Tag Archives: employeeengagement

Leadership Tip for Engaging and Motivating Employees

Being a leader comes with a lot of responsibilities. One of them being: how do you keep your employees feeling engaged and motivated?

Here is a way we have found to further engage your employees, particularly if you have meetings or trainings.

At the beginning of every meeting, start by asking each employee to take 20-30 seconds to talk about what they are excited about right now. It could be a win they’ve recently had or progress that they’ve made at either work or in their personal life.

Doing this, will enhance your leadership, increase engagement and create enthusiasm within the company.

If you found this idea helpful, please share it with somebody that’s a fellow business owner. We’d love to hear back from you if you have any comments about this as well. To learn more about this or other ways to have a great meeting, schedule a free consultation or you can also subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Make it a great day!

by Scott Ballard , August 8, 2023

Acknowledge the Wins!!

Do you know how to start your meetings with wins so that everyone will want to attend your next meeting (be it virtual or in person) and be excited about it??

As we work with clients, one of the things we are seeing is that they’re having a lot of meetings and/or doing a lot of strategizing. They’re meeting with their team all the time. Those meetings tend to be a real drain, not only for you as the owner or manager, but also for the team. So our tip for you today is an idea that can help stimulate and make meetings much more productive so that you can get a greater result out of them.

Here’s the simple tip that you can add to each meeting at the very beginning once everybody is there. This has nothing to do with your agenda or the project that you’re working on, nor does it have to do with what you want to talk about.

Start your meetings with everybody in the group taking 30 seconds and sharing what they’re most excited about in their life right now.

For example, it could be at work, it could be personal, it could be family related, it could be a recreation or whatever they’re doing — but give everybody a chance to do this and share. What you’ll find is that mentally by doing this, their engagement will increase 10 times just because now they’re talking and thinking about something that they’re truly engaged in. There’s energy around this and it will then transfer on into what you’re talking about in your meeting. They’ll have this positive mindset and be ready for the meeting.

So this is how we change meetings from being basically the “death of a business” to something that people look forward to! Recognize and let people acknowledge the “wins” in their life. Because if you do this at every meeting, as you go on, people will come with the anticipation of sharing what they just did. Maybe someone will say, “Oh, I want to share with everyone that I just finished my first half marathon” or, “I just did this…” and they will say what they are excited about. This is how to change meetings from being this thing that people dread and they think are wasted time killers to making them productive, exciting and a great experience.

Make it a great day!

by Scott Ballard , May 11, 2022

How to engage your employees

As we help business owners and CEOs with employee engagement, some of the questions that I ask them are: How do you engage your employees?

What’s fundamentally going on in the employee’s mind?

What are they really seeking in this working relationship?

Two Takeaways.

There are two things today that I want to point out to you that are really important for your employees.

The first is to be “known”. People want to be known for who they are and hear their name said. When you call them by name, it makes them feel good. Think about this — How many times do you walk down the hall, go through the warehouse, or maybe you’re out on a job site, and you don’t acknowledge someone that you see? Do you call them by name and say hello? Or, do you simply go on by? Do you ask how the project is going? How their day is going? Are you too focused on your own thoughts to stop and be friendly?
The second thing is to give your employees a place in your business or relationship where they have a voice and can be “heard”. Do you have a specific place where they can report to you about safety, a project, ideas for the company or just whatever’s going on in their mind? Do they feel comfortable expressing their thoughts or concerns to you?

When we work with companies, we not only work with the owners and leaders, but we also work with their employees using The Dream Employee. Being known and heard are two of the biggest needs we hear from employees. I hope you will use these two big takeaways to improve your company culture and engagement.

This sounds relatively simple to do. However, it takes intentionality on your part to really make your employees feel that they are known and heard. These two things are critical. If you’d like to learn more of what we do and how we can implement The Dream Employee in your company, schedule a free consultation today.

by Scott Ballard , May 10, 2022

Give hope and show you care

We’ve been talking about ways for better employee engagement, retention and how to deal with the great resignation and ghosting that is so prevalent today. The employees today want more than just to have a job. They want to be seen as individuals with a purpose, be known, heard and even loved.

Let me ask you a question: “Does everyone have a dream or goal for their life?” — the answer is definitely “Yes!” We have created a benefit for your employees that will show that you really care for them personally which will create more hope and commitment and loyalty within your company.

The Dream Employee

We work with companies who hire us to come in and implement a process with their team members called “The Dream Employee.” The Dream Employee is basically the concept of finding out for each one of your team members what their dream, goal or aspiration is for their life. If you can find out what really motivates them and have a conversation with them about how you can support, encourage and help them to achieve their goal, this in turn helps them see the connection between their work or job and the contribution they are making in your business with what they are after. By figuring out what really motivates them internally in their personal life and showing them the connection between their work and their goals, we find that we’re able to transform whole cultures, have greater employee engagement, and improve the feelings and emotions of people. They bring their best self to work.

Goodwill

When you start talking about the one, two or three things that they are most motivated about personally, you’re depositing goodwill into them. In doing so, when they come to work on Monday morning, they come with batteries! Meaning – they come to work ready to go because they understand the connection, they feel your support, and they know that you know what is really important to them in their life. This could be a myriad of different things — maybe it’s putting braces on their daughter’s teeth, it could be getting a second car, a dream vacation to Italy, learning a new language, finishing a college degree, getting their GED, learning woodworking or painting, or maybe running their first half marathon. It could be any number of things — the list of people’s dreams and goals are endless!!

But what we’re saying is, if you invest time systematically into what’s most important to them, then ultimately they’ll start to see the connection between their life and their work. They know you care! So then when you speak about what’s most important to you or what the vision or mission of the company is, they will respond to that in a much more positive and open way.

The other benefit of this is when you do have to have those difficult conversations about their performance or attitude or about something that went wrong or needs correcting, you have made positive deposits into their life by supporting their goal. This helps those difficult conversations go much better and there’s a lot less negative pushback because they know that you really care about what they really care about.

Celebrate the Wins

This also creates a whole culture of amazing momentum. It’s a culture where as people are achieving things personally, we all celebrate (just like when the company wins)! We celebrate them as individuals as they accomplish whatever goals they have; doing so builds unity, collaboration and a winning attitude in your business.

We get great pleasure doing this with companies. If you are interested in learning more about The Dream Employee, reach out to us today. We’d love to talk to you about it. We can also introduce you to other companies that are doing this and having great success. Make it a great day!

by Scott Ballard , April 29, 2022

Playing the Long Game

The expression “playing the long game” seems to be counterintuitive in today’s instant gratification world, but we need to think of our business, employees, and customers in the sense of a lifetime. We all need to play the long game.

So here’s my question to you:

What’s the long game for your business? Where do you want to be ten years from now?

What’s the long game for your employees? How will they be positively contributing ten years from now? How do you help them to achieve their own dreams, goals and aspirations so that they are happy, engaged and your biggest company cheerleader?

What’s the long game for your customers? How will their needs change ten years from now?

Focusing on the long game brings in a bit of double vision. Here’s what I mean:

Having a successful business today is important, of course, but it has to be coupled with your plans for a successful business ten years from now.

The long game is what all successful long-term businesses do well.

So what is your long game?

Schedule a free coaching session if you want help figuring it out.

by Scott Ballard , August 11, 2019

Give Them Clarity and Vision for the Future

One of the areas where employees feel uncertain (which makes them not perform at their highest level) is when they lack clarity and a long-term vision from the owner or CEO. An effective way for you as the business owner to lead your team and employees is to share with them your vision for the future.

We’ve been helping our clients to have what we call a “clarity” talk. So, if you haven’t let your employees know your vision in the last six months — now’s the time.

Here’s how you can give a clarity talk. Get your group or team together. In about 15 or 20 minutes: give them the long vision of what you’re seeing and what your plans are; what the strategy is; where you’re going; what’s happening in the industry.

They need to hear this from you at least a couple of times a year. By doing this, you will find that all the uncertainty about the future and all the negativity that is coming at them (fear via social media, the news or maybe something happening in their own life), will be dispelled a little bit. They begin to realize that you’re actually thinking, planning, and strategizing about the long-term future of your company as it goes forward. This helps bring clarity to them. Which in turn brings confidence and courage; and a willingness to invest even deeper into the work that they’re doing in your business.

We suggest that you focus on giving a message of clarity that comes directly from you about the business and about their long-term future. A lot of your employees are looking at the company as their future vehicle to get them where they want to go. But if they don’t hear it from you on a consistent basis, their minds can wander. They can think that another company is a better opportunity because there’s more clarity about where they’re going, what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and who’s doing what.

The “clarity” talk also works well in conjunction with The Dream Employee program where you invest in and help your employees achieve their hopes, dreams and aspirations. Your employees really feel cared for. They know where the company is going; and they also know that you want to help them achieve things in their life personally too. It’s a win-win situation!

So that’s our tip for today. Bring clarity and leadership to your company by giving them this clarity/vision talk on a regular basis. Once again, if you found this valuable, let us know. If you’d like to know more about how to prepare a clarity talk or how The Dream Employee program works, schedule a free consultation.

by Scott Ballard , August 4, 2019

Find the “Why” of Your Employees

Everybody’s looking for an edge in business. One way to have the advantage over everyone else is to find the “why” of your employees, team, managers, and leadership. Use this to show them how to connect the “why” for them personally to the “why” for the company. If you can do this, then you’ve really got something special! We call this an unfair advantage in the marketplace because your people are internally motivated; with their big “why” being the secret sauce. This is an advantage over your competitors.

Finding the “why” of your employees is critically important in order to get the most leverage out of your people’s talent and ability as they help grow the company. It doesn’t matter how many employees you have (10 or 10,000). You create an ecosystem that can provide you with long-term internally motivated employees by finding their why.

Most people come to work because they have goals and dreams in their life that they want to achieve. By finding the why and connecting their why with their job or work that they do in your company, you show them how one supports the other. This is just one of the things that we do when we introduce The Dream Employee into a company. As you help your employees to achieve their personal goals and aspirations, this creates a better work environment because they know you care about them.

Why are they working at your company? Why are they doing the work that they’re doing? What is the purpose of their job? Are they clear about it being a vehicle for them to achieve the things that they want to achieve in their life? Have you helped them draw the connection between their job and their big “why”?

This is an area where you have to start asking these questions — even in the interviewing process when you’re on-boarding somebody. Why are you here? How do you see this job as a fit in achieving your personal goals in life? What part does it play? Do you understand how your job can help you achieve your hopes and dreams and the big “why” of your life? When you know their “why”, you can then support them in it.

So “why” is a simple question that can dramatically improve your employee engagement with all your employees. It’s a conversation that you’ll always find fruitful in managing, supporting and leading your team. If they understand their “why” then you can communicate better what the company’s “why” is and then you can correlate and connect the two of those together. When people get clear about their “why”, they gain confidence. They get committed to the task. They have a sense of courage that takes them to a new level of performance.

We look forward to hearing what you’re finding when you’re asking “why” questions. Let us know because we’d love to talk to you about it.

by Scott Ballard , July 28, 2019

Greatest Untapped Resource

Did you realize that your greatest untapped resource or asset in your business or organization is your employee? How are you taking care of them and letting them know that they matter and are of vital importance to your business?

The Dream Employee program that we implement can be a benefit to your organization. It shows the employee how much you really care about them because it’s all about helping the employee to achieve their hopes, dreams and aspirations.

When an employee sees that you really care about what’s important to them outside of work, they begin to see the connection between the work that they’re doing and achieving their own dreams and goals. This is a way to help them understand that their job is a vehicle to achieve their own personal goals. By your encouraging and supporting them in achieving their goals, they come to work ready to go because they are in the process of achieving. They come to work with their batteries fully charged! There is connection and purpose between their work and their personal achievements. This is a win for the company and a win for them too.

So, the greatest untapped resource for pretty much every business is the employee. We go into companies and help them to see this and show them what role the company can play in helping their employees achieve their own personal dreams, goals and aspirations. This in turn, helps the company be successful going forward because you have happier and well-cared for employees.

If you’d like to talk about how we help people implement this into their business, reach out and schedule a free appointment today at Confidence Coach.

by Scott Ballard , July 21, 2019

Business Owners Guide to Employee Engagement

Establishing a #business can be easy but the real challenge lies in earning trust and a good reputation from your employees, partners, clients and customers. Regardless of the size of a business and the number of employees, owners need to develop strong leadership skills, interpersonal skills and a sense of responsibility. Always remember that one unhappy employee can affect the present and future relationship with clients.

by Scott Ballard , July 19, 2016