2014 - Page 4 of 7 - Optimus Performance

Improving employee’s self-esteem and self-confidence

Jul 27, 2014 Comments

Employees with higher self-esteem and self-confidence tend to take more risks, find solutions to problems and are less resistant to change. I’ll talk about how to increase an employee’s self-esteem and self-confidence in this video and article. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for new videos as they come out.

In one of my previous articles and videos I spoke about how to have employees become more creative and practice, continuous improvement. One of the key factors I mentioned was employee self-esteem and self-confidence and how this impacts creativity and attitude towards change.

Some people are the type that embrace change and risk-taking and others are much more conservative in the face of change and risk. You cannot change someone’s basic nature, but you can improve their self-esteem and self-confidence.

Leaders can improve someone’s self perception by the type of feedback they give them. Employees require both negative and positive feedback. There needs to be a balance between the two. Often there is a greater emphasis on negative feedback as we often tend to see what’s not going well versus what is going right.

Too much negative feedback can lower someone’s self-esteem and self-confidence. By recognizing good performance and behaviors that lead to that performance will make it easier for the person to receive negative feedback. When done well negative feedback can act as constructive criticism towards continuous improvement.

When people receive positive feedback for the work they’re doing it reinforces that they are on the right track and this fuels their self-esteem and self-confidence. Positive feedback should be explicit in that it points out the qualities the person is using to produce positive results. Rather than saying you did a good job on that report, one could say the report you produced was well thought out and presented in a very clear and understandable fashion. You really have a strength to go into depth on things.

When done this way you are linking a personal strength to how the task or job was performed well. This can really boost someone’s self-confidence and motivate them to use their strengths even more.

Set a goal for yourself to look for things that people are doing well every day. Take notes and formulate how you can give positive feedback using the guidelines described here. Give the feedback.

If you make a conscious effort to do this every day. It will soon become a habit and you won’t have to think about it anymore. It takes a conscious to look for the positive.

At first it might feel unnatural and uncomfortable to give the positive feedback but this is only temporary and worth the effort. Do it with sincerity and soon it will become natural and easy. This will make you a better leader and manager.

I hope these tips were helpful and let us know your experience with giving feedback.

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Understand Types of People for Improved Knowledge of Self and Employees

Jul 09, 2014 Comments

In this video and article I will talk about the various types of people and how this impacts leadership and employee behavior.

In my last video and article I spoke about how to have employees become more creative so they can contribute better ideas for continuous improvement. I mentioned that the first component to that is to understand the different types of people and how each type views change. Change is an important element of creativity and continuous improvement.

Everyone is unique, no two people are the same. This is true for our DNA, our personalities and our type. We have often heard the expression, he or she is not my type said to us by a friend. But what exactly does that mean?

There are six classic types of people and many combinations of types. So no two types can be the same. What is similar is the core tendencies of each classic type.

The basis for the classic types is rooted in our dominant intelligence. There are three intelligences that each human being processes, the physical or instinctive intelligence,
the emotional intelligence and the intellectual intelligence. Some practitioners of neuroscience calls them the three brains.

The basic difference between people starts with their dominant intelligence. A person who is dominated more by the physical or instinctive in physical intelligence2 telligence is more focused on physical beauty and pleasures and on performing tasks with force and determination.

The emotional types are heart centered people and see life through their emotions. They tend to want to help others and promote happiness. They make good listeners and are highly empathetic.

The intellectual types use their intellect first to interpret situations and people and define their preferences. They tend to like to express their ideas and opinions of which they have many and are prone to do a lot of research and analysis.

Just from these brief descriptions you might already have a new perspective on yourself and your team of employees. The better you understand someone’s dominant intelligence and type the easier it is to work with them.

Each type has their strengths and weaknesses depending on the situation, relationship and task at hand. To improve one’s effectiveness in working with others and performing tasks well, each person needs to become better balanced in all three intelligence’s. This means
using a good balance of your intuition or physical smarts, your intellectual thinking and your emotions. When all three are in good balance one can be highly effective in their relationships and task execution.

I learned about this types of people approach from my former colleague Fritz Glaus. Fritz wrote a book about this and also developed a leadership and team development training program that incorporates the six basic types methodology. In the book CrazYZoo, KnowThyself Made Easy, the reader gets involved by making a choice about himself before the start of the story and another one as he progresses through it. He discovers himself by taking on the role of one of the animals in the story. It is a simple yet highly effective method of learning about oneself and about others. You can download the book from this link for $5.

I will talk more about the types of people approach to self-knowledge in future videos. For now I encourage you to observe yourself and others to determine which of the three intelligence’s is most dominant and how it affects your behavior and relationships.

Stay in touch by subscribing to this channel and share your thoughts as well. Here is the link to the last video about employee creativity I mentioned earlier.

How to get employees to be more creative and drive continuous improvement

Jun 25, 2014 Comments

Continuous improvement and creativity go hand-in-hand. Entrepreneurs and business owners are typically creative people in the business sense and usually craft their businesses from an idea. It often takes a lot of trial and error to develop a winning formula for your business. Even though there are best practices that can be followed from a business strategy and management perspective, each business has its own personality and thus there is really no cookie-cutter approach.

As businesses grow and take on more employees. The business owner can no longer be involved in every aspect in detail of the business. He or she must rely on forward thinking employees who care enough about the business to want to make improvements.

There are three key components that affect the ability of employees to be creative, and continuously improve how they do things.

The first component is their human type. Certain types of people enjoy change and other types prefer keeping things as they are.

The second component is the level of self esteem and self confidence of the person. The higher these elements are in the employee, the easier it is for them to take risks and try new things.

The third component is the culture of the company, based on the leadership style of the business owner and top management. It is not enough to expect people to come forth with suggestions for improvements. The business leader must create a platform for people to engage in continuous improvement discussions so they can draft well thought out proposals to management.

In fact, the essence of teamwork is not only to have the right synergy among team members in order to execute well on a project. Equally important is for team members to be able to meet together and find opportunities for improvement that will keep the organization more nimble and effective.

Even the types of people who don’t like change, often have good ideas for how to improve things. They’re usually reliable dependent workers who you know will perform their tasks in a consistent fashion.

To have all employees contribute to continuous improvement business leaders simply need to organize regular problem-solving or continuous improvement meetings that uses a structured approach that is efficient and gets everyone to participate.

Business leaders can also raise people’s self-esteem and self-confidence by coaching them to do more challenging work and then giving regular positive feedback.

The more that the business leader delegates responsibilities and decision making. The more people will fill engaged and committed to the business and will want to ensure the company success.

If management is going to encourage employees to contribute their ideas for continuous improvement management must act on these ideas or let people know why they can’t. Even with all the new applications for sharing information amongst employees and management, is still in some ways, just like the old suggestion box. People do not see their ideas taken seriously. They will just develop a poor attitude towards management and the attempt to have them participate in idea generation.

In today’s global economy is imperative that every organization utilizes all its resources to continuously improve and find new ways to do things. If your competition is doing it. And you’re not. You are to big disadvantage and risk becoming insignificant to your clients.

Everyone can improve something every day that does not require approval from management. It could be just how customers being served to learning a shortcut on a computer program that will save time. We just need to have the mindset to want to improve and look for opportunities that are all around us.

Stephen Goldberg

How to Establish Personal and Organizational Values

Jun 18, 2014 Comments

When personal and organizational values are aligned and shared by key stakeholders great things can happen.

In my last video and article I spoke about two business leaders who claimed their company success was in great part due to their well communicated corporate values.

Creating corporate values is a pretty straightforward affair. You of course need to afford the time it takes to do it. And this is where many businesses fail, as a high percentage of business owners and leaders are too busy dealing with the day-to-day business matters.

Once you understand the benefits and the importance of defining your corporate values will set aside the time it takes to get it done.

Just last week I facilitated a values definition meeting for customer service department. Within two hours they had shared their key personal values and agreed on their five top departmental values.

The next step for them will be to define what each of those values means so they can be lived by the team members. Here are the steps to go through to set the values for your organization. It is imperative to have a skilled facilitator run these sessions. I good facilitator will set ground rules to make sure that the participants stay on track and come to a consensus.

Here is the process I use:

Personal Values

The first step is to meet with your team and brainstorm the personal values of each team member.

I like to start with a long list of personal values and have each person classify the values by order of importance using high, medium or low importance.

From this list. I then have them rate the high importance, values on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most important. Then I asked them to choose their top five most important values from the weighted list.

I then have each person share their top five values and write them on a flipchart. We then can see what the most common shared values are. Next I ask each person to choose one of the values and write down why that value is important to them. I have each person then share what they wrote and asked for comments from the others. This helps each person understand how each one thinks and helps build mutual understanding and communication.

Organizational Values

I follow the same process for setting the organizational or departmental values as I did with the personal values. The differences I start with a list of values that are different than the personal values. If you do not start with a list of values, you can always have the group brainstorm a list and then go from there. Having a prepared list facilitates the process and saves time.

Once we have listed the most important organizational or departmental values on the flip chart, it’s often easy to see the shared most important values. Often, there may be three or four that stand out and then you have five or six that may need prioritizing. I would suggest having between four and six key values and not more.

One way to prioritize the list of remaining values is to have the group go through the same exercise of waiting each value as before. This usually narrows down the list to two or three top values.

Values Definition

Once the top organizational department values are determined ask each person to write down a description of each value. I ask the question, what would other people see happening if everyone in your organization or department was putting into practice these values?

Depending on the size of the group. You can then have people pair up and take one value and summarize the definition of the value based on hearing what others had to say about that value. Or you could assign one person per value to take what each person wrote and summarize this in a statement. They would do this is an assignment and report back at the next meeting.

Broadcasting Your Values

It is important to broadcast your values and make them visible. A good example is Zappos who proudly showcases their values in their work setting and publicizes them. This creates a culture that strives to live the values and results in a better workplace as well as superior organizational performance.

Strategic Vision.

Defining organizational and departmental values that are linked to personal values is a key step in creating a strategic vision and plan. It’s a great way to engage people and rally them behind a purpose and mission.

It is also a key element in building an autonomous team that practices continuous improvement.

Stephen Goldberg

Yearly Archives: 2014