Hawthorne Workers (picture from ansanelli.com)

In 1924-1932, a series of experiments were conducted to examine how fatigue, monotony and supervision on an assembly line affected productivity. However at the end of the experiment, researchers were amazed to find out many other correlations that affected employee productivity and morale. Many of their insights and observations are still used by today’s management. What they have discovered decades ago will be to increase productivity of your team today.

The name of this experiment is called ….

The Hawthorne Experiment

This experiment was carried out at Hawthorne Works, a factory that produced electrical components and equipment. It was one of the state-of-the-art factory of its time where over 40,000 people worked there. Hawthorne Works also pioneered many quality control practices and principles.

In all the experiments, an observer sat and watched a particular control group. In some of the experiments, changes to the illumination of the room were made. In another, conditions of the work environment constantly changed. In fact, it was changed 23 times. Changes included introduction of 2 five minute breaks, more breaks being subsequently added, breaks were lengthened to 10 minutes, food was given during breaks and staff were being dismissed half an hour earlier and then 1 hour earlier. In most cases, output generally increased.

What was interesting was even when conditions were worse off at some time, production generally increased. The amazing thing was that when these privileges were taken away and workers resumed their normal working conditions, output was increased by 25%. What was more interesting was that the team had no supervisor and they assumed personal responsibility for their work and output.

Here are some of the findings of the Hawthorne Experiment:

1.    The simple fact that the participants were asked to be part of an important experiment, created better attitude within them. They considered themselves to be an important group because their views were constantly sought after by the company.

2.    There is an eager desire within each person for cooperative activity…. and can be utilised by intelligent and straight-forward management.

3.    Consultation between management and employees gave a sense of belonging to the company. This helps people to take ownership of what they do.

4.    When employees form a social atmosphere in the work environment (which also included the observer), they tend to be more motivated.

Implications to the work environment and how you can use the Hawthorne effect in your work place:

1.    Giving your staff specialised training or verbal appreciation will help them work harder and increase their motivation.

2.    Getting people to work in small teams helps to improve performance if the team is harmonious and dedicated.

3.    Giving a sense of freedom to staff without a need for micro-management will tend to yield ownership in their work. Frequent interaction between management and staff is also a crucial contributing factor.

4.    Creating an environment where there is a social factor is also important to staff motivation. There is a need to change some management’s thinking that fun or social relationships should not take place in work environments. It does add to your bottom line when you have employees who feel a sense of belonging to the company.

PS: I would love to hear your comments. Do let me know what you think! If you have other reasons, do share them in the comment link above this article.

Impolding Structure from www.washington.edu

You have always suspected that members of your team are not happy and yet when you ask what happened, you don’t get any good answers. You’re sure that there’s something wrong, but you just can’t confirm it. How can you tell if your team is at risk? 

1.    Some members of the group feel frustrated and sometimes avoid bringing out certain issues when it is important. 

2.    There’s unresolved conflict in the group. They might even avoid meetings to keep away from meeting the person they are unhappy with. 

3.    Team members start to complain about each other and say “Just between you and me, I believe that Jack is …..” 

4.    Members start to point fingers and lay blame at each other. 

5.    You start seeing small cliques within the group; each trying to support their friends in discussions. 

6.    Worst of all, anything you say, seems to be the best idea and you are constantly reminded that your ideas will make a huge difference in their lives. 

What can you do? 

1.    Remember that when people come together, conflict is inevitable. Rather than call it conflict, we should call them reasonable engagements. It is reasonable to engage your team members in a conversation. Conflict resolution skills should be developed to handle different opinions, rather than avoiding conflicts. 

2.    People do not need you to necessary agree with them on everything but they need you to hear them out. Once team members have spoken, they tend not to harbor resentment. 

3.    Be sure to remind your team that they are challenging ideas and not each other. 

4.    Check if team members share the same objectives, it is simply impossible to solve issues if they do not have that common ground. 

5.    Help members understand that the group’s interest takes precedence over self interest. 

6.    Educate team members about the different working styles and personalities of each member. Tools such as DISC personality profiling assessments have been used by over 50 million people, many of them in the Fortune 500 companies. 

To prevent a group from disintegrating, a leader must be sharp to detect the symptoms and then apply the necessary ways to address them. I have personally learn from my mistakes that whenever team problems arise, I must address them quickly. Failing so will lead to a lot more problems in the future.

Want to know ways to increase your team work and by helping your managers work on their team management abilities? Contact Kenneth now.

Related Articles: 

Here Are The Limitations Of Most Teambuilding Programs 

How Teamwork Helps You Achieve More With Less 

Getting People to Consistently Trust You In All You have to say 

10 Ways to Inspire Team Members to Consistently Give Their Best

People Resigning from whyatt.com.au

Whenever a person leaves a company, it is estimated to cost their employers about 2 years of that person’s salary. This cost comprises of rehiring, training, loss of contacts that this person might have, employee benefits and etc. During exit interviews, I don’t think you will actually hear the REAL reasons why they leave. After talking to many professionals and including HR practitioners, I have concluded that in most instances, people actually leave their bosses, not their jobs.

I understand that there might be other push/pull factors for a person to leave; however, I will just focus on the reasons to why people leave their bosses (or managers).

1. Poor leadership skills of bosses

One of the main reasons is that their immediate bosses tend to have poor leadership skills. Bosses tend to give them unclear job descriptions, make them work hard without proper recognition/rest, are picky or have poor people skills. Making staff work hard is not the main issue, but not giving them the proper respect and acknowledgment at work is extremely frustrating to their staff. There are some bosses who also tend to be insecure in their role, pushing their staff down, while ensuring that they be acknowledged for every level of success their staff brings.

2. They are micro-managed by their bosses
If a staff is constantly asked by his/her superior on the progress of their work and had them to intervene in the way they do things, they will tend to be frustrated. Bosses intervene mainly because there is a lack of trust in their staff’s quality of work. It is better for bosses to actually manage based on end results rather than day to day monitoring.

3. Bosses with hidden agendas
The lack of trust between staff and boss tend to produce conversations with hidden meanings. When trust is low, people start to guess what their boss actually mean in their conversations. Some bosses speak in meetings to seemingly care for their departments, but often their staff feel that there is a hidden purpose behind every statement. Some people have even commented that their bosses are political and hide behind different meanings in a statement. The way to combat such ill feelings is to be forth-coming, truthful and transparent in the way you relate to staff.

4.    Bosses not delivering promises

Have you heard of the following statements:

“I have plans to promote you in the next few months” or “If you were to achieve these targets, you can expect _____” to only find out that your boss did not fulfill his/her promise?

The thing I am trying to bring across is that sometimes managers don’t deliver on what they say. It only needs to happen only once before people starting doubting everything their boss says. The only way to address this issue is to consistently say what you mean and mean what you say.

Conclusion

Whenever people leave, take a good look at the leaders. In most cases, people leave their bosses, not their jobs. In order to stop great people from leaving, always start with working on the way leaders lead their people.

PS: I would love to hear your comments. Do let me know what you think! If you have other reasons, do share them in the comment link above this article.

Image from lifeinthenhs.wordpress.com

Trust is the currency in all relationships, whether in office or at home. If you do not have enough of this currency, you will realise that whatever you do, you will need more time, energy and money to perform a task. However, you will realise that the reverse is true as well.

Imagine how things can be done faster if people had their trust in you?

Imagine that business deals are done simply with a handshake rather than countless pages of contract?

Imagine how you can align people to a common objective because they trust that you will deliver?

Before we carry on further talking about Trust, let’s define what it is in the first place.

Trust is basically summed up in one work “Confidence “. We do place our trust (or confidence) in people and objects every single day of our lives. We trust what people say (or similarly, we distrust what some people might say), or we trust objects to fulfill their functions (eg, our car will work well and take us to the intended destination).

I will just focus on one of the most challenging areas and that is how do we get people to consistently trust you in what you ALL that you say.

First of all, Trust building is a function of 2 things, namely: Character and Competence.

Character:
If a person has a great character or good intent in all he does, you will tend to believe him. If he is congruent in his speech and actions, there is absolutely no reason to even doubt anything he does. Character is important because most people have values and if these values are in conflict with what they believe in, they will leave your organisation.

When I was younger, I kept asking people to trust what I have to say. To my dismay, there were quite a few times people didn’t believe in me. This was because my character has not matured to the point where I ‘walk my talk’ or am clear on my values. I realised that when you have strong values, people actually respect you in what you do and will be drawn to what you say or share.

This is indispensible especially when you need to organise groups quickly or even make difficult decisions. Although what you do might be painful for certain individuals, they will still trust you because you act in good character and intent.

I am absolutely convinced that most politics stem out of distrust and ill-intent. The only way to combat such issues is to demonstrate good character and intent.

Tips on developing good character and intent:

• Be clear on your values and stand up for them.
• Honour everything you say (this includes your commitments to family and kids).
• Be careful of making rash commitments that you cannot keep.
• Trust others so that they can trust you. Trust is a reciprocal relationship.

Competence:
While character is important in developing trust, I strongly believe that competence is the other element. I mean, are you able to trust a person who does not have the capability to do what he said he will do? Will you trust an inexperienced surgeon to perform a major surgery on you? Trust seems to be developed when you consistently deliver what you promised. You simply cannot trust someone who regularly shows poor performance at work. Therefore, in my opinion, competence inspires trust.

One of the fastest ways I learnt about building credibility and trustworthiness is when I have a track record. Being able to show for results do matter to a lot of people. When I first started out in business and talked about my inspirational teambuilding programs, it took a lot of convincing for decision makers to use my programs.

In recent years after running so many mindset change teambuilding programs and giving keynote speeches for government and corporate clients, it was so much easier to get the buy-in from them! I realised that I was actually spending a bit of time sharing about my experiences with the different types of clients and what kind of results that I had achieved with them. Most of them wanted to hear them and know whether I could deliver it for them as well.

That is why competence is important in establishing your trust currency. You have to show that you are capable to perform a task well and it will automatically inspire confidence within people. That is why to convince people quickly is to show them results and that you are competent in doing what you said you can do.

Tips on developing competence:

• Constantly read and attend seminars to be an expert in your field.
• Achieve mastery in what you do for a living.
• What kind of results am I currently displaying in my work? Is it helping me display credibility in my work?
• Take responsibility for your results and make a decision to constantly improve it.

Conclusion
Character and competence sums up what you need to get people to constantly trust what you have to say. Since trust is developed over time, therefore character and competence also takes time to build. Where do you think you are in your character and competence level?I hope to hear from you.

Related Articles:

What’s Your Trust Meter Like?

How To Develop TRUST Within Teams

Teambuilding Lessons From Growing Orchids

Trust is one of the biggest issues that faces any team and everyone says that you need it but how many of them actually teach you how to establish trust step by step?

This article will teach you how you can consistently get people to trust your every word.

You can download this article.

Well… I can’t argue with that logic… hehehehe

In my previous blog post, I asked people to define “what is leadership to you?”

There were a lot of great definitions and answers that were contributed and allow me to share with you mine.

Leadership is all about INFLUENCE. It is about who listens to you when you speak and how much influence you have over them. People who have higher influencing ability tend to have a larger group of people following them. If you want to know whether you have strong leadership ability, it is pretty simple. Just look behind and check if anyone is following you.

Most people tend to find leaders by their titles given to them, eg. he’s the group leader or she’s the director of this department. However, I want to caution you that this is the lowest level of leadership. This is because you can be a leader by position, but that does not mean that you will be able to lead people by their hearts. A higher form of leadership exists where people follow you simply because of what you say, stand for and believe in, rather than your position.

So, how do you influence more people? I would like to suggest that there are many ways, but I will list down a few principles:

1.    Move in integrity. When you are integral in your life (meaning, your thoughts, actions and speech are coherent), people will have more faith and trust in you.

2.    Willing to spend time and invest in people. When you develop a person’s life in some area, whether through coaching. mentoring or teaching, you are demonstrating that you are truly interested in their growth.

3.    Establish clear communications. Everyone knows exactly what you mean and will not misinterpret your message. To have less communication breakdown, you will need to spend time with people (point 2).

4.    Lead themselves well. A great leader leads himself or herself well, with or without people around them. They understand that their credibility and consistency is important before people listens to them.

It is in my firm belief that anyone can develop in their leadership ability, since it is an observable behaviour. However, to be a great leader, you must have outstanding character and talent as well. Before you lead others, lead yourself first!

Without great leadership, great organisations can fall.

Before I talk more on leadership, let’s define what is leadership to you?

Please post your comments! I want to hear from you right now!

I will give you my definition in the following days.

When it comes to working in teams, most people often hesitate in asking for help. In fact, some leaders often think of the many reasons why their staff do not want to take up certain projects or additional work.

In my work with people, my experience tells me that unless I can share the reason for doing things with other people and delegate work out, I can never truly be transformational in what I do. The role of a leader is to create a team and galvanize them towards an objective. However, in most cases, whenever we think of the people we need to spearhead certain initiatives or even join our team, we can sometimes give a lot of reasons why he/she is not willing to take it on. We say NO for them.

Statements like the following:

“I’m sure that she will be great for this role, however she has just completed a major project and I don’t think she will take up a new role right now.”

“It will be great to have him on our team, but there’s just no way he will come in. Our remunerations will never be close to what he’s getting.”

I understand that those above are real concerns, but if we do not ask, we will have totally closed the door for that person to work with us. In fact, there are many instances when I am surprised over and over again that people do want to give more of their time, money or effort to something they believe in.

Here’s a conversation I had with whom someone I wanted on my team:

“Glad to have been able to know what you are passionate about and the marvellous skills that you possess. Right now our aim is to develop and mentor new members. Personally, they are a great bunch. However, if I have you helping out in the mentoring process, I know they will surely soar in their work scope. There’s no promise of more incentives, but I can guarantee that this will be an extremely fulfilling work because you will be able to teach and impact lives.”

Guess what? This lady with superb counselling skills joined us and played a pivotal role in building the team.

Never say NO for other people. Give them a reason, share with them your vision and they might just surprise you with a big resounding “YES, I’m willing to be involved!”

Here’s how Intel made one of their staff into a Rock Star! A simple gesture, but it goes a long way in staff recognition, excitement within the staff, and knowledge that their company is doing something great! All this at a little cost and creativity.

Here are some Themes that I suggest you can try out: Print posters on certain people you want to highlight and make them into…

• Super Heros! (Have you watched the series: Heros?) Eg, Melissa, aka Storm, she can tune down the storms in peoples’ lives.
• Boy Bands (Yes, form your own band with the males)
• Star Trek Characters

So.. when are you going to celebrate your staff?

If you like this article, please subscribe to our blog by getting the Free Report on “7 Transformational Secrets to creating a Dynamic and Cohesive Team”. If you have comments, I would love to hear them. Please post them below.