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So, you have a team of pretty good people, who know how to do the job, are competent and well qualified. They have each been doing the job for some time, but they appear to be despondent, lackluster and perhaps even a little cynical….Is it something you are or aren’t doing? In short…. perhaps. Hold on though, there is a secret hack for motivating your team, relatively painlessly that will have a measurable and remarkable effect, you can provide your team with something that most adults in our society are unaware that other adults need to be healthy, engaged and motivated. It’s a basic human need… but what?
Attention!
People, all people, need and crave attention.
They seek it out in a whole host of ways in their lives, adapting and shaping every aspect, both professional and personal to give themselves the best chance of receiving it. Everyone looks for opportunities to be the center of attention, and nowhere is this more clearly seen than with children. Even shy children, you know, the ones who will do anything to avoid being the centre of attention, secretly absolutely crave it. By withdrawing, they are in effect seeking attention from their primary caregiver, rather than their social group as a whole. How do we know that people thrive on attention in the workplace?
A keen interest
Researchers looking for ways to improve productivity conducted a now-famous experiment at the Western Electric Company’s plant in Hawthorne, near Chicago. They were exploring whether different working hours, longer or shorter breaks or a whole host of other measures would impact positively on performance. A team of six employees were chosen and isolated from the rest of the workforce, where various working conditions were trialled and the impact on performance measured.
They introduced short rest periods twice a day, they increase the length of the rest periods, then tried no rest period but a shorter working day, and so on. After a year it was observed that productivity had increased significantly, but it wasn’t clear to the researchers what had made the difference. Only when they realised that the only consistent change for these employees was the attention that was being paid to them, did they conclude that it was this itself that had prompted the ramping up of output.
The researchers suggested that by supervisors giving their workers attention, both in seeking to engage them with the best approach to the work and regularly inquiring about their wellbeing, they would see a consistent increase in performance, these findings became known as the Hawthorne Effect (Mayo 1933). You see, attention itself is the secret hack for motivating your team and is essential for people to be mentally healthy, and healthy people are productive people.
Is all attention healthy?
Another form of attention that changes your team’s engagement with their work and you is feedback, positive and negative. We’ve all heard that feedback is essential, but what you may not know is that all feedback is not equal, and to illustrate this there was a Gallup poll taken measuring whether respondent’s managers paid most attention to what they did badly (negative feedback) what they did well (positive feedback) or neither (ignoring them altogether).
They then made further enquires designed to quantify the respondent’s level of engagement with their job. They were then able to work out a ratio of engagement for each type of attention. Surprise surprise, ignoring staff all together meant that for every engaged employee, there were twenty who were highly disengaged – the worst outcome.
Perhaps unpredictably though, only picking up on things employees could do better (negative feedback) did lead to a forty-fold increase in engagement! So, this illustrates that regularly paying your employees some attention, even negative, boosts engagement, and therefore productivity. But we can do better than that can’t we? How about a twelve hundred-fold increase in engagement ratio??!
That’s right, giving regular feedback on what a member of your team is doing well, and where things have gone right in their work resulted in a ratio of highly engaged staff vs highly disengaged staff of sixty to one! (Harter and Adkins 2015)
(For access to a great monthly focus meeting template which includes a section on feedback, check out the Let’s Work Healthy Shop).
How to give attention to your team the right way
Let’s start with the most simple and straightforward tip, and yes, it’s cheesy – SMILE! Even when you don’t want to. In the brain, we have things called Mirror Neurons, which have been shown to play a huge role in learning and development in children and influence behaviours in adults (Meffert et al 2013). Through a process referred to as Emotional Contagion a person, in this case, you, can influence the emotions and emotional behaviours of your team members, positively or negatively.
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When people communicate with each other, they may well find themselves imitating gestures and facial expressions of one other, and amazingly, feel what the other person is feeling. This phenomenon was written about in-depth by a Psychologist called Paul Ekman, and he coined the phrase, ‘The happy face advantage’.
That gives us the simplest of tools to promote positivity and happiness in our teams. Remember too, think before you say anything negative in front of other people, they are looking to you as a barometer for the team’s status. A positive team is a productive team. I get it though, you’re busy right? We intend to make time to motivat
e team members, and surely, the odd encouraging comment here and there is enough isn’t it? Here’s the problem though we are all very busy, and things often get pushed aside as the next crisis follows the last. Things that are said are often forgotten and not acted upon, and what effect does this have? Loss of faith is what.
Formalise to legitimise
We’ve established that giving your team members feedback is important, but it’s the perception of importance to the employee that is key here. If it’s haphazard and ad-hoc, even your best intentions will soon be seen as lip service by your team. That’s why it’s important to schedule formal sessions for feedback, at least monthly with your team members, and write the key points of the discussion down and share them with the team member. Accountability, honesty and transparency are the watchwords here.
Documented feedback sessions are a win-win, for you and your team. Points they raise are documented, actioned and reviewed next time, this is your way of assuring your team that you are taking their thoughts seriously, building trust and faith in your leadership. It also gives you a formal record of areas where you asked the team member to focus their attention and gives you a tool for review and development in future sessions.
(For access to a great monthly focus meeting template which includes a section on feedback, check out the Let’s Work Healthy Shop).
Dedicating these short allotments of time now will pay serious dividends in the future! Another little nugget of leadership magic often overlooked is the collaborative approach! Yes, you are the team leader or manager, and the responsibility for how things are done sits with you, but your team aren’t stupid! (You wouldn’t have employed them if they were, right?) – You wouldn’t be where you are if you didn’t know what you are doing, but the adage, two heads are better than one has incredible value here.
Remember, you’re all in this together, and asking your team how they would approach a situation shows you value their input. This gives them a feeling of ownership over their work and with that feeling of ownership comes a desire to excel. If you don’t agree with their suggestions, remember to acknowledge them and thank them for their input, explain how you have considered their points, but on this occasion, you are going with another approach (and that you are taking the responsibility for it). Be sure to reassure them that you will be seeking their input again in the future though.
The right attention gets the right results
Giving employees attention regularly in a structured way yields results. Here I’m talking about seeking their input into how the work that they do could be organised to better suit them and make the job a better fit for their skill set. This in contrast to seeking more efficient and more productive ways of doing the job, ensures that the employee realises you have their best interests at heart.
It’s important here to note, that where practical or theoretical improvements are identified by the employee you must follow through on these improvements to ensure they feel listened to and more importantly valued. (If you can’t deliver it…. Don’t promise it!). Couple this with regular positive feedback and a fair assessment of their performance; you will find that the employee starts to value the attention that you are giving them. The benefit here is that by meeting their need for attention in a healthy and positive format you encourage them to behave in a way that will sustain this ongoing attention from you.
This will serve to boost their self-esteem and ultimately unlock their higher abilities that they haven’t had the confidence to try, giving them the job satisfaction they crave and benefiting you with those abilities. This has a positive effect over time of the employee aligning their work ethic and belief structure with yours as the attention giver.
This may all sound like ideological management mumbo jumbo, but here I sit as living proof of having achieved this in the teams I have had the privilege of leading. I can assure you from personal experience, that dramatic results are very achievable by giving simple, regular, structured and documented attention!
Get involved
As you can see from the post, I am trying to give simple practical help to leaders wherever I can. I would love to hear your thoughts on the tips in this article, so it would be great if you could leave some comments below. Have you any great tips for motivating a team? Let me know below!
I will be offering lots of pointers on this site as I develop the content and so let me know about anything you’d like me to cover too. I am also developing some great resources for leaders, and if you subscribe in the box at the top of this page, you’ll get FREE access to the new 32 page E-book, ‘New Leader Quick Start Guide’. This guide is great in giving you an action plan for establishing yourself and developing a creative and motivated team! I’m sure you’ll love it!
See you for the next article!
Until next time
Greg Bennett is a Public Health Professional and
Leadership Coach
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References and further reading
Mayo, E (1933) The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilisation.
Macmillan Harter, J. Adkins, A (2015) Employees Want a Lot More from Their Managers. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236570/employees-lot-managers.aspx – accessed on 20-8-2019
Meffert, H., Gazzola, V., den Boer, J. A., Bartels, A. A., & Keysers, C. (2013). Reduced spontaneous but relatively normal deliberate vicarious representations in psychopathy. Brain, 136(8), 2550-2562.
