focus on #5 and #6 when
discussing how to have a productive team, but you seldom see #1 to #4
mentioned - they may be self-evident, but I've seen more teams suffer from the
first four factors being absent or neglected than not.

~~~
cookiecaper
They're not mentioned or enumerated because it's not popular to provide those
things. When people get in positions that are ostensibly powerful, they more
often than not cherish their position of power, and things that seem to
trivialize that power, like hands-off delegation or allowing real flexibility,
are not seen as pleasing, even if they produce better results in the long run.
In many cases, even if you have someone in control of a certain group who is
not threatened by proper management, his boss or his boss's boss will find
such a style of governance ridiculous and think that the good manager is
slacking off all day because he's not nitpicking or ordering around his
employees, because the boss or the boss's boss is one of the people described
earlier.

I once worked for a great manager who was canned after eight months because
his boss couldn't understand non-egocentric management techniques.

Management consultants don't sell this advice because management consultants
don't make money by producing good managers, they make money by making their
clients happy and getting referrals, and advice like 3 and 4 does not please
very many "powerful" people.

~~~
tobtoh
Yup - sadly I have to agree with you - and unfortunately with no support from
senior management, all that encourages is PHB behaviour.

However, part of being a good manager (although they seldom teach managers how
to do this) is being able to manage the boss/senior management/execs so that
those people develop the confidence to allow the manager to exercise their
'non-egocentric management style' - it's a lot of work and damn hard if the
senior managers don't have faith in this, but it can be done.

In my experience, my bosses do trust me because every time I delegate
responsibility to my team and they complete the task successfully, I make a
point of saying 'I told you so'. But I've had to put my own reputation on the
line many times backing my team to do the job without my micro-management. And
I the reason I have confidence in my team is because I spend a lot of time
coaching my team leads and senior techs who in turn coach the rest of the
team.

Ultimately, IMHO, the key to a good manager is one who spends time with their
team and has the strength to carve out time in their daily routine to do so.
It isn't an easy task and sadly often goes unsupported and unrecognised.

Edit: Oh and the way I carve out time for my team - I let any phone call that
is not from a recognised number (and even some that do) go through to
voicemail. My staff are always amazed when they are talking with me that I
will ignore a ringing phone (even if it's from my boss) and focus on them. My
argument is that even if a system has gone down, there are plenty of
'escalation' contacts to try - the manager should not be the micro-managing
escalation bottleneck - especially when they are engaged in face to face
conversations. To me, it's basic respect - but I also find that by following
this policy, people gain confidence in the rest of the team to handle
escalations and I gain so much valuable time which I then invest back in my
team.

------
rookie
Any suggestions to bring this up to the bosses without them taking it
personally?

~~~
angdis
Whether or not they take it personally or not, the bigger problem is that it
is very unlikely that any article will prompt a change in style from a
dysfunctional/de-motivational boss . Much easier to just get what you can out
of the job (eg resume bullet points) and then leave.

~~~
jsz0
Even if they memorize these rules by heart it doesn't change the fact that
many companies are setup to marginalize workers to be easily replaceable.
Chances are your opinions really don't matter at all. I've worked with enough
people who take this approach to realize it ends up being insulting more than
anything else. I actually prefer a realistic employer/employee relationship
instead of making a whole act out of being a "good manager" which changes
absolutely nothing in the end. Chances are the "good manager" has their hands
tied from above. Don't get me wrong -- there's value to having a pleasant
constructive relationship but this management style tends to lead to a lot of
bad two-faced exchanges and wastes a lot of time in my experience.

------
known
Share _ownership_ with employees.

~~~
vanni
Sometimes they try to do so, but in a bad way.

You share the risk staying on their sinking boat, but easy money goes to them
only. They win, you lose, always.

My best advice to you all: leave your employee job and start your own
business.

