What gets your employees excited, passionate and fired up? What hooks or inspires them to perform?
Consider this: Not everybody is great at everything. No kidding, right? But this is important because it explains how to help you identify what your employees’ hooks or “performance activators” are.
The brief explanation, also supported by the new book Drive by Daniel Pink, is our hooks are based on what makes us feel capable and competent in what we do, and like doing it; we must be good at what we do and passionate about doing it. When this happens, we perform. When this does not happen, we are just not that interested in our work.
Picture this: a salesman in an accountant’s role. Death wish. There isn’t any hook – the role does not play to what a salesmen is fundamentally good at and passionate about doing – that is connecting with others, winning others over and making the sale. Okay, reverse the roles – an accountant now in a salesman’s role. Again, no hook – the sales role does not play to the accountant’s love of details, focus on control, order and analysis (more about details than people).
No competence, comfort or passion and performance suffers. When you are good at what you do and love doing it you perform better.
To find your employees’ hooks:
1. Identify what the employee is consistently good at (talents).
2. Identify what the employee’s passions and interests are.
Start a regular conversation with your employees to get to know them. When you know their talents, values and interests you will find their hooks. Then you can realign them to roles that activate their best performance. Your people are your profits.
For more information click on “For Managers” on www.LifeFiredUp.com.
Daniel Pink, Drive, employee motivation, employee performance, intrinsic motivation, love your job, right employee, talents, values
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 at 7:26 pm and is filed under For Employees, For Managers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
