#392 How do I motivate the organisation for a challenging year?

How do I motivate the organisation for a challenging year?

Motivation by content

The New Year has begun.

The week after 6 January is often seen as the actual start of the year. Vacation time is over, public holidays are over, and now the full activity of the organisation begins. Many organisations and their managers report the negativity they have experienced. Many see the coming year as difficult or at least very challenging. The conversations convey the same emotion.

How do you motivate the organisation and its employees for a challenging year?

Facts

Challenges must be accepted. We are in a difficult political situation. This aspect is a fact in many countries as well as globally. The consequences of this affect every organisation. Even if you are a small business operating outside of metropolitan regions, you, too, are subject to supply chains massively influenced by the overall political situation. A sense of political instability and permanent change has now reached even the last few employees. In recent years, you have had enough time to prepare your employees for the state of permanent change. However, most of them are not aware of the instability. As a manager, it is now important to avoid engaging in motivational-inspirational chumbawumba or the eternal tirades of opportunity as supposedly always positive change. Facts must be recognised. This aspect is the starting point for all communication.

Method

You now need the leadership triangle. This triangle consists of three equally large components. Identification, one of the main factors in keeping employees in the organisation. Quality, an important component to satisfy your customers. Time, a factor that is always limited. It is now essential to communicate clearly in which part of the triangle, in which corner of it, you find yourself as an organisation. If you focus on identification and quality, time will always be a challenging factor, and in some cases, the target times set will not be achievable. If you focus on identification and time, the quality of your results will not always meet expectations. If, on the other hand, you decide in favour of quality and time, employee identification will diminish. You must always move in one of these three areas. The area to avoid is the one in which you believe you can fulfil all three aspects at the same time. This attempt will only end in frustration for everyone involved and a lack of results. The particular combination you choose will be seen positively by employees as a communicated focus and will, therefore, be appreciated. The focus can change several times throughout the year. Always communicate this proactively and openly so that employees see clear guidance and leadership.

You can find more details on this in the current podcast (see links below).

Realisation

The first thing you need to learn as a manager is communication. Learn to speak freely. Speaking should be free, content-led and focused on the benefit of the group of people listening to you. This skill can be learnt, and no matter what excuse you used to make, it is essential for managers to master it. One-to-one conversations are the next building block. Listen to people and help them as much as you can. The situations and views may be very individual and not always comprehensible to you, so it is crucial that you show interest in a solution that is as satisfactory as possible for all parties involved through empathy or empathetic behaviour on the other side. It will also be important that you learn how to delegate. Especially in difficult times, many managers want to do too much themselves. You need to prepare yourself for crises and conflicts anyway. You can only do this if you master delegation, show trust and enable genuine empowerment.

Conclusion: with the right approach, honest, substantiated content, and clear goals, long-term motivation through identification is always possible.

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More on this topic in this week's podcast: Apple Podcasts / Spotify
See below for the Podcast Transcript.

Is excellent leadership important to you?

Let's have a chat: NB@NB-Networks.com

Contact: Niels Brabandt on LinkedIn

Website: www.NB-Networks.biz

Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.

Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, moderator.

Podcast Transcript

Niels Brabandt

The New Year just began, and many people say, well, it looks like it's a bit challenging, isn't it ? And that's exactly what we're going to talk about today . How do you motivate your organization when the year seems to be reasonably challenging ? The New Year now has begun . Many people say usually the real start of the year is from January 7th . That is due to different public vacations, holidays in different countries . So usually after that week is done, the real start happens, and that is what happened right now . Many people say I hear a lot of critical talk . I see a lot of challenges right now, and, of course, you very critical facts around where people are reasonably worried about what is going to happen with the organization in the future . So how do I mode an organization ? How do I motivate an organization when people are, let's just say, not too motivated by themselves because they are worried about the future . So first, we have to start with the facts . It's very important that challenges, problems, issues, situations, name it as you like, need to be acknowledged . What never happened is that you do not acknowledge them and simply say just move on . If anyone says shut your mouth and move on, that is the most horrible advice in the history of e economics . So never follow anyone who says anything like that . We are without any doubt, in a very challenging political landscape . When you look at any end of the world, it's going challenging and more challenging every single year . This has massive consequences for the whole economy and for every organization . When you work in public service, it's exactly the same . So when you say, oh, I'm just a small handyman with my 2 people business somewhere in a very small village, even you need goods and these goods are given to you, sold to you, delivered to you via a supply chain, which as you have seen just recently, just tuned up the pricing in a way that you say there's less profit than it has been before or you have to rack up the prices which ends up with either clients buying less or being more critical about what you do or whatever else could happen with it . So you see, anyone will be affected . No exception . Even when you say public service, you have people out there who expect you to deliver on promises . Even you need resources such as electricity . And all of that is not becoming any cheaper, and it's not available on an unlimited scale . It's getting more expensive and including climate crisis and whatnot else . This affects your work as well . Anyone is affected . We see the massive consequences throughout the whole economy, through our public service, absolutely anywhere . There is a feeling of constant instability and ongoing change . And here we have to decide between 2 things . The 2 things I just stated . Ongoing change is a topic we talk about for years . So when you now say my organization isn't prepared for that then this was a management and leadership mistake . You had years to prepare your people on with with different means that change is going to be ongoing especially technical change which affects any single aspect of business . So it is very important that if you haven't done so yet, please prepare your organization for an ongoing change . However, ongoing instability is hopefully temporary although looking into the future, I do not think it is too soon that this will end that we have this ongoing feeling of a certain level of instability . However, what you need to avoid and when you only avoid that, you're already on a better path than many other leaders because this episode is based on many emails which I received from people who either said, hey . Look, when my organization is done, I'm very happy with this positive example or even more . Many people emailing me and saying, look at why what my organization has done . I'm not very happy with that . And as usual, I will keep everything 100% confidential here . What you need to avoid is simply telling people to have positive thoughts . If you have any kind of these motivational inspirational statements, I give you an example . Someone will tell you, oh, did you know that in Chinese, the word crisis has 2 different letters . So first, they don't have letters, they have signs, but that's that's a different thing here . 2 different signs . 1 means crisis, 1 means chance . Every every crisis has a chance for positive development . And so first, people are sick of that . 2nd, if you never cared about Chinese culture and suddenly you pull that out of thin air, people will say, oh, there's a bit of a nitpicking here, a bit bit bit of cherry picking . Cultural cherry picking . So you like cultures as long as they serve your agenda . That, of course, is not possible . And when someone is really aware of Chinese culture and language, they will call you out on the lack of context you just gave, but that's a completely different story . Stop telling people just to move on . If anyone in today's circumstances, when something bad happens or something bad affects you and anyone gives you the advice of just shut your mouth, don't say anything, put your hat down and move on . If anyone still has that statement, that statement is actually really harming your people and your organization both at the same time . So just moving on is never a sustainable path and by the way, it it it never has been because many times when things really went wrong from abuse to misuse of, for example, children, women, or minorities, it always went on with, oh, just shut up and move on . Things will be better in the future and surprise, it didn't until someone spoke up . So just shutting people down will never work . Telling people everything will be alright because it never affected you, it always worked out somehow is also not a sustainable means of leadership . I give you an example . I could, of course, say, well, it always went well somehow . My business started when the IT bubble burst at the end of the nineties, followed by 9:11 terror attacks, followed by banking crisis, other economical crisis following, And, then we had a a COVID pandemic where everything was shut down for years . And I survived all of that with my business, so everything went very well, didn't it ? It will always turn out well . I can tell you 100 of 1,000, 1000000 people out there will tell you their side of the story saying how it didn't turn out well for them . So you cannot you cannot just play a game by chance . By the way, telling people don't criticize anything is toxic positivity and toxic positive positivity besides the fact that it's psychologically harmful is at least as unacceptable as toxic negativity . So we need a different approach . So how do we do that ? And what we need is a triangle . A triangle which is called the leadership triangle . Inside this triangle, you have 3 additional triangles . So 3 triangles within the triangle . And the first triangle in there is identification . We all know that we need identification because losing people in today's workforce and talent shortage is horrible and finding new people and getting them on board and getting them productive is extremely challenging . So, you know, identification is important . 2nd, quality . You have people on the other side of the service . No matter if you work in free enterprise where you have clients or if you work in public service where you have citizens on the other side sitting who expect a certain level of quality, you have sit you have someone sitting on the other end of the game telling you that was how how I expected it to be or not . And the third one is, of course, because you could now say, hey . Let's just make people very identified and then, we just strive for best quality, perfect life . Then anyone will say, yep . But then if we make everything puff perfect, we will not get the work done because we run out of time, and that's the third aspect . So we have identification, quality, and the third one is time . We don't have unlimited time . We all have the same amount of time . However, we do not all have the same amount of task every single day . Either you have seasons in your business or you have certain waves coming due to clients pushing more or less business in your organization or not . And now you have to do the following . When you have these three aspects, you need to tell people in which corner are we right now . One corner could be that you say we focus on identification because we can't lose people plus quality . So identification is important . We do coaching, leadership training, conflict management . We we do stuff for people to keep them motivated and we focus on quality because anyone will be happy then and we will always have sustainable client base when we focus on quality . Then people will say, sometimes you run over time and that is something which will happen . You do not aim it to happen . You don't want it to happen, but it might happen sometime . Practical example, the construction industry . The construction industry will rather go over the designated timeline for month before they will put a building to the general public, open it where humans will be harmed afterwards due to a lack of quality implemented when building the whole construction, the site, the building, the house, the mall, whatever else, the office buildings, you name it, they they deliver it . So they focus on identification and quality . That means sometimes you run out of time and then you have to deal with it . A challenge which is at least to be expected . So you need to deal with it and prepare for it because it will happen sooner or later . When you now say, well, that's not a great fit for my business, I need, of course, people who are very loyal . So I put money, I invest into people for identification purposes, but we need to focus on time . So for example, when you have courier services, you, for example, work for a large online retailer and they want their goods to be delivered somehow, somewhere, but on time, it needs to be on the day that you promised . Then sometimes the the the quality will not be sometimes the quality will be great or good or acceptable or somehow okay ish, but sometimes it will miss the mark . That will happen sooner or later . The deliveries where where the goods are harmed or or the quality of the product isn't great or you picked the wrong one . When you focus on identification and time, quality will be the issue, and that's foreseeable . So prepare for it . If you now say, well, I want to have the best quality and the best time so that makes clients happy . So I only focus on quality and time because happy clients are the only thing I need . Well, when you only focus on quality and time, then you will have less identification . You will lose people and that means you have to invest horrible amounts of money into recruiting and onboarding which will probably kill the operational margin that you have or when you work in public service . When you focus on quality and time but not identification, you will you will have an employee turnover and you know that especially in very complex legal issues and situation, it takes months, if not years, to onboard people properly . So here you see how and and now some people, by the way, might say, well, I think it changes during the year . Sometimes we do this . Sometimes we do that . Maybe we focus on identification and time . And then maybe at the midst of the year, we go identification quality . And at the end of the year, because we have a season and the Christmas season is get get things out because we need to serve clients, We need to get things sold because when we have Christmas season on on December 25th, that that that was it for another year . We have to get the goods out because then the the snow season begins . Then you will focus on quality and time at the end of the year, lacking identification, which you will invest in beginning of the year probably again . Or when you, for example, work in the agricultural industry, and I have quite some clients in the including largest manufacturers, largest organization in this industry, and they do all their identification means between October, November, it starts, and then it usually ends between February March because then the season begins . And that means harvest . Get the goods out there . Sell as much as you can . And that is very important that they focus on identification quality, identification and time from October, November to February, March, but quality and time in the meantime, and you will probably have the same . It is just very important that you loud and clear tell your people where are we right now, and if it's somehow possible, tell them for how long . Tell them, hey . At the moment, we can't do much for the identification thing . We can't do motivation events . We can't do any kind of parties or em employee events . We just have to get our goods out . We need to make the money right now . Afterwards, we will focus on identification and then probably some goods will be delivered a bit later because it's slow season and we have less to do anyway . So you have enough time to focus on that besides doing seminars and coachings . Tell people where are you within that leadership triangle . Is it identification and quality ? Is it identification and time ? Or is it quality and time ? The death value of leadership is if you try to do all of the 3 at the same time because then you're running around like headless chicken who tried to do anything before they drop that and then you usually leave the organization or you get fired because you didn't achieve your goals . You need to decide loud and clear . Tell people where you are . As soon as people know, hey, the next 3 months will be stressful, but then it will be more relaxed . People will be motivated by that because they know the timeline . They know the goal . So how do you implement all of that right now ? Implementation . 1st, learn how to speak . And I don't mean chitchat . I don't mean banter . I mean free speech, content driven speech, focused speech . Refrain from doing motivational, inspirational chamba wamba speeches . People are over it . They have enough . They can't hear that anymore . And by the way, it's that it's like that for years now . The time of the motivational inspirational speaker is over . They might have a certain very limited space during some conferences to have a nice atmosphere there, but that's a very limited spot in a very limited setting . In most organizations, no one wants to hear that their well paid manager shows up and say, well, you might see that some of you might lose your jobs now, but many people who were in your situation created great enterprises afterwards . Because 98% of the people didn't or 99.9% probably didn't . And people are annoyed by motivational inspirational nonsense when the facts speak against what you just said . You need to learn how to speak . You need to learn how to do corporate speaking, public speaking, free speaking, and it's always three aspects . Free speaking, content focused speaking, and so free speaking, content driven speaking, so proper facts, and then focus speaking . Learn it, and this is something you really can learn . I didn't learn free speaking just by sitting there and saying, oh, I think I need to somehow chat with people . No . I have professional training and coaching for years, and just get a starting point and take it from there . Learn how to freely speak in front of people . 2nd aspect, you need to do one to ones . And when managers still tell me, oh, I have so much on my table because I I just don't have time for that . I I have a team of 15 people . I can't do 15 one to 1 talks every 6 or 8 weeks . What what ? You have to . You simply have to . You have to find the time . It doesn't need to be an hour, but take time for half an hour . Listen to people, listen to their situation, listen to their worries, and help them as far as you can . Because as soon as people see that you help them as far as you can, they will already be more identified . More identification means more motivation, less thoughts of employee turnover and leaving the organization . Most likely they will work harder, more productively and they will stay longer . And that already at least clears your table from having re recruiting issues or productivity issues . So these one to one talks are important, and be honest with them what the situation is, but help them as far as you can . The more people you help, the more loyal employees you will have . And the third aspect is you need to be able to let go . You have to everything that's not meant to be on your desk, you have to delegate . And I know how hard this sounds because sometimes people say, well, I delegated and then I had a bad experience . We all had . I had, you had, anyone had, and that happens . But the answer cannot be you do everything by yourself . Because as soon as you drop the as as as soon as you call in sick, everything will collapse . You need to delegate things, tell people how to do it, and then have the learning curve with them where you see until it's on that level as you expect it to be . It might take couple of weeks, sometimes month, But then people are able to do it by themselves . It's not only relying on you . If everything's just relying on you, it will collapse . The the the question is not if . The question is just when . Learn how to delegate that you can focus on something that will happen this year . You will have conflicts and you will have crisis . Prepare for what could go wrong . I just recently talked that's just last week . I just recently talked to board of directors about an obvious challenge they have with their database and everything they do with their online shop is is is with that database . And I said, there's an IT staff shortage . What do you do when there's an emergency and no one's there ? Because then your your website is offline . You don't make any money . So what do you do ? And the answer was, we just hope this doesn't happen . Just ignoring the issue . That is never a sustainable solution . Prepare for conflict, prepare for crisis because crisis will arise, and then you need to be prepared . These moments of truth where people either say, hey, my leader protected the team, did everything they could to help us, or they just did grenade over the fence and ran off because they protected themselves over the team, then people will leave very quickly . The moment of truth is where you need to be prepared for . You don't know when crisis will hit this year, but it is guaranteed it will . It's either conflict or crisis or both at the same time . Be prepared . Wrapping this up, getting all that together . Conclusion . With the right approach of communication, with honest and content focused substantiated communication including goals, and I mean measurable goals, very clear goals, motivation with the means of identification, the lead triangle we talked about is always possible in a sustainable way, and I wish you all the best implementing that in your organization . And when you now say, that sounds like a bit of work, may I have a question or 2 about that ? Yes . Of course . Feel free to to to contact me anytime . Nb@nbhyphenetworks.com is my email address . I will put into the show notes of this podcast . Below this podcast, you will find my email address, then you find my LinkedIn there . Feel free to connect with me on there as well . Thank you very much, by the way, for the chats and the feedback I received there last week . And you also find my website there, which is nbhyphenetworks.biz . You also find on that website the transcript of this podcast, so feel free to access that there . The second aspect, which I always recommend is register for the leadership letter . When you go to expert.nbhyphennetworks.com, and I also put this in the show notes of this podcast, you will be able to register there . You only receive one email every Wednesday morning . It's a 100% content at free guarantee . And in this email, you get full access to all the podcast, full access to all the articles, including all the transcripts of all the podcast, and most importantly, access to the live sessions . We have live sessions usually once a month in average . Feel free to join us online, and then we can chat about anything you like . It's basically a q and a just online . It's always free access for everyone who is registered with the leadership letter because we only communicate when the next leadership, live session will be via the means of the leadership letter . So feel free to register there . I'm looking forward to seeing you there . The first step, however, is the most important one . Apply, apply, apply what you heard in this podcast because only when you apply what you heard, you will see the positive aspects that you obviously want to see in your organization . If you need help, contact me anytime . If you need anything very specific, coaching, training, keynote, we can chat about that . But if you just have some question or have a chat, let's do that as well . All available at your fingertips at no cost here . I'm looking forward to hearing from you . I'm available for you 247 . Every message you sent me, I will answer within 24 hours or less . I'm looking forward to hearing from you . And at the end of this podcast, there is only one thing left for me to say . Thank you very much for your time .