* How to rekindle the fire in your employees
Last week I covered the first of two steps when it comes to motivating – or remotivating – yourself and your staff. First we have to address the emotional angle, according to Alexander Hiam, author of “Motivational Management: Inspiring Your People for Maximum Performance.”
To recap, Hiam says people (and include yourself under the “people” umbrella) can’t do a good job if they’re not feeling well emotionally. And, times being what they are, a lot of us fall into that category. We’re worried about paying our bills, taking care of our families and keeping our jobs. Hiam says managers need to first find out how our employees are feeling, determine what they’re concerned about and see what we can do to assist them with those problems.
“You need little management with IT,” Hiam says. “First they need to feel good about their jobs before they can do a good job.”
Once employees’ are straightened out emotionally – or on the track for resolution – you have to address the second step, the employee’s work.
“IT is very much a creative field,” Hiam says. “IT people need achievement, give them something to shoot for Match people with good opportunities and adjust the level of challenge for them. It’s about achievement and challenge.”
A bored IT professional is an unmotivated IT professional. But pair them with the right project and they’re supercharged. And given the size of our staffs these days, finding a good challenge or interesting opportunity among the hundreds of to-dos in your list shouldn’t be difficult.
Hiam says the first step is the more difficult of the two: “The hardest thing is the emotional leadership. If it doesn’t come bubbling up from within you can’t fake it.” And in order to inspire that genuine concern, you need to be motivated.
“The self-work is very important,” he says. “If we have anxiety or stresses interfering with our ability to effective, let’s put it on the board as a challenge to our management and work on it.”
Hiam believes this two-step motivational process is not relegated to just times of crisis, when motivation can be hard to come by. It can – and should – be used in salad days, as well. “There isn’t a fundamental difference,” he says. “We haven’t been paying [motivational fundamentals] much mind because we didn’t have a crisis before.”
