Ask for direct feedback from your people. This can work however it may also be very confronting and you may not get real truth. Often people will not voice how they really feel for fear of repercussions or because they know that whatever they say will fall on deaf ears!

Get coached A good coach will help you enhance your skills to be best you can be. Ensure whoever you use is external to business. We can also help you in that area. Just send us an email lorraine@office-organiser.com.au for more details.

Be Aware

Take a look around you. Are your people happy? Do they enjoy coming to work? When you speak to them are they generally positive or negative in their responses? Is there a high turnover of staff or is your team stable? Consider absenteeism rate. Are your people often away from work? These are a few questions to ask yourself.

Encourage regular feedback from your people. Ask them individually and as a group what they think & how can you be a better manager? What can be improved? What do they like about their work, people, industry, management etc.

You can also choose to do nothing, which is not a good option. Don't wait until a crisis occurs.

A business owner I know said everything was fine. He said his staff were happy although he never did anything to pro-actively ensure they were. His perception was that he believed all was well because no-one complained. He only acted if a problem was brought to his attention. One week, three of his key people resigned. They had enough of owner's poor leadership skills. The loss of those people nearly brought business down.

So stay on top of things, be proactive, ask questions and take nothing for granted.

The success of any business is a reflection of its leadership. Lead from top.

Lorraine Pirihi, principal of The Office Organiser is Australia's Personal Productivity Specialist. She is also a Business and Life Coach.

Take action today! Contact Lorraine to discuss how she can help you on (613) 9532 5497 or email lorraine@office-organiser.com.au

* Fourth, be pure in your appreciation. If you to show appreciation, don’t muddle it with other communication. In other words, don’t show appreciation for one action and then start discussing a potential corrective action for another action. This sends mixed signals that say to receiver of this communication, "I don’t want any appreciation because there is always something bad attached to it." Keep it pure!

4. Be Public, if Possible Appreciation is not something you hide. It works best when done publicly. Show you appreciation in a public way in meetings, in front of team members, and management. The funny thing is that once you get in habit of doing this many of your team members will increase activity they need to take to also earn this public appreciation.

5. Be Relational When I ask question, "Why do you come to work everyday?," in my workshops I usually get "to get paid" as first answer students give. Then as we discuss it further it always comes down to "I feel like I make a difference" as main answer. You see, in most cases reason why employees decide to climb out of bed in morning, their toes touch floor, and they decide to drive to work is that they feel that they make a difference where they work.

I remember an opportunity to emcee a large sales meeting for a Fortune 500 company. I introduced a Senior Vice President and he went to lectern to address over 500 employees. He announced that company achieved sales of $14 billion. Then he quickly announced that their goal for next year was $17 billion. As he was talking I was looking at audience. They were unusually quiet and attentive. However, as I looked at them they had a glassy eye look. I realized problem was that speaker was just talking numbers. He didn’t relate how those 500+ employees made a positive difference for company. All he needed to say was how their sacrifice everyone translated in success of company. Along with this, they will meet coming years challenges only with talents of our employees. So simple, but so rarely done.

Relate action done with how if affects team, department and organization. Let’s go back to our earlier examples to complete appreciate process:

Manager: "Mike you did a great job on report for new computer system earlier today. I can see you invested a lot of time to do research so that we have necessary information to request computer system. Mike, we appreciate your efforts because new computer system will make our team more productive so that department will achieve its goals and company will be profitable this year. Bottom line, bigger bonuses for everyone. I look forward to seeing your high level of work in future. Thank you."

Mike:"Thanks. I appreciate making a difference. Please let me know whatever I can do to help team."

As you can see, Mike has a clear sense of achievement and where he fits in company. Also, manager encouraged Mike to do same behavior soon by saying "I look forward to seeing your high level of work in future." And manager ended with a sincere "thank you."

These are five simple tips that will motivate your employees to achieve more with a minimum amount of efforts. Starting today, apply these techniques and you will see a world of difference in your team, department, and organization. Remember, "pay" yourself with rewards now or "pay" yourself with a low performing team later.