"If your employees get over-involved in community activities, church or social commitments, then you've got a big problem!"
Don Beveridge's words challenged me all that day, but now he went over the top. I was proud of every person on my team--and especially the team member's active church life!
But Beveridge had a point: we compete for the attention and creativity of our team members...and, sometimes, we lose that competition.
If we want to work with people who are involved in their community, church and family, how do we keep these good people producing at a high level at work?
Belated relatedness
It gets back to Alderfer's ERF Theory with Relatedness Needs, Growth Needs and Existence Needs. Everybody is wired a bit different so we, as leaders, need to understand our team members and their needs. To cover the three major need-groups:
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Build a positive and encouraging culture to build productive business relationships. Catch someone doing something great and acknowledge it in a note or a staff meeting.
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Set goals and achieve plans that allow your team to learn new things and prove their ability to accomplish big things. Write the goals so others can see with some kind of 'progress meter'. If it requires new skills, include that step in the progress meter, too.
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Celebrate the achievement, whether team or personal, to make the achievement memorable. Use your creativity, as well as good resources like 1001 Ways to Reward Employees by Bob Nelson.
These three areas help us keep our team engaged even when team mates are wonderfully and heavily involved in their churches and communities.
What are specific ways you see that help keep your team engaged while your team mates are involved in service?
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