The cost of low morale

- Over the years I've done a lot of training for different companies and I've got to know the cultures of lots of companies, and it's amazing how much they vary in the level of morale, the level of motivation that you get. So, some companies, everybody's engaged, they're energized, they love it, and other places I go the people just they don't really care, they just going through the motions, and lack of engagement costs you a huge amount. If people are your biggest cost and they're not really engaged, you're losing a lot of time and you're wasting a lot of money. You're basically employing more people than you need to. There is some research that happy workforces are 80% engaged, and unhappy workforces are only 50% engaged. So, you're losing 30% of your workforce if they're not happy, and that's huge, that means you're employing an extra 1/3 of people than you need to, and that's a lot of money. So, how can you get your workforce to be more engaged, well we're into the whole subject of leadership now and I've done other courses on this, but if I had to pick a sort of top five, I would say first of all communication, maximum communication, tell everybody what's going on, what you're doing, why you're doing it, you know, your longer term plans, maximum communication, it costs a little bit to do it but it's really worth it. Second I would say, involvement, if you can involve other people in your decisions as much as possible, you'll get better decisions, they will be much more motivated, and it's less work for you as well. So, involving people in what you're doing, it's more enjoyable too, why would you not? Even if you think you know all the answers, ask some other people, they might come up with something even better, you never know they might impress you. I think thirdly, to have really clear goals for the organization, what are we trying to do? And that's an important part of leadership isn't it? It's that vision of where the company's going. So, make sure you've got really clear goals of what you're tryna do communicated to the organization. The fourth one I would say is to not have fear. If people live in fear, if they're going to be punished for making mistakes or have their bonus taken away, or even perhaps all get fired if they don't perform, then they won't engage with the system, they'll spend the whole time covering their rear, the whole time worrying and a certain amount of energy perhaps even looking for other jobs. So, management by fear leads to lack of security and disengagement, and then you're wasting your money paying your people, because they're not going to be engaged. And finally, there's what I call the management potato, I've done a YouTube video on this, but the potato of performance. If you got somebody who is probably pretty good at their job, they got an area of excellence and they've go part of their job that is not so good. Management tend to focus on the bad bit and they criticize, 'cause they see that as a problem that needs to be solved, and if you do that the person will first of all not bother with the good bit, because they got no thanks for that, and then secondly, the bit where they get into trouble, they'll try to avoid and their performance will reduce, they won't do the great bit, they won't do the bad bit, they'll just retreat and then they'll make a mistake and be criticized and they'll do less, and what happens is they just end up doing less and less, and if you criticize someone a lot their performance will shrivel from the potato of performance down to the prune of performance, and they become a shriveled prune, and this is what people do. So, I'll give you a quick example of this, I used to play in a band and it was run by the guitarist, he wrote all the songs and he was actually really talented, but he was critical of other people, he didn't suffer fools really, and he used to criticize other things. So, you know I brought along some suggested lyrics one time and he went, "Not sure." And of course, then I thought I won't bring any more lyrics and then I made some posters and he said, "I suppose they'll do till we get some proper ones made." And so I just thought well, I won't bother with that anymore, and he was right the posters weren't brilliant but they were better than nothing, least I did something and then I managed to get us this gig in a pub that turned out to not be brilliant, and afterwards he said, "That." I'll paraphrase the words. He said, "That was a rubbish gig you got us Chris." So, I'm thinking well I won't bother to get us any more gigs then. So, I gradually did less and less until all I did was turn up and play, and so if you criticize people they'll just do less and less, until they're just doing the minimum, and I remember him saying, "This band's rubbish, "I have to do everything myself in this band." And I'm thinking well I wonder why that is? So, even though I knew about the management potato, I couldn't help becoming a prune because he criticized the things that I did. So, the answer of course is to do the very opposite of the potato. So, what you should do is first of all, focusing on the really great stuff, and say to the person well done for doing that, and well done for getting us that gig in that pub and alright it didn't work out brilliantly but at least you got the gig and that's great, keep getting us those gigs Chris. That's what he should have said. So, encourage the good, and if something bad happens, you can't ignore it but just say in this area here, I mean everything else is fine, there's one area where I think you could be better, it's probably my fault for not having taught it to you, so next time it comes up I want to show you how to do it, would that be okay? Or even just do you know what you'll do differently next time? 'Cause I know you can do this, and let them have another go. So, if you can have a supportive positive style of management you'll get a lot more out of your people, and the last thing you want is a whole team of prunes working for you because you've criticized them. If you're doing that, that's a huge waste of money and you know, that's just a huge cost that you've unnecessarily given yourself and then you going to have to employ more people to get the same work done. So, get people to be engaged by a positive management style.