10 Tips to Motivate Employees to Excel

Engaged employees are excited to come to work, committed to success, and exceed expectations – this leads to improved business results. Here are 10 tips to help leaders motivate employees to excel.

• Leverage your relationship – Employees often stay because of relationships with their manager and co-workers.  Invest the time to build relationships with employees.
• Develop excellent listening skills – Listen intently to what is being said and to the passions and concerns behind the words.  Listen without judging.
• Ask curious questions – Go beyond listening and ask inviting questions to explore their perspective.  With a good question you might help them learn about themselves.
• Help them recognize their strengths – Encourage dialogue about their strengths, give them feedback about what you see, and ask how they are using their strengths today.
• Talk about aspirations – Explore their career aspirations and how these are being fulfilled today.  Find out how you can help turn some of their aspirations into reality.
• Think differently about the work that needs to be done – Match the work to be done to the talents on your team. Get creative – think beyond the job description or title.
• Clear expectations – Be clear on what exceeding expectations looks like.  Tell them when you see it and they will be more likely to do it again.
• Explore best fit development opportunities – Talk with employees about what development opportunities are a best fit for their aspirations and their learning style.
• Think beyond formal classroom training – Your best tool for developing employees may be your highly productive employees who can mentor, train and coach others to excel.
• Connect to the mission – Most employees want to feel a part of something they find personally meaningful.  Help them connect to what’s meaningful about your mission.

What drives employee motivation is different for everyone.  The only way to find out is to ask.  It’s often not as easy as it sounds . . . let us know if we can help you with:

• Individual coaching for facilitating an engaging conversation
• Training leaders with skills to facilitate an engaging conversation
• Training employees to take charge of their career
• Conducting a survey to focus employee engagement priorities

Contact us at info@thebaileygroup.com or (763) 545-5997.