There is no question that targets drive behaviours, especially when they are heavily incentivised.  The trouble arises when targets distort behaviours.  We all remember the horror stories of ambulances queuing outside casualty departments, holding patients until admitting them causes no threat to the 4 hour waiting time target.

It’s time for some fresh thinking, and the new government is already making a start, with some radical changes to all areas of public service.  In no particular order, they are pushing for

• decentralisation and local empowerment
• deregulation and
• a focus on value for money

There are savage budget cuts across nearly every department (with one or two notable exceptions – Health and Overseas Development).  There are also new institutions being considered or formed.

• Local Enterprise Partnerships will take over the role of the current Regional Development Agencies.
• Consumer Protection and Markets Authority will regulate financial firms (in effect a successor to the Financial Services Authority)

Underpinning all this change is the belief that there is a need for new approach to relations between consumers and the public sector.  There is a huge opportunity here to forge a new relationship which would be based less on targets and more on outcomes.  A relationship in which the customer experience will be a key factor to consider in the design, delivery and quality assurance of all services.  A relationship in which there is less emphasis on an inspection and tick box regime, and more on a culture change – to assure the embedding of customer focus throughout the public sector.

There is already a well proven tool out there that can be a huge help to developing this new, customer focused culture.  It is a quality standard called Putting the Customer First ™ and it is owned and promoted by a private, not for profit company, Customer First UK.  If customers are important to your organisation then Customer First is for you as it offers a practical approach to achieving customer service excellence in your organisation. The standard offers benefits to all service deliverers and has been achieved by hundreds of organisations in the public, private and not for profit sectors nationwide who have seen significant improvement in their bottom line, customer satisfaction levels and staff motivation.

Using the Customer First standard would achieve many worthwhile objectives.  It puts the responsibility for managing customer relations squarely onto the service deliverer.  It forces them to think through the strategic implications of how they run their operation and it is a great stimulus to a creative change in culture to a more customer focused and effective organisation.  There would also be a huge saving by not requiring the plethora of existing public sector bodies whose sole purpose is to check others’ numbers.  The key philosophy behind the Customer First approach is the requirement to demonstrate how you know you have satisfied customers and the lack of prescription in the way you achieve your service delivery and quality levels.  This is the main difference from the tick-box, check everything, reams of evidence, “we know best how to run your operation” approach that has bedevilled the public sector (and swathes of the private sector too) for so long now.

This standard is a fantastic tool to support a more enterprising, customer focused and value for money public service across all departments.  Let’s use it to help drive the changes necessary to support the much needed recovery in all parts of the country.

The Government has started already to dismantle some of the targets in the NHS but we suggest this needs to be balanced by a renewed focus on outcomes – the satisfied customer, consumer or patient.  With the Customer First standard, we have the ideal tool, applicable to both the largest and smallest environment.  We are ready to work with the public and indeed the private sector, to share our aspiration to “Put the Customer First”.

£38.50 + VAT to Chamber Members, £60 + VAT to non-Members

Toby is a creative learning, change and organisational development specialist at QED Consulting. An expert in the design and facilitation of learning and organisational change programmes, with particular focus on learning transfer. Toby has considerable consulting experience, working with organisations to understand complex problems and design and implement appropriate solutions.

Toby will bring his wealth of knowledge, experience and expertise to the Executive Club and will be talking at this event about ‘Innovation in the Workplace’.

Don’t miss out on this excellent opportunity to network with Doncaster business leaders and decision makers.

To book visit http://www.doncaster-chamber.co.uk/events/august-executive-club-dinner/

What I have been less happy about is the frequent lack of focus and the re-invention of ideas and approaches. The region has scores of small, under-funded, specialist organisations, set up by Yorkshire Forward to promote one new idea after another, often with no real appreciation of the private sector capacity to fulfil demand in that sector or technology. Most of these have had little real impact and most have either disappeared when funding ceased or are struggling on with one or two staff, clinging precariously to whatever scraps of funding that they can access.

So, what is the potential for Local Enterprise Partnerships? Well, it all depends, doesn’t it? The detail of the White Paper, promised for the Autumn, will be key to whether these Local Enterprise Partnerships will be a move forward or backwards. The key issue is to develop much clearer terms of reference for these new structures – I hesitate to call them organisations but who knows what form that they might take? RDAs have suffered from conflicting targets and priorities and, it must be said, from the undue influence of some of their non-executive directors from the private sector who pushed simplistic and unhelpful priorities and objectives onto the executive teams. We saw many examples of that in a number of RDAs, especially “pet projects” around manufacturing and promoting broadband! My concern is that, with a partnership approach, the risk of the lowest common denominator approach to decision making becomes a real possibility, coupled with the inevitable delays in policy and decision making.
And what about the impact on regional businesses? Well, any firm very dependent on the public sector will have tough times ahead but that was always going to be the case. Wise or fortunate ones who do not have that problem may not be too affected by the change. However, in our business, we believe passionately that all change creates opportunity and that’s the way that we are looking at these announcements. Looking for new scope that the changes produce is the way forward. I know that the following is supposed to be a curse but, as the Chinese say, I think we’re going to be living in interesting times over the next few months and years.

FIRST NHS TRUST TO ACHIEVE CUSTOMER FIRST STATUS

NHS Lincolnshire’s Choose and Book service has been awarded the national ‘Customer First’ kite mark.

The 32 point assessment process examined all aspects of the service from stakeholder involvement and management, staff development quality of service, pathways and communication.

The department took six months to achieve full compliance and is already seeing the benefits.

Andy Hill, Commissioning and Performance Manager for NHS Lincolnshire was delighted at the results and hoped to influence similar improvements across other departments in the organisation.

“The opportunity to reflect upon our working practice allowed Choose and Book to up our game in terms of providing an efficient and effective service to patients. We had 9 partially compliant areas which were developed over 6 months. The assessment process was hard work for the whole team but it created an opportunity for us to identify areas of potential improvement or development in the service. As a result customer feedback channels have now been introduced and we have adopted a more caring approach towards our staff.”

We are delighted to be the first primary care trust in the UK to be awarded the ‘Customer First’ kite mark and I would definitely recommend the process to other NHS Trusts.” He added.

Samantha Bennett, Business Development Manager for Quantum Assessment Services commented. “We have found NHS Lincolnshire to be very forward thinking and innovative in their approach to quality and care. This is highlighted by their pioneering lead as the first NHS organisation in the health sector to adopt the Customer First standard.”

Janette Gran, Assessor, worked closely with the Choose and Book Service. She said “Andy Hill and his team put in a lot of effort to understand and fulfil the demands of the Putting the Customer First Standard.  They have used the journey as a catalyst for further improvement to their service and for fresh and proactive engagement with others in their organisation and externally.”

Nor has it been the spectacle of some very bright people who have been seeking our precious votes that particularly captured my attention. Some of even the very senior candidates seem to have signed up with the SPUDDIES over the last month. (Am I ahead of the game here? That’s the Society for the Promotion of Unmitigated Drivel, Disingenuous Issue-Evasion and Sophistry.) Did you spot any of them too?

Rather, I have been fascinated by the lessons we might all learn at work, from watching and listening to politicians as they have gone about their task in seeking our support. Here are seven, all inter-linked

1. Trust and Authenticity

As I go around the country, speaking to ordinary people (to coin a popular phrase), I have been struck by how little trust there is by so many I have met; not just in our politicians, which may be fully understandable given the hugely damaging expenses scandal, but in many of the political parties themselves.

Trust is a non-negotiable commodity. It is built on the authenticity and consistency of our arguments, values and actions, as a key component of their credibility. As managers and leaders in any walk of life, we may only forget that at our peril.

2. Answer the Question!

If you have failed to be convinced by any particular Party’s proposition and carefully-crafted arguments over the last few weeks, it may be that your hard-wired allegiances may never be over-turned. (That’s a helpful thought for any Change-Management programme by the way: you can’t argue with an emotion. A subject worth exploring on another occasion?)

But is it also possible that these arguments just didn’t address your issues? That seems to be a common complaint from many of those I have discussed this with. The lesson for me is that in any walk of life, unanswered questions still remain just that: unanswered. Far better they be addressed, however unpopular the answer, than ignored?

3. You can’t please everyone, all the time

I think this is a particularly important lesson to for us all to learn. In the desperate search for votes at this election, perhaps it is not surprising that at least the larger Parties have tried to appeal to as many different sections of the electorate as possible? But at least in our own work lives, being ‘everyone’s friend’ is a deeply flawed strategy. The danger is that we then satisfy no-one.

My own lesson from this is: don’t expect to please everyone. Almost certainly, you can’t.

4. Don’t Fudge the Facts

I must admit this. The more I know, the less I find I really know. I also find it equally true that the less we know, the less we are aware of what we don’t know.

(Donald Rumsfeld expressed this thought perhaps less clearly, but certainly more famously. He also said: “I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started.” Well, I think I know what he meant.)

But how many ‘facts’ have we been given in the last few weeks that proved not to be? As with ‘Answer the Question’ above, electors don’t take warmly to instant ‘facts’ or policies that go against others’ particular knowledge or experience. Nor do colleagues.

5. The Message, or the Medium?

As we all know, managing the medium for our key communications is vital, as the televised three-way Leader-debates amply demonstrated – and generally rather well, you might think? But managing the message is equally critical. A slick presentation counts for little if the message is weak, fuzzy or unconvincing.

No doubt you will have your own views on which party leaders have done this particularly well or badly during this election. Nevertheless, whatever our own jobs, managing both the medium and the message is essential for all of us.

6. Leadership

A famous politician across the water, Rudi Giuliani, ex Mayor of New York, is frequently reported as saying that: “Before you can be a leader, you need to know who you are and what you stand for”. Ain’t that the truth? If you have voted for a party in our elections where that leader has demonstrated that truth to your satisfaction, perhaps that is why you voted for that party? (Or put another way, perhaps you didn’t vote for another party, because this wasn’t demonstrated?) If this quality helped you to decide which candidate should have your vote, how much more might this apply to our own leaders, colleagues and followers at work?

7. Building a Winning Team

Of course, a General Election is not just about voting for a Prime Minister, but for a Government. A strong leader with a weak team is as unlikely to be any more effective than a strong team with a weak leader. (I have been very conscious that we have seen very little of any party’s team at the forefront of this election to any significant degree. I do wonder why.)

In your own work, do you have both a strong leader and a strong team? Improving both ‘only’ needs strategic vision, shared values, clear plans and indomitable purpose.

May we hope our incoming Government shares the same thoughts!

I’ve been trying to connect the policy pronouncements from all the parties (all very thin on the ground with serious business related proposals by the way) with what we’re hearing from our clients on a daily basis. The topic came up when I was talking to one of my long standing clients the other day. We were discussing how we would go about refreshing his business strategy and how he could build the leadership potential of his (fairly new) top team. “The problem is” he said “that this business is like a raft going down a white water river. There’s lots of rocks sticking up, lots more I can’t see and I’m sure that some of them are moving! How do I give my team a clear strategy in such a confusing situation?”

I responded by asking how he would brief his crew if he were indeed about to embark down a perilous white water river. “You may not be able to tell them where each rock is or how big it is but you can talk about managing the raft, about your respective roles – paddlers, fenders-off, navigators etc (and some might just be ballast! You know the ones I mean) and what you’ll do at the bottom. Your guys have been used to more gentle forms of boating – you now need to get them toughened up for more demanding conditions”.

I was reminded of this discussion and indeed of the ongoing work that has flowed from it whilst listening to one of the many pre-election discussions on the radio. An earnest man claiming to speak “for business” was saying that “what businesses wanted was certainty and stability” and saying that any outcome to the election that threatened such docile conditions was not “in the country’s interest”.

Well, I beg to disagree. Change is healthy. Change creates opportunity. Problems create opportunity. Businesses should be embracing the potential change that will flow after the election; regardless of who wins (if indeed there is a clear winner). I want my clients to be highly competent at negotiating white water – I know that if they strive to stay in the calm backwaters they’ll be left behind – the great river of progress will whirl away without them. So, how to learn this invigorating skill without serious risk of drowning in the process? Well, I know from my own experience, boating can be a dangerous pastime, but these simple precautions might help.

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will do”. Have a vision, a direction, and an end goal.
“Fail to plan, plan to fail”. Plan your trip, including for when the inevitable things go wrong. Make sure you have the right tools and skills within your team.
Get the right people on the boat – good navigators, strong paddlers, good team players. Leave the ones that are only really ballast and the ones afraid of the torrent on the bank.
What’s all this got to do with the election? Well, this isn’t a party political message. It’s up to each of us to make our own decision about the way we’ll vote. All I ask is that you do vote and encourage your staff, your colleagues and friends and family to vote also. The higher the participation, the more democratic the process and the more support any new government will command. However, don’t forget that whatever the colour (or colours!) of the new party (or parties) in power, we’ll still be in that white water maelstrom. So give yourselves the best chance. Get the best team, give them the best training and bravely lead them into the foam. It will certainly be exciting, you’ll get somewhere very fast and you may even have fun doing it. Happy rafting!

TIP 1 – Strategy Implementation is a lot harder than Strategy Development!
Some Boards work really hard to develop excellent strategies and then wonder why they fail. Successful execution usually requires acceptance and belief from all those who have to implement the strategy, not just its creators!

• Consider sharing your strategic deliberations with everyone involved in its implementation, invite their participation as appropriate – and at least their comments?

TIP 2 – Make it YOUR strategy!
External facilitators and advisers can add considerable value to developing winning strategies, through their objectivity, impartiality and willingness to challenge with integrity. But in the end, they can only facilitate.

• If the strategy is going to work, it must be your strategy, not your facilitator’s. If anyone doesn’t like it, they must be encouraged to say so!

TIP 3 – Take your time!
Creating a winning strategy takes time, requires research and development, and almost always iteration. Winning strategies are hardly ever ‘created in a day’.

• Encourage your team to be patient, explore many options and withhold early judgment.

TIP 4 – Factor in the ‘People’ element!
Bright boards, with a keen operational focus and a firm eye on financial and market outcomes, often need reminding that they need to factor into their strategic thinking the ‘softer’ elements of strategy development to be successful. Not just the impact on employees, but other stakeholders such as shareholders, customers and suppliers of course (as ‘people’ as well as organisations), and the local community.

• Don’t be shy about this. ‘People’ can be really good at sabotaging any strategy, if you don’t consider and engage them!

TIP 5 – … but don’t forget the Action Plan!
Notwithstanding Tip 4 above, strategy development can only happen with time-bound actions and agreed responsibilities.

• Because many busy people hate to volunteer a thought or idea if they think they are going to be landed with the responsibility for developing it, why not consider drawing up the Action Plan at the end of your planning session, rather than as you proceed? This will also help you make sure that the necessary actions are evenly and reasonably distributed.

TIP 6 – Focus on Corporate needs first!
It is only natural for individuals to consider the impact of colleagues’ suggestions on themselves first, rather than the organisation’s best interests – and still wonder whether others’ suggestions may be based on their own personal interests, desires and aspirations too!

• In leading your organisation’s strategy development, demand that everyone participating puts their own personal interests to one side, at least for the moment.

TIP 7 – Lift your eyes up from today’s detail!
Members of functionally organised, operational and executive Boards are often most used to dealing with immediate issues. ‘Dreaming and scheming’ about how the world might look, in time still to come, does not always come naturally to many.

• So make sure your strategy development team is encouraged to look ahead, to lift their eyes above their immediate horizons, and to ‘look around corners’.

TIP 8 – Break the Mould!
Winning strategies rarely involve ‘doing what we always did’ (because then, you ‘always get what you always got’!). This isn’t to say you shouldn’t ‘stick to the knitting’ (thank you Tom Peters!). Rather, ask whether the way you ‘knit’, where you ‘knit’ and what you ‘knit’ is still appropriate, even whom you ‘knit for and who should do the ‘knitting’? (You may also even ask why you ‘knit’!)

• Note that a winning strategy often means doing things differently? (As does all improvement!) So encourage your colleagues to think outside the ‘well-established’. If your Chairman or other senior influencers may not like this, or hold ‘self-evident’ truths that may possibly be worth an updated challenge, show them this document!

TIP 9 – Speak your mind!
Let ‘group-think’ be anathema to you? Encourage your ‘rebels’ and folk from ‘left-field’, the deep thinkers and the slow thinkers, all to have their say. First, almost certainly they will have something to contribute. Secondly, you won’t ever know the truth of this if you don’t encourage them!

• Think how easy it is to close down a comment you don’t welcome, even by saying nothing! An arched eyebrow? A pregnant pause? A worried frown? Or even a light quip? A sarcastic remark? As your team’s leader, don’t forget you have a leadership role here!

TIP 10 – Apply ‘Chatham House’ Rules!
This means that not only may everyone speak their mind, they must! But what is said must allowably be kept private, ‘in the room’ and never elsewhere for future reference or attack.

Successful strategy development requires trust and respect, that each and every contribution is allowable (and probably valuable) – however unpalatable – and that it is inherently intended in good faith.

And finally, here are 5 criteria by which you might judge your emerging strategy?

• First, is it sustainable? If it isn’t, you have probably created some great short-term tactics – but not a winning strategy.
• Second, is it flexible? Can it be adapted and developed as circumstances and situations change, as inevitably they will?
• Third, is it transparent for those who need to understand and implement it?
• Fourth, is it convincing? Will those who have to implement the strategy ‘own’ it?
• Fifth, is it comprehensive? Does it cover the whole organisation, and all that you do and wish to do?

I wish you good, strategic, fortune!

Last month’s QED Consulting seminar was very well received. Conversations with attendees after the seminar were all based around understanding where organisations are going and what skills are required to get their successfully. Parts of this puzzle involve knowing and understanding the market in which you trade.

I often wonder how many Managing Directors ask their employees to not just understand their own role in the organisation but to understand the business sector the organisation trades in.

“Do you know the industry ‘best practice’ Or do you only know how it is done in this organisation?”

How often do organisations stop to lift their head above the parapet and look at what is happening in competitors businesses? How often do they talk to their competitors or read articles in trade journals to gain the ‘bigger picture’ point of view?

In marketing the Demographics of the population are used to understand target markets. When planning business strategy PEST and SWOT analysis helps to identify the ‘Barriers and Enablers’ that exist in the organisation or industry. Each of these types of investigation or analysis is a tool used by organisations looking to understand their market.

“A market is defined by what is addressing it, be it a product, company, brand, business unit, proposition, idea, etc, so be clear about how you define the market being analysed, particularly if you use PEST analysis in workshops, team exercises or as a delegated task”

Taking the time to understand the lives your customers and to understand the difficulties they face when they use your product or service lets you shape your product to make it easier to use which in turn gives you an edge against your competitors that customer see, feel and become engaged in.

“Okay, I understand that customers tend to be more ethically minded now, but what does that mean to us?”

KPMG research shows…

“53% of business leaders in parts of the UK admitted they were not spending enough time thinking about the broad strategic direction of their business.”

“ Growth is ranked as the most crucial issue, but -43% stated that they did not spend enough time thinking about growth strategy.”

‘49% were operating without a one-year business plan’

‘50% of business leaders in the region aspire to work less than 40 hours a week.’(Insider Magazine August 2006)

Some of these quotes may be a little old, however they make the point that organisations can only merely exist without doing a little homework and acting upon the findings. To get the competitive edge they need to know the market.

WHO NEEDS COACHING?

If you have ever enjoyed a sport at a serious level, you will know at first hand how critical a coach can be; first for maintaining, and then for improving, both personal and team performance.

It isn’t any different at work.

But because management and leadership development requires a serious commitment of both organisational time and cost, inevitably many employers might far prefer to recruit the ‘finished article’. Yet surely a fond hope? History records no such person ever existed! Even if you were to find the ‘perfect recruit’, jobs inexorably change over time and require new skills. And if the job-holder can’t develop these new skills, he or she may then block others who might.

This is the reason why really wise employers seek to recruit people for their ability to do the next job in their organisation, not just the present one.

For ‘Developing Potential’

Accordingly, the most frequent reason to offer Executive Coaching in any organisation, of any size and in any sector, is to develop an essential ‘talent bank’ of potential for the future. (How might you identify those with the potential? – subject to a separate article!)

Confidential Executive Coaching is most certainly not the only way to develop such colleagues. But it has an extraordinarily strong track-record as part of a wider management-development strategy in developing and realising existing talent. It is highly flexible and outcome-focussed and, inevitably, it is highly motivational for those selected.

However, in focusing on developing potential managers and leaders, you might still miss out on at least three other categories of people who might benefit from coaching, as follows.

‘The High Fliers’

First, don’t forget your ‘high-fliers’, whose rapid rise to a very senior management position may have resulted in some essential omissions in developing all the core leadership skills and experience necessary?

Many of us, with more traditional if longer career paths, might take for granted the acquisition and development of some of the necessary experience and skills required of a senior post over time. But the high-fliers will not necessarily have had this opportunity. Often, these omissions may not be too apparent to their bosses, perhaps because they have never been tested as yet. But the individual themselves might be acutely aware of them – and so, by association, might their staff.

For example, it could be that the high-flier still needs to fine-tune their business judgement or their relationships with particularly difficult or very senior colleagues and stakeholders. These skills don’t usually arrive ‘oven-ready’ on first appointment! Alternatively, there may be some new skills to acquire, as varied as managing corporate risk, managing large meetings, negotiating mission-critical deals, making major presentations, handling press interviews – or even managing stress and work-life balance. All of these are great topics to add to a tailored, confidential, coaching programme.

‘The Nearly Wonderful’

Then there are those who might have been ‘high-fliers’, who have may key knowledge and essential skills that are highly-prized by your organisation. But they just don’t quite ever seem to make the grade. You don’t want to lose them, and indeed you may not be able to afford to lose them. But for one reason or another, they just don’t win their manager’s confidence to be given the senior posts they almost certainly aspire to.

You will know this category well because their performance reviews almost always leave their bosses thinking (and sometimes saying): “If only they didn’t …”, or perhaps “If only they did …”!

Examples might include the Technical Expert, who is brilliant but never embraces the wider commercial picture; the Key-Account Sales Manager whom customers adore and their own colleagues find impossibly vainglorious, self-seeking and ill-disciplined; or perhaps the Accountant who produces wonderful management information, on time and accurately, who is painstaking over quite minor issues and misses the really important ones. You’ll know them!

Also in this category, there may also be others who really are very good. But perhaps just on this occasion, they have been passed-over for promotion because there was an even better candidate and only one post going; or the timing wasn’t quite right; or even that they were really capable, but not yet actually quite as good as they earnestly believed themselves to be.

They can all benefit from coaching too.

‘The Just Treading Water’

There are also those who are highly capable, have been in post for a long time, often at the top of their profession, but feel that their job has somehow lost the savour, excitement and challenge it used to have. These may not be typical coaching clients, you might think, but perhaps they should be?

This category could include many Owner-Managers, Researchers, Teachers, Lawyers or Senior Clinicians, for example. They might not actually be bored, they probably love what they do, but they need re-energising – if only they knew how.

And if they aren’t ‘re-energised’? – however unwittingly, they well may find solace in taking up distracting interests elsewhere that don’t support their organisation, and may even damage their colleagues’ morale and own commitment.

SOLUTIONS?

Executive Coaching may not be the only solution for any the above situations, but it is certainly a very flexible, cost-effective and tailored process. It also answers many prospective coaching clients’ concerns about any type of development activity, such as:

What other development processes might you consider?

Rather separate from coaching, some might prefer to have a Mentor. While a coach’s job is primarily to help a client to develop new skills, as a specific project with agreed objectives and outcomes, a mentor’s role is predominantly to share relevant experience, reflection and accumulated wisdom, usually over a rather longer timescale.

Coaching and Mentoring actually employ very different processes, and often imply rather different relationships. It may well be worth considering both options with a provider before deciding which is best for each individual.

Alternatively – or even additionally – some may learn best from their peers, either through a ‘Peer Review Group’, or through a slightly more formal ‘Action Learning Set’ with more specific learning objectives. The principle of both of these approaches is to share common problems and probable solutions together, so that in effect members of the group become coaches of each other, guided by an external facilitator.

In many larger organisations, such groups can be drawn together from amongst their own colleagues, across the globe. However, smaller organisation can still be very well catered for, by mixing people of similar seniority from completely different organisations and sectors, such as in QED’s regional ‘Senior Executive Leadership Forum’ <otherwise known as ‘SELF’ – geddit? – as in ‘self-development’>. Both types of group work exceptionally well and, if you are at all interested in becoming part of such a group, do email us for more information.

And finally, you may want to consider Team Coaching. Like 1:1 coaching, there will be some clearly agreed goals and a formal process, but designed for the whole team rather than any one individual.

CONCLUSION

As the cliché has it, most organisations do genuinely recognise that their staff are at least one of their most valuable assets, if not their most valuable. But not only do good managers need help and training to become great leaders, they need continuing development as their roles change. And this applies to all managers, not just those picked out for a talent-management programme.

This development can’t happen easily without an employers’ support, but it can be greatly facilitated through several different options. All of the above processes can have a significant effect on a manager’s performance, impact and motivation. But as with many management challenges, there need not be just one solution.

I like to think that managers are inspirational in their actions and motivate teams intentionally to achieve objects and targets.

We all love being part of a successful team but are we effective motivators when we are required to be or is it luck?

Here are some top tips to consider when creating those changes in performance that will have you and your team standing in number one spot in no time.

1. Lead by example
   Be a great Manager. Being great is contagious. People like to be part of something great. Be sure you “walk the talk” and make sure your actions and words are consistent.
2. Set goals
   Setting goals gives you a clear destination to aim for. It allows you to plan and set strategies in place to get where you want to go. Make sure the goals are ambitious and you inspire people to reach out and meet them.
3. Create a positive environment.
   Promote an atmosphere that makes all employees feel enthused and an important part of the team. Ensure there are no favourites.
4. Right job for the right person
   You can improve employee motivation by improving employee confidence. Assign individuals with tasks you know they will enjoy or will be particularly good at. Play to their strengths.
5. Understanding what motivates your team
   For some it is reward such as a salary or status, promotion, relationship with peers, personal growth, work conditions, responsibility etc. For others it might be interest. The subject of the work they do is also personally engaging. Fear is the third motivating factor. Some adverse consequence is perceived as a result of not doing a task. Examples might include: falling behind in promotion, losing face, risks to safety or security. Remember that different things motivate different people. Take the time to get to know your team and understand what is important to them as individuals and as a group.
6. Encourage and Empower your team to develop new ways of working
   By allowing employees to make suggestions, you can motivate them to think of new and improved ways of doing things. An organisation that appreciates employee input motivates staff to be creative. This spurs them on when things go well and they learn when things do not go as expected.
7. Delegate and show trust
   Delegating provides a clear message to a team that you trust them. By undertaking tasks, it provides them with an opportunity to explore their full potential.
8. Train and develop
   Help employees improve their professional skills through coaching, external training programs, vocational training or in house career development. Your team will feel you are investing in them. This investment will be rewarded by loyalty.
9. Provide feedback
   So often, employees feel that management only notices them when something is going wrong. Let the team know how they are doing and what they are doing well. Effective feedback will not only praise the results but also highlight the traits or behaviours that are to be continued or changed.
10. Honor your promises
    Failure to follow through on promises will result in a loss of trust.

…See you on the podium!