Peter Barron Stark Companies Helping CEOs, Managers & HR Professionals

Step Five: Write the Goal

The research on high achievers shows that successful goal setters write out their goals. There is something almost magical about writing down goals. Without writing down the goal, it is merely an idea or a wish. Writing it down helps to bring it to life.

Here is a simple, yet effective guideline for writing good goals. It is called the S-M-A-R-T model. Each letter of the S-M-A-R-T model refers to a characteristic of effective goals:

Specific. Good goals are specific. They detail exactly what is to be accomplished. Don’t be vague or general. Write out specifically what is to be accomplished.

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Step Three: Identify Roadblocks

Now that you have identified your vision and you know what it will take to achieve by outlining key actions or goals, you can begin to identify the barriers or roadblocks that may get in your way. It may sound negative to spend your time and energy thinking about barriers or problems, but there are two good reasons for this. First, if you are able to think about what problems could stop you, you can also begin to generate plans to get around the problems if they should arise. And second, when they do come up, they do not paralyze you. Many people have had their goals undermined when problems surfaced. Sometimes people will even tell you they thought the problems would arise.

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Step One: Create a Vision

To start the visioning process, you must get in touch with your true desire. What is important to you? What matters? What do you care about? What do you really want? A vision comes from the heart. It must be truly meaningful to you.

Create a mental picture of what you want. The visioning process requires quiet reflection. Step back from your busy, fast paced environment and relax. Visioning requires imagery and creativity. The more relaxed you are and the farther away you are from day to day tensions, the easier it is to create and visualize. Many people have a difficult time creating a vision because that vision may be so far removed from reality. Yet, it is that very distance or gap between the vision and current reality that propels you toward achieving the vision.

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Great Managers Keep Their Employees Uncomfortable!

Most managers feel they should keep everyone on their team happy and comfortable. But, we have found such managers usually have poor long-term job security. They are secure for a period of three to five years, then they are let go or moved to a less significant position by the organization. Why are they moved to positions of less influence? Because the whole world rapidly changed while their focus was on keeping people happy and comfortable. Major problems in the areas of customer satisfaction, quality, timeliness, or cost-competitiveness have usually occurred.

To be successful, your focus needs to be on staying ahead of your competition. The problem with rapid change is that it usually makes people feel uncomfortable, unhappy, and fearful. The following recommendations can help keep your people “uncomfortable” while ensuring your department or firm’s long-term success.

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Expand Trust in your Organization

Good managers, supervisors, and leaders take specific actions to create a climate that is conducive to open and honest communication. In this open communication climate, people feel free to give their input and ideas, information is shared freely, conflicts are openly discussed and worked through, and people are more willing to express innovative ideas and to take risks.

The basis of the open communication climate is trust. The leader establishes an environment of trust within and among all the people in the group. To begin to build or expand trust in your organization and to foster an open communication climate, try some of the following tips.

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Ways to Motivate Individuals

We recently asked a group of seminar participants, “Would the people who work with you on a daily basis consider you to be a motivating leader?” On a scale of one to five, with one low and five high, only about one-third of the participants rated themselves either a four or five. We then talked about what makes a leader a motivator.

Research in emotional intelligence has demonstrated that most individuals are looking for three basic needs to be met in their life if they are to be motivated. First, people want to be appreciated and recognized for their contributions. Second, most people want to be cared for; and third, most people want to be given the opportunity to grow.

As a leader who wants to motivate, there are ways to meet these three basic needs and, in the process, become an even stronger leader.

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The Almighty Push from Within

All managers know that part of “the job” is to motivate their workforce of direct reports. Motivating others is a never-ending responsibility and most managers are continually searching for new and creative ways to encourage employees to get the job done. But, too little has been written or shared about how managers can raise their personal level of motivation. The challenges managers face on a daily basis can send them home in the evening emotionally drained. A manager may rightfully ask, “How am I supposed to motivate others when I am not personally motivated?” That is a great question. The following six tips will encourage you to explode in a positive and exciting way, even in the toughest of times.

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One Manager Questions the Value of a Vision

During a recent leadership seminar, a participant stated that he felt this “Vision” thing was highly overrated. He went on to add that although it may have value for the executives to create a vision for the organization, there is little value for managers or supervisors to create their own visions.

To define the term concisely, a vision is a clear mental picture of a desired future outcome. A vision is like the picture on a jigsaw puzzle box. It shows you exactly what you are trying to create. Call it a vision, mission, purpose, philosophy, or values…the labels vary, but they usually describe the same thing: the overarching purpose of an organization. Some organizations even give employees laminated copies of these carefully crafted, highly worded sentiments, which get placed in a wallet or purse, or better yet, are used as the bookmark for the corporate policy manual.

The problem with the “vision” thing is twofold. First, some organizations do not have a clear vision of where they are heading. Second, other organizations have a stated vision, but they are not living the vision or bringing it to reality. Both of these problems will cause motivation, morale, and productivity to decline.

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Invest in Employee Engagement: it will prove worth your while

The buzz word most associated with employee satisfaction these days is “engagement.” As recently as two years ago we were writing about the impending talent drain, as boomers would be leaving the workplace in masses for retirement. We stressed the importance of creating a workplace where employees would feel motivated, enthused and most importantly, “engaged.”

That was two years ago. Today the whole business landscape has changed. As of December 2009, California’s unemployment rate is 12.1%. Massive layoffs have had a profound impact on not only the way we do business, but on the employees who are left shell-shocked after layoffs, wondering if and when the axe may fall on them. We’re not hearing the word “engaged” much these days as it relates to employees. In fact, some leaders have been so bold as to say, “I really don’t care what employees think and how they feel. They have a job and should be grateful to have survived the last round of cuts.”

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Why Supervisors Fear Delegation

The following poem, written by an author known as “anonymous,” brings a humorous light to our hesitancy to delegate work to others.

“Functions of a Supervisor”

As nearly everyone knows, a supervisor has practically nothing to do except, to decide what is to be done;
to tell somebody to do it;

to listen to reasons why it should not be done, why it should be done by someone else, or why it should be done in a different way;
to follow up to see if the thing has been done;
to discover it has not been done;
to inquire why it has not been done;

to listen to excuses from the person who should have done it;

to follow up again to see if the thing has been done, only to discover it has been done incorrectly;
to point out how it should have been done;
to conclude that as long as it has been done it might as well be left where it is;

to wonder if it is time to get rid of a person who cannot do a thing right;
to reflect that he/she probably has a significant other and a large family,
and certainly any successor would be just as bad and maybe worse;

to consider how much simpler and better the thing would have been done
if one had done it oneself in the first place;

to reflect sadly that one could have done it right in 20 minutes, and now one has to spend two days to find out why it has taken three weeks for somebody else to do it wrong!

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Involving Employees in Decision Making

Over the last several years, Peter Barron Stark Companies has surveyed the opinions of over 100,000 employees in companies throughout the United States. Some of the companies we have surveyed have referred to their employees as “employees.” Other organizations have referred to their employees as “associates,” “staff members,” or “team members.” What we have learned is that there is not much correlation between how a company or department refers to their “employees” and overall employee satisfaction. However, there is a direct correlation between how involved employees are in the decision making in their department or team and their overall morale, motivation, and satisfaction with their jobs. Companies and departments who have a higher level of employee involvement in decision making show higher levels of employee motivation and satisfaction.

All managers and supervisors would like everyone to think that they involve employees in the decision making of their department or team. But, if you ask each employee in your department the following five questions in an anonymous survey, would they strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree?

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