Yes, you can! One of the biggest challenges we all face when managing poor performance, is preventing people from becoming demotivated. The idea behind performance management is to help employees ‘pull up their socks’ and put a spring back in their step but, sadly, the opposite often happens. If not handled correctly, performance can actually get worse and demotivated employees are likely to spread their negativity and low morale around and affect other members of your team.
In fact, this cycle of demotivation can be something that happens in our personal lives too. When we are trying to resolve conflicts with our loved ones, help our children perform better at school, help a friend who is struggling with motivation, improve our performance in an exam… (the list goes on and on)… we must also take steps to put a spring back in their or our step.
Over the next five weeks, we are going to use the word ‘PRIDE’ to turn our demotivation into motivation. This week we will start with the letter ‘P’ and use it to help us…
Create a POSITIVE Environment
Your Key Steps Coaching for the week ahead:
Positive environment. It is well known that people work better, are more creative and achieve more when they are happy and in a positive environment. Often, when people are not performing their best, they are dealing with compounding issues and feel bad enough without working in a tense environment where they are scared to make a mistake. You need to let go of the past and help people make a new and brighter future. Also check that their aren’t other negative influences preventing people from succeeding. In a nutshell, make sure the environment is safe and free from threats and lighten up.
How can you do this? Make sure that you are not micromanaging, being negative, excessively critical, demeaning, holding a grudge or behaving poorly towards employees. Make sure that you handle any discussion about performance in private rather than public. Ensure that you ‘tackle’ the behaviour and never attack the person. Make time to talk to people and assess how they are doing. Remind yourself of a time when you were behaving like a 2 out of 10… it was then that you most needed someone who cared to treat you like a 10 out of 10. So, treat people like the 10 they can become and have faith in them. You can help them to…
