Feature
How To Create An Instant Turnaround
By Ross Reck, PhD and Harry Paul
Authors of Instant Turnaround! Getting People Excited About Coming to Work and Working Hard
Do you have a department, team or sales force where the employees are demoralized because of today?s bad economy or where they routinely underachieve, fail to take initiative or refuse to work together as a team? Would you like to turn your situation around immediately?as in overnight? Think something like this is impossible? Think again!
Early in 2007, Tom Coughlin, head coach of the New York Giants of the National Football League, was in danger of losing his job. His team had lost seven of their last nine games and was characterized by in-fighting and bickering. Coach Coughlin had always been a no-nonsense hard-nosed football coach who motivated his players with fear. During the off-season he completely reversed his approach to coaching and started motivating his players with trust. He started smiling, let his players get to know him as a person and communicated to his players in a number of ways that he cared about them. The turnaround was instant. The team came together and the players gave Coach Coughlin everything they had, week in and week out, which culminated in a 2008 Super Bowl victory over the previously unbeaten New England Patriots.
What coach Coughlin was able to do was tap into the discretionary effort of his players — get them excited about coming to work and applying every bit of energy and passion they have toward performing their jobs instead of doing only what they have to do to in order to stay employed. He finally figured out that that people intentionally regulate the amount of effort they put into their jobs based upon how they feel they're being treated. If they feel they're being treated well, they will become excited about giving their absolute best efforts which means they'll work way beyond their job descriptions. If they feel their efforts are unappreciated they'll pull back and do only what they have to do to keep their jobs. And, if they feel they're being abused, they'll either find some clever and costly way to get even with their boss or they'll look for a job somewhere else. In other words, the better you treat people, the harder they'll work — it doesn't get any more straight forward than that.
If you'd like to create a New York Giants kind of turnaround in your organization, all you have to do are the following simple things sincerely, consistently and well:
- Focus your attention on people as well as performance numbers.
Far too many team leaders, supervisors and managers are fixated on performance numbers which are measures of success and they ignore the cause of that success which is the level of effort of the people who do the work. Trying to manage people by focusing solely on performance numbers is like trying to coach a football team by focusing only on the scoreboard. The problem with doing so is that the scoreboard isn't going to score any points for you; it only keeps track of them. It's the people on the field who score the points, and that's where the attention needs to be focused.
- Motivate with trust instead of fear.
Using fear as a motivator assumes that you can control the amount of effort people put into their jobs by threatening them with negative consequences. The problem is that fear doesn't bring out the best in people; it brings out the worst. There?s only one way possible for you to motivate with trust and that's to build personal relationships with the people who work for you. This means that if you expect to motivate with trust, you have to be willing to jump into the trenches and become directly involved with your employees. You can't just throw them a bone and walk away.
- Turn work into fun.
Fun is extremely important because it releases energy thus making it possible for people to work harder?if there?s no fun, there?s no discretionary effort. When work becomes fun, whatever you're doing never gets old or boring which means people look forward to coming to work every day — even on Monday. On the other hand, when fun is restricted or prohibited at work, unhealthy and costly symptoms quickly appear?boredom and negativity set in, people become irritable and crabby, the energy level in people goes down and productivity takes a serious hit.
As you put these three steps into practice, you?ll notice an instant turnaround starting to take place immediately. The beauty of this program is that you won?t have to wait a month, six weeks or a year to see results; you'll notice significant improvement the very first day. What?s more, these steps are easy to execute, cost nothing and the big winner is YOU.
If you'd like to see this program in action, all you need to do is take a flight on Southwest Airlines or jetBlue, stay at a Marriott or Ritz-Carlton Hotel, shop at a Wegman's Food Market, Costco or Trader Joe's. Or, you could take in a New York Giants football game.
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