Eye on the Workforce

Putting together an effective message to motivate project workers is difficult. In the last post I showed how you can simplify your messaging by targeting individuals in one of two groups:  Promotion-focused and prevention-focused. (Recall that these tips are based on this webinarby Heidi Grant Halvorson provided by the Harvard Business Review. Check it out.)

You should use different points and phrasing strategies for each group. Here are tips on how to motivate (and de-motivate) each group.

How to Motivate Promotion-focused Individuals

Do

• Speak in optimistic language and in a tone to build eagerness
• Give praise
• Associate rewards w/goals
• Allow workers to make their own decisions and give feedback

 Don’t

• Don’t dwell on past mistakes
• Be a “downer” in tone of language

How to Motivate Prevention-focused Individuals

Do

• Emphasize being vigilant to avoid costs, losses, errors and noncompliance
• Emphasize the importance of planning in the project to identify and avoid what can go wrong
• Talk in terms of safety (of assets), security, cost avoidance, accuracy
• Provide honest feedback to see how to avoid mistakes (dwell on past mistakes before moving on)
• Frame rewards in such a way that the individual gets an award unless they perform in such a way that they lose it.

Don’t

• Give praise or say “things will be fine” because this can lower vigilance
• Motivate by expressing your gut feelings

You might think now that these groups should be in separate meetings so that you can use correct language for each and discuss success factors for each. Do this if you can! Separate out those who are trying to acheive more goals from legal specilaists and maintainers. Unfortunately, that might be impractical, so it may be better for you to have distinct language for each group to show you care about their priorities.

For example, you are making a presentation to a broad project workforce, including promotion-focused creatives and prevention-focused compliance specialists. In this case you can have one slide or section of your presentation talking optimistically to the promotion-focused about achieving results by the deadline. Next, you transition by saying something like “None of this means that we are going to sacrifice security or compliance! We will institute best practice controls to make sure we avoid a wide range of problems when operational. Here’s more about our controls.”

Using these tips, getting your motivational message across can be more effective.

You have to motivate workers to be successful at project management, but how good are you at doing this? Answer this question:  Which of the following are good motivational strategies? You may choose more than one.

1. Associate rewards with reaching new objectives
2. Allow individuals to make their own gut decisions
3. Avoid praise
4. Dwell on past mistakes

There’s not really one leadership style that will win every day in every situation. You have to be flexible while working from your strengths. Individuals are motivated in different ways. The best leaders will understand the motivation of an individual and use that to influence the individual appropriately.

This may not come naturally, of course, so it will be useful to get some tips based on this webinar by Heidi Grant Halvorson provided by the Harvard Business Review. She works in motivational science. You probably didn’t even know there was such a thing, but they have been doing some great work that we all need to learn.   According to the summary, the webinar “explains how to identify a person's motivational focus, how to change this focus, and how to use it in the right way to get results.”

How do you avoid making the mistake of attempting to motivate someone by using the wrong tactic? Ms. Halvorson groups people into a couple of easy-to-remember motivational focus groups. People tend to be dominant as

• “Promotion-focused” – who want to advance and identify career opportunities
  OR
• “Prevention-focused” – who see goals as responsibilities and concentrate on staying safe by not losing or making errors

Right now, categorize yourself in one of these focus groups. Next, think of someone you work with who is motivated the other way.

Each focus area has strengths and weaknesses, but you’ll have to check out the webinar for those details or buy Halvorson’ book Focus. Suffice it to say now that both focuses are needed to make your teams successful. Your job is to identify which of the two focuses motivates the person you are trying to motivate and use tactics appropriate to that focus area.

These tactics will be the subject of the next post, but you can get started by looking at the question that started this post. The top two answers are motivators for promotion-focused individuals. The bottom two answers are motivators for prevention-focused individuals. Notice how you don’t understand what motivates the other type of person. It may even de-motivate you!

And that, my friend, may be the most important lesson in motivation.

Advance your career with the motivational tips in my next post.

Bonus activity:  Find statements made in this post that clearly motivate one or the other focus group!

Look over your workforce. Find the happiest workers. Are they your best workers, the highest performers?

You might think they should be, but according to a new study, the happiest may be your low performers, so don’t be surprised. In fact, in 42% of companies it was the low performers who said they were the most engaged.

If you keep up with this blog, you’ll know that the topic of getting your workers engaged, that is so that they work hard and do extra discretionary effort to make your team successful, is a common theme. This study does certainly uncover a problem that must be resolved.

What is going on in that 42% of companies where the low performers reported being more engaged and enjoying their work than the middle or high performers?  Researchers found that this result was because the low performers were not held accountable for their performance. They did not even realize they were low performers! They reported their belief that everyone works to the same standards in their organization.

OK, that’s bad enough, but repercussions are worse. The coworkers have to work extra hours and tasks to get the work done. Note that the coworkers now busting their collective hump are the middle and high performers. They become more dissatisfied with the organization. In this topsy-turvy world of motivation, the workers you want to keep are being betrayed and looking to leave. Your project fails to meet its objectives.

How do you make sure you are living in this topsy-turvy world? How do you make sure project worker performance is not hobbled by this problem? You can’t expect to fix your organization’s motivation problem, but you can do something to help your project.

• Ensure there is a way for each individual worker to have a clear picture of the standards and expectations for their role. Don’t think job position descriptions will be enough here. Define project-specific role and responsibility descriptions.
• Work with those groups that do not have good role and responsibility descriptions to define these, perhaps with the help of an HR resource. You will want to make sure your project needs are met here, so you or your designee may have to participate.
• With the above foundation, evaluate the process(es) whereby each individual worker finds out how he or she is doing against those expectations. Annual reviews do not cut it in the project environment. You need a more continuous solution. Consider evaluating team performance in your project and let the teams take care of individuals.
• The key is to evaluate team performance based on expectations of schedule and quality connected with your project. Get positive and constructive feedback to the team in question often – even weekly - so that the teams can respond. If you see weaknesses in a certain individual’s performance, make that clear. Now you have provided team and individual information to support direct action. You even have justification to request replacement resources for your project.

Without this basic setup, your ability to take effective action is limited. You will complain, but the response will be more likely, “We know and we wish we could do something about it.”

Get the Leadership IQ PDF for this study.

I remember seeing a sign with “The four most important words”:

Ask questions and listen. 

Excellent advice, especially in light of the fact that authoritarian behavior shuts down worker participation and reduces employee engagement. Even if you do not have an authoritarian personality, you may not be active enough in questioning effectively.

It’s easy to get better. Just be aware of opportunities and capitalize on them. Here are some tips.

When to ask:

• in planning meetings
• when developing status reports
• when resolving difficult issues
• when you want to influence without pushing
• when you want to see that people are working efficiently without intimidating them
• at the water cooler or other casual settings
• when you want to learn what is really going on
• to discover more about the people you need to work with to get work done

What to ask:

• So what are next steps?
• What are you trying to accomplish? What are your goals? What do you want to get out of this?
• What are your challenges? What are the challenges of your team?
• What can we do to improve how we work together? What do we need to do to be successful in the coming weeks?
• How are you going to handle this situation?
• Who are you going to involve in the solution?
• Why do you think that happened?
• What are things we can do to get better quality next time?
• What do you think about the UX team?
• Those are reasons we may not be able to do it; what are ways we may be able to accomplish this task?

What not to ask:

• What’s your problem?
• Don’t you know better than that?
• How could you do that?
• What were you thinking?
• Any questions that are answered by “Yes” or “No”

Asking questions not only gets you answers, it shows you care without having to hug anyone. It is clear evidence that you involve others. That stimulates the project team and stakeholders to participate more.

Plan to use more questions in your next interactions.

Bonus tip:  Avoid judgment when asking questions and listening - unless you are making positive, supportive statements. Critical reactions reduce the full answers you will get next time.

Maybe you’re one of those people who read the forecasts from the various sources at the beginning of each year. Maybe you even make plans to respond to what you learn.

 But do you ever go back to check to see if the forecasts were right?

 Here’s a forecast (in PDF format) by CareerBuilder at the beginning of 2013 based on a survey they did of employers/hiring managers.

Staying Power . . . Let’s look at the 2013 forecast after 6 months. It says that IT workers are comfortable in their jobs, more than any other industry in fact. According to the CareerBuilder survey:

• 72% of workers currently in IT report being satisfied with their job vs. 15% planning to switch jobs in the coming year
• 75% of employers plan to increase compensation for existing employees
• 54% of employers plan to offer higher starting salaries for new IT employees 

That was good news back at the beginning of the year. It made you feel safer that you would not lose good people. But what have you experienced in six months? Did you lose anyone that was a high-performer? Did the raises occur in your organization?

Beware Poachers! . . . Also in the study was a statistic that said 27% of hiring managers plan to recruit full-time, permanent employees for IT, second only to that of sales workers.  According to the CareerBuilder survey:

• 19% of workers reported that, even though they did not make the first move, they have been approached to work for another company
• 52% of employers plan to hire temporary and contract workers in 2013

Well that was bad news for you as a project manager. They might try to poach your workers! Did you have this problem? Have any of your people been poached? Perhaps lured by a new business or high growth at an organization elsewhere? Perhaps lured by higher salaries?

A more recent survey reports that there remains a positive outlook from information technology hiring managers for the next quarter. If you need additional workers, you may find some unwelcome competition. Also, if competing organizations (for workers, that is) are raising their salaries and your organization is not, your workers may be at risk.