Self-esteem – you wanna increase?

On the topic today I’ll take you through a few substances that you as a leader need to focus on to increase your employees self-esteem. These substances are 100% natural and your feel-good-feeling will increase if you add on to those.

First, not all of them are applicable in a work environment, second some of them are very difficult to increase by sole management. The substance I’ll talk more about in my next post are: Dopamin, Endorfin, Serotonin and Oxytocin…stay tuned…

Are you recognized? What is recognition? What does recognition do to you? I have a thesis that recognition can be strong or stronger depending on who the giver is. Best giver is your peer.

First I want to give you some examples from life that support my thesis around different levels of recognition and how strong it gets.

I bought a basketball cap for my kid of age 7. Of course, I sold out my purchase as much as I could saying; – Son, this is such a cool cap, it fits you just perfect. He responded back; -Thanks Dad, I’ll ware this at school tomorrow. Next day at school the first Mate he met called directly: -O man, what a cool cap. He was recognized by his peer. This went straight into the heart of my son. His peer recognized him. This is peer-to-peer recognition and it is stronger than if a parent or a little brother of age 4 commends you.

Another example to explain this thesis. Imagine Zlatan would practicing free kicks with Messi. If Messi would give Zlatan some good words about his free kicks, Zlatan would be stronger recognized than if his coach would commend him for them. A peer-to-peer recognition is again the strongest.

Salesrep-to-Salesrep, Dev-to-Dev, CEO-to-CEO, Geek-to-Geek, ITPro-to-ITpro, Manager-to-Manager. They all go strong when it comes to recognize each other, peer-to-peer.

If you could transfer this peer-to-peer recognition into your work space the company culture would change dramatically to an amazing playground. I’ll refer to my previous blog post around this topic where the discussion mostly handled receiving recognition from your coach/manager/boss to you. This is important as well but as a coach or leader it is more important to make those peer-to-peer recognition opportunities/meetings happen. If you make this happen, the peer-to-peer recognition will appear.

In our company we have a lot of consultants. They often go onsite on their own, in different assignments. No one sees them in the perspective of recognition. The customer demands and only. The coach/manager/boss have no clue what they are doing out there not to mention the Account Managers or Salesmen who’s only interest is to sell and to make the customer happy. The consultant’s peers and colleagues are working on other assignments which they do not really know of.  And they do not have time to put any effort into each other’s assignments.

Play with the idea that you want to apply peer-to-peer recognition in your company and you believe this is the way to go. Where would you start? We started years ago with small steps where we arranged meetings for peer-to-peer to get together. One-on-one meetings in the beginning, where the task was to explain to each other what they do at their customer site. One just asked questions about his/her project. Half time they switched position and the other one asked questions. They gave feedback back and forth. Peer-to-peer recognition. All of a sudden someone knew what you actually were doing.

A battle occurred!

Stay tuned – A definition of a battle is soon to come…

Treat yourself – Do your best.

Do you work smart? Yes, if you work hard and efficient, focusing on things that will take you there, making your best effort. I guess you think you do, otherwise you are just “cheating yourself” i.e. you are doing more harm than good for yourself in your attempt to cheat someone else like your Employer, your Colleagues or your Boss. You are cheating yourself.

–          Don´t cheat yourself

–          Treat yourself!

I’m the coach for one of my son’s Soccer team. He is eleven years old. A lot of kids in his age just play around without getting serious in what they do; Practice soccer to get better. I often remind the kids to make every occasion to a serious opportunity to increase their skills. If you make your best effort in every attempt to shoot, to score, to make a pass or to run as fast as you can, you will make progress, no doubt. You are the only one who can make this happen. No one can do it for you. And of course, do things that you like and that you thing is the most fun. If you keep yourself inside your comfort zone you will probably have greater time short term with no fatigue, but there will be an “epic fail” long term. You are cheating yourself.

Treat yourself!

I often compare this with the process for weight loss or your training program. When you cheat on your diet, who are you really cheating? When you cheat on your training schedule, who are you really cheating? Of course you are cheating yourself. We all know it but it can be really hard to stop eating certain things or changing diet. Same thing with training and exercise, it is sooo easy to make up excuses all the time to not practice even if you told yourself to do so. You are cheating yourself.

Treat yourself!

Some people always goes to those meetings, day out and day in making their least effort in your own Comfort zone. You are telling yourself -What differ will it make if I’m attending this meeting without my greatest alertness, just hanging around chilling. Seriously, how can you be productive with all those meetings not making your best effort, instead blaming others for making wrong decisions or no decisions in the meeting? Do your best and your day will be more productive. Do not cheat yourself.

Treat yourself!

Are you productive if you are creating reports all day? Are you productive attending all those meetings day out and day in? No. Especially if you are not making your best effort creating those reports and attending those meetings.

I mentioned before that you should go out there and work instead of having those internal meetings and time for creating reports. Do things. Do not waste your time sitting in those meetings and doing those reports. Go out there meeting with your clients or prospects.  And if you do, make your best effort always!

How do you work smart? Well, with my own experiences I found myself most efficient when I follow those four steps, not that I always do but…it has happened…

1)      Prioritize – Do what you have to do first. Make an outline on paper and limit your goals to be reachable. Learn to say no. If you have to choose between two assignments or projects, pick the one you’d like the most and the one that will take you there.

2)      Dealing with clients – This is probably the most important one. Please make sure you work with your customer base or prospects, making your relation strong. Either direct or indirect, depending on your role in your company. Remember, without a strong relation with your clients, you are done.

3)      Getting more done in less time – Reuse and copy-cat your old work/projects and modify for your client at this time. If you have fun at work or having interesting assignments this will not be a problem for you. Clear communication with your clients to achieve realistic expectations will help.

4)      Take care of yourself – Rest and come back fresher. Periodic brakes during your day, blame caffeine addiction. Recognize the point of your exhaustion. Exercise. Eat good food.

A summary: Treat yourself!

Recognize similar phrases?

–          I’ve been to meetings all day, I haven’t had time,

–          I’ve been writing all these reports, I haven’t had time,

 

    Meetings – Cancel those meetings:

Some people always goes to those meetings, day out and day in. Seriously, how can you be productive with all those meetings? Take them away and your day will be more productive.    

Reports – Cancel all those reports, no one reads them anyway:

Are you productive if you are creating reports all day? I’m thinking of writing reports on how other persons perform. And who           reads them anyway? And if they read the reports, do they understand the report?

Go out there and work instead. Meet with your customers, clients and prospects. Do things. You must not waste your time sitting in those meetings and writing those reports. My experience of meetings and reporting are that they just waste your time, or the time for the company.

Most of the meetings I’ve been to out there try to solve problems that originally comes from low productivity. I give you an example: Company A says: Consultants do not invoice enough of their time. Ok, let’s have a meeting around this topic.

1)      First of all there will be meetings and meetings around the topic.

2)      Secondly, on one of those meetings there will be a decision made that someone has to create a report on different things to confirm the problem

3)      Later on there will be meetings again to try to solve the issue that they already knew about, but now confirmed by reports that someone spent a lot of time creating, sending and distributing internally.

4)      Now it is time to change the way of working to get more efficient and productive team to make the invoicing increase

5)      There will be more meetings to find out how to make changes.

6)      Then there will be meetings to modify the reports to be fitting the changes that will be made

7)      To be continued… What if the managers and employees instead put all their efforts in enabling and performing out there instead? So, what should you do instead of go to all of those meetings, creating reports and then go to meetings again? How about:

• Meeting with Customers, Clients and prospects

For managers, meetings with your team make sense:-).

Are you enough recognized at work?
Are you sufficiently appreciated?
Do you get enough praise?

Check yourself!

• Have you heard any nice words from your Manager or have you got any other feedback today?
• Did any of Your colleagues say something good to you like; Thanks, good job, awesome or any feedback?
• Did You give any feedback to any of Your colleagues today?

If the answer is no, there is a huge risk that you will quit your current position or job in the near future. The feedback culture we all want gets more and more important and is not only “nice-to-have” today. It is a requirement. We do want more feedback, it is one of our most basic need, to be seen, to be recognized. What is good, what is bad behavior? We all want praise. How can a manager miss out on that 2013?

We all have experienced managers who say:

– We are here to work not to cuddle, aren’t we?

or

– Yes, we should have a better feedback culture, but as a manager you don’t get praise or feedback so much either so why should I give any?

2013! We all know that the Mother Earth is round and not flat. Do we need recognition? YES we do!

What happens if you get it often? You will get an increased self-esteem in your Company. What does that give you in the end? Everything that you want in the Company! Highly skilled people want to work for you. Your colleagues want to bring in people to the company. People start to talk about your Company in a positive way. They love their job!

So, what can you do about it? A lot! Start asking for help at work, begin to say thanks, I’m sorry, those kind of small things… Those small words will create the culture you desire…it is not that hard. Try it and see if someone will nag you about it. Don’t think so. Who did you ask for help today? Did you say sorry to anyone today? Did you praise anyone or did you say thank you, good job to anyone?

The best working climate today includes all of these expressions and where this is common, you probably have a management team that think this is important and drives this topic consciously or unconsciously. Motivation or what? Oh, yea!

I had a manager that never said thanks nor gave any praises or positive feedback no matter what you did…to anyone. Also he required more work to be done, working for him, not with him. Why should I?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once, one of my most skilled colleague told me as a manager that I never gave him positive feedback. I asked him what he meant by that, I thought I always praised him for things he did. He answered me back that even the number one football player in the world couldn’t get enough positive feedback for things he or she did. Sometimes they are the persons who need it the most. Conclusion: If there is a smallest reason to give feedback or praise…just do it.

Start today, start to say – Thank you! Good job! I’m sorry, my bad.