Leadership comes from top down. Poor management skills is cause of most employee dissatisfaction and results in their poor performance.

The following article by Nathan Chanesman from My Profile is worthwhile reading:

Poor management skills lead to poor employee performance It's disheartening to read that poor management skills is cause of most business dissatisfaction. You'd think that with all training and investment that has gone into this topic that we'd learnt by now to get it right.

Employees have lost trust in companies they work for Kelly Services Survey published in October last year indicated that 47% of Australian employees believe "that companies do not have their best interests at heart".

Dissatisfaction seems to be order of day. 50% of Australia's workforce want to quit it's job and nearly 40% reported that they often "woke up in morning not willing to face day".

SEEK, online job board survey of October 2003 reported that 75% of employees questioned are not happy with their current job.

Asked what they liked most about their job 51% said "the people I work with". And what did they hate most? 60% said "the quality of management". Not surprising, dissatisfaction with management increased as people got older.

The Solutions

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Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, since said, "There are two things people want more than sex and money...recognition and praise." Time and time again one motivating factor that is at top of most employee lists is appreciation for a job well done. It is more requested than green stuff, money.

Why don’t more managers, owners, and employees give appreciation? Some people state they don’t know how to give it. Others don’t know what to give appreciate for in work environment. Yet others say they are too busy to give appreciation.

I think is this is biggest sin of managers, being too busy to give appreciation for a good job well done. Remember what old transmission commercials used to say, "You can pay me now or you can pay me later." Well, that is what giving appreciation is about. You can invest in your employees now and "pay" them with sincere appreciation and achieve even better performance. Or you will "pay" later by seeing your team’s performance sink, corrective actions and coachings increase, and overall morale decrease.

The following are five tips to giving sincere appreciate that will motivate your team to soar to higher level and achieve more:

1. Be Specific In order to get same behavior or action again you need to let employee know exactly what action(s) you are appreciating. For example, typical attempt at appreciate sounds like this:

Manager: "Mike, you did a great job earlier today. Keep up good work!"

Mike:"Thanks" (Mike is thinking what is he complimenting me on?)

The correct way:

Manager: "Mike you did a great job on report earlier today. I can see you invested a lot of time on report by detail you put in it. I really appreciate you effort. Thank you."

Mike: "I appreciate you noticed time a put into report. Thanks!" (Mike is thinking that manager really did read it and appreciates his effort. I will be glad to do it again.)

As you can see employee has a clear understanding of what action manager is showing appreciated for and he is motivated to take on project again.

2. Be Timely Make sure you show appreciation as soon as possible to action you appreciate. The further distant in time between appreciation and action less impact it will have to motivate employee.

Manager: Mike, report you submitted six month ago was great. Keep up good work. Thanks!"

Mike: "Thanks, I think. What report are you taking about?"

Always find time to show appreciate in a timely manner. Even if you need to drop something else take time to appreciate your employees.

3. Be Fair One of key concerns of students in my workshops is that when appreciation is shown, it doesn’t seem fair. The biggest villain of this is dreaded "Employee of Month" board. Many times when you ask "Employee of Month" what did you do to earn it they say, "I don’t know." I have one action you must take when giving appreciation...be consistent!

* First, clearly state rules for appreciation so that everyone understands how appreciate is earned.

* Second, be consistent when showing appreciation. If one employee does a favorable action and you show appreciation and another employee does same or similar action and you don’t show appreciation you have just sewn seeds of bad morale and feelings of favoritism.