1. They create opportunities to provide recurring feedback about current performance; positive performance is applauded; poor performance is coached and corrected. Feedback is a daily event.

2. They create performance expectations for employees; employees know what is expected and are held accountable for results and performance. They have a culture of accountability and no excuses.

3. They regularly meet with employees to talk about the future. They are honest about opportunities – within and out of the organization. They value their employees’ personal and professional development. Employees know where they are headed; they are connected to both a vision and a plan for the future.

This works because their managers are held responsible for building and sustaining relationships with their employees. This daily focus on personally connecting to employees creates a rapport that facilitates a discussion about many issues that other organizations can’t discuss – including career development and the future. This not only allows employees to have a longer vision of employment and helps the organization with succession planning, it inspires employee loyalty.

Knowing the strength of your people and guiding them to a meaningful future allows the organization to plan for its growth and how to staff it. It allows them to better manage their intellectual capital and talent. This is how one company ensures that the best employees are here today and here tomorrow.

Please share this with someone who can benefit from it and contact me to help you develop an employee retention approach for 2011 that keeps your best employees. More information at www.FireUpYourEmployees.com.

This past week the NY Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote an OP-ED titled, Americans Want the Greatness Back. He presented some startling statistics that nearly half of the Americans who vote feel that our best days are behind us, not ahead of us. And though his OP-ED is more about what changes may need to happen in our political process, his message is clear. Greatness as a nation can only happen when we each recommit to personal greatness.

So back to my opening line, you can’t have a great company (country, town, organization, family, etc), without people who choose to be great. How do you inspire each employee to choose greatness over just showing up?
Consider these ways:

1. Clearly define what your company believes in and its commitment to greatness in all it does; this attracts like-minded people. You set a standard and belief that guides not only who you hire, but what behaviors are expected once they are hired.

2. Hire the best people for the job; hire based on talent and fit, not just on experience. This way you hire people capable of greatness because their work matches what they are intrinsically good at. Employees who feel capable and competent perform at greater levels.

3. Connect employees emotionally by customizing their jobs around what they love and are interested in. There are few jobs that employees love everything about. But if jobs are sculpted around employees’ interests, passions and values, employees become more emotionally invested in their work. This raises their effort, interest and performance – their greatness.

4. Openly value your employees by building strong personal relationships with each through constant communication and contact, performance feedback and honest interest (see this issue’s Recommended Read). Employees who are personally connected to their managers, team and organization, feel more part of the team and therefore commit greater effort.

Personal greatness must be inspired, encouraged, developed and applauded – this is part of management’s role. And the more personal greatness grows, the more organizational greatness will grow. Great organizations realize that they are great because their employees have chosen to bring their best and to make an impact – they have chosen to be great. And if we can rekindle it in the workplace, we may be able to rekindle it across the nation.

Please share this with someone who can benefit from it and contact me to help you learn how to activate the personal greatness of your employees. More information at www.FireUpYourEmployees.com.

I used to think that if you were good, bad things would not happen to you. Seemed reasonable – you should be rewarded for being good. Then, after lots of years of the planet, I realized that is not how it works. Instead, life just happens – and it brings some easy times and some tough times. The same way weather brings beautiful days and powerful storms. It just happens – it is part of nature… it is part of life.

But here is what we need to remember. As things happen, they are neither good nor bad; how we perceive them and how we choose to handle them, is what determines the good or bad. We choose to see each event as a means to something better or as a defeat. We choose to use each event to learn, get better and come out stronger or complain, check out and give up. We choose to be grateful or ungrateful. Events just are. How we respond comes from our state of mind. Optimism is a state of mind. Thanksgiving is a state of mind.

I do a lot of business coaching. And in today’s recession, much of my coaching focuses on helping organizations optimistically approach their work environments to invent, find and implement opportunities. Ordinary companies complain about how tough things are; they spend their days whining about the recession and how it has made things worse. These organizations find it very difficult to find opportunities for growth or success. They choose not to see them. Extraordinary companies always focus on seeing value, finding opportunities and remaining optimistic. The use the tough times to regroup, redefine and restructure to come out stronger and more focused. They envision success. They respect, appreciate and are grateful for their employees and customers. They have a thanksgiving state of mind.

Life is as it is. Nature is as is. We get what we get – but we have an amazing resiliency to respond. And it first starts with an attitude of optimism, energy, gratitude and thanksgiving.

• Do I appreciate what I have, who I am and my ability to make choices?
• Do I realize that life happens and it is up to me to make it great (and there is always something good in every circumstance – I just need to get better at finding it)?
• Do I realize that great events let me catch my breath, laugh and love so I have the energy and strength to handle tough events that require more effort, more thinking and more resolve?

This week we celebrate a “day” of Thanksgiving. Yes, I look forward to celebrating with family and friends on a day we have carved (I had to say that) out as a formal day of gratefulness. But I won’t forget that thanksgiving is really a state of mind, and as such, should guide my daily outlook and approach. Join me. Make “giving thanks” your state of mind.