Performance Motivation

Everyone makes mistakes – even your top-talent employees. How can you correct them and motivate them at the same time? There are a few tips from Sharon Daniels, president and CEO of AchieveGlobal, in a recent Talent Management.com article.

Sometimes poor performance or an increase in employee errors is due to lack of motivation. What can you do to re-vamp your employees? Make note that decreased performance often has an underlying cause.

When your employees start faltering, it’s also a negative reflection on your management abilities. There are other hazards to consider – if the root-issues aren’t addressed, you run the risk of having to fire the employee or the worker quitting.

Motivation is met by satisfying these three basic needs:

1. Competence: the need to feel valued as knowledgeable, skilled and experienced.

2. Relatedness: the need to collaborate with colleagues and co-workers.

3. Autonomy: the need to exercise self-regulation, within guidelines, to achieve business goals.

Keep these motivation factors in mind when you address performance problems with your employees. Your workers will respond better to the conversation if they feel that you are listening and that they are adequately heard.

Understanding what motivates your employees will make your management strategies stronger. There are a few things you can do that will help a performance talk go smoothly.

Adopt the employees perspective.

Communicate in an informational way.

Generate opportunities for choice.

When you understand your employees’ perspective, you can better understand how to communicate with them. If you can see where they’re coming from, it will be easier to explain the issues to them. And, when you tell them about the situation from an informational perspective, versus being confrontational, they can better assess how to improve. Lastly, give them some choices about how to fix the problem. When there are choices, your employees will feel like they have an active role in bettering the situation. To read more about what you can do when it comes time to have a performance chat with an employee, click here to read the full article.

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