If you're a business leader looking to foster positive workplace culture, enhance team effectiveness, and navigate challenges effectively while focusing on strategic objectives, or if you just want to make work work better then join us for a mini workshop where we share three things you can do today. I'm your host Dr. Marc Reynolds, and Today is a mini workshop based on the Dana Oakes interview. One of the things Dana Oakes said was, “Part of my job was to curate.
uplift and maintain a culture of excellence. Today we want to share with. You three practical tips of how to curate, uplift and maintain a culture of excellence without fear based motivation. Why? Why? Without fear based. Motivation? Well, fear based motivation is something that's been super common in the workplace and in our world around us. Fear is a great motivator to get people. To do things. It's a way to control people. Unfortunately.
It isn't the best way to influence Or help people be their most productive. So instead, what we want to learn how to do is how to motivate people in a way that uplifts them, that encourages them, that makes them excited and Thrilled to come to work every day because they're looking forward to what's coming next. What are three things that you can do today? First, you can lead by example. Demonstrate excellence in your own work ethic and decision making. Now that sounds great.
But practically, how do I do this? Well, one of the things to remember Is that a culture of. excellence isn't Necessarily about the product. being excellent, though that will be the result. It's about creating a process oriented company where you are helping people learn how to grow, progress and become better every day. It's about evolution and growth more than it is about creating excellent products.
Where we get the fear based motivation is where the excellence in the product is the only thing that matters. Reality is we're human. We're going to make mistakes. We're going to make errors. We're going to learn new things. We're going to be able to improve and evolve. So if we can make the focus a system that will organically create excellence if we are focused on continuing to grow then that is something that is sustainable, exciting and motivating to people. Show that it's more about.
Learning from your mistakes, and it is about not making mistakes. That you Want them to take. good risks, to innovate, to create, to try something new. Part of that is being willing to be wrong yourself sometimes, and highlighting that and showing what am I learning? How am I Growing? What am I thinking from this mistake that I made that Is helping me. to be more excellent tomorrow than I was today?
The second way to build a culture of excellence without fear based motivation is to set clear expectations, communicate realistic goals, and provide necessary Support. Well, what do we mean by that? You can use a Smart goal You can make sure you're covering the. Who, what, where, when, why and how. But if you aren't communicating then that's the first step. Second step. ask them to restate what they think your expectations are. Most of communication breakdown.
Is. In just human, flawed human error. We say something and assume they understand our intention of what we meant. But the reality is. Most of our language can be interpreted in many different ways. So we won't know if communication is clear until we hear back from them that what they're saying matches what we're saying. We might think we're being crystal clear in how we're communicating, but we can't be assured and be consistent. In our communication without that feedback.
Look for assumptions in what you're communicating. Take a moment to think. How might someone else. Interpret what I'm. Saying differently? Get rid of assumptions. Be clear. One way to do that is to speak so that any average sixth grader could understand you. It needs to be simple, short, concise, and to the point with simple language and not making any assumptions that people understand what you mean or the. Context. Doesn't mean you have to be.
exhaustive But if you can really clarify it down So sixth grader understand that you'll be in good shape. The third. Thing I'm going to suggest. For building a culture of excellence without. Fear, based motivation. Is to foster open communication. Create an environment where feedback is encouraged And valued. Not just giving lip service, but where it's followed up on where you're expected to report. It's okay to make a mistake. It's okay to ask for more time or to ask for help.
That requires that you take Time. to get feedback and to apply Feedback. Make it a regular part of meetings. Regular part of your interview with employees. Just put that in as something you always. do. Ask for feedback towards yourself. How could we have made this meeting even more effective? It only needs to take a minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. One idea of how To improve next time is all we need. to keep moving forward.
Most importantly, it's to put systems in place where people feel safe to give feedback that is candid and gives the entire picture. They may think, well, that's an anonymous survey. Not necessarily. One of the problems with this anonymous survey is you don't have a person on the other side asking follow up questions and digging deeper and really getting an understanding Of what is really. going on.
Often with surveys and feedback questionnaires what happens is people write to the question and they'll give you a piece of information, but they'll only give you as much as they think needs to be heard. When sometimes There are. patterns among all the comments or comments that are made that if there's a live person on the other side, they can dig deeper into that and really understand. the real Challenge or the. real opportunity ahead of them.
That's one of the reasons why we offer the service of third-party skip-level interviews, or we also offer a whistleblowing service. We offer being a third party, where we protect an employee's anonymity and make sure that they are advocated for without the fear of reprisal or without fear that they're going to be labeled as a complainer or whiner or that they're going to be fired. You might think. but doesn't that just enable a culture of whining?
And the answer is no. We make sure that we empower people to solve their own problems. We aren't just a source for people to vent and complain. We really are there to sort and sift out patterns among a company culture and moral, legal, and ethical problems that need to be. Addressed. It's not just a hindsight tool. It's a way to predict and See problems or opportunities. that are coming down the pike. It becomes a predictive tool.
Here at the end, let me give you the short list of things that you might try today to improve your practice and to make work Work better. First, Along the lines of leading by example, share something you are learning or working on with your team, Show them what learning excellence looks like not just by what you do but sharing what's going on in your head, your thought process, how you learn, how you think, how you question yourself. Number two.
One simple way to improve the clarity of your communication today is to get in the habit of asking for restatement. For example, you might give a directive or explain something, or share something and then ask something along the lines of Could you please. Confirm your understanding of. The task or of what I shared? I want to make sure I've communicated everything clearly. This makes it so that it's not Their fault. if they don't understand but that what You're doing
is acknowledging that communication is a two way. street. It's not just what you say, it's also how it's heard. You want to make sure That if. clarity needs to be made, you want to do it now and not down the road when it's too late and time and resources have been wasted. Three. Foster open communication, where feedback time is a regular part of meetings. Put it on meeting agendas, put it on your calendar - five minutes. Or less for feedback at the end of a meeting.
Regularly go back to that feedback and report what happened. What you did on it. You want them to say, ‘I heard this feedback. And so this week I did this, this, this, this.’ If you model it, they'll get the idea. And if you keep asking them to report On the feedback that we discussed last time they'll understand that they need to pay attention to that and be ready to report and hopefully take the initiative moving forward. As always.
I'm sure that most of what we talked about, if not everything you already know My goal here today is to make Sure that. I'm reminding you of the things that you know, and that you have some clear ways that you can make work work better. Next time for our mini workshop, we're going to explore the power of externalizing your thoughts and plans with your team. See you next time.