Motivate Employee Teams
The Enthusiastic Employee

Enthusiastic employees outperform their less motivated peers.

They provide the spark to motivate employee team members, to rally in times of stress or when they are focused on a difficult challenge.

When learning to motivate employee teams, you must recognize that there is one major thing that tends to dampen the spirits of the enthusiastic employee – that one thing, unfortunately, is MANAGEMENT.

When it comes to motivating employees, there are 33 beliefs of most managers that have little or no basis in reality.

These “myths” cover several areas and when applied to the typical employee or work group, do little to motivate employee teams or promote increased productivity. They also often contradict each other, as "common sense" beliefs often do.

Leaders looking to motivate employee teams must beware of blindly buying in to any of the following beliefs.

”I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that, for you to gain, those you deal with should gain as well.”
- Alan Greenspan

The Enthusiastic Employee provides supporting research debunking these myths.

The 33 Myths include:

1. Workers care most about their pay and benefits
2. People are never satisfied with their level of pay
3. When employees complain about their pay, they are really unhappy with something else
4. To a great degree, praise can be an effective substitute for money
5. Traditional merit pay systems work
6. Profit sharing is a major motivator of employee performance
7. To survive in a competitive marketplace, companies must keep wages as low as possible
8. Employees object to a large difference between their earnings and the earnings of senior management
9. People who feel secure in their jobs become complacent
10. Telling people they’ve done a good job makes them complacent
11. Companies that have no hesitation laying off surplus workers do better than companies that go to great lengths to keep their workers employed
12. Most people doing routine work hate it
13. Most people dislike work of any kind
14. Most people don’t care whether they do a quality job
15. Professionals are much more concerned about doing a quality job than are nonprofessionals
16. Whether workers should be treated as thinking human beings depends on the type of work they do. For example, it is useless -- even counterproductive -- for employees doing routine, highly standardized work to be involved in decisions about the work.
17. If they are not supervised closely, most workers will try to get away with whatever they can
18. Most workers dislike their immediate managers
19. It is the immediate manager that is the cause of most employee morale problems, making it difficult to motivate employee teams
20. No matter how nicely a manager does it, correcting an employee’s performance will be resented by the employee
21. People who have too much to do are more unhappy than people who have too little to do
22. There are major differences between generations in what people want from their jobs
23. Young people today resent authority much more than young people did two or three decades ago
24. Young people today are much less concerned with job security than were previous generations
25. There are major differences between cultures and countries in what people want from their jobs
26. Loyalty between employees and their employer is -- and should be – dead
27. Companies that are loyal to their employees are less successful as businesses
28. Traditional organization principles -- such as the need for hierarchy -- are stifling and outmoded in today’s "new economy"
29. Whether a company is ethical and a good corporate citizen is of little concern to most of its employees
30. It is best to foster internal competition to improve performance
31. Most employees resist change, whatever the change is
32. "A bitching army is a good army" -- when employees are happy it is because their employer is giving them too much and not demanding enough from them
33. You can’t generalize about people at work because every individual is different

”Human capital will go where it is wanted,
and it will stay where it is well treated.
It cannot be driven;
it can only be attracted.”
- Walter Wriston, Former Chairman, Citicorp/Citibank

Contrary to the above 33 myths, The Enthusiastic Employee gets a true sense of achievement from six primary sources. Master the use of these six sources in order to motivate employee teams effectively:

1. Challenge of the work itself. - the extent that an employee can use and develop their intelligence, skills and/or abilities.
2. Acquiring of new skills. - an enthusiastic employee is one who is growing and expanding his or her library of knowledge and resources.
3. Ability to perform. - you can more easily motivate employee teams when they are receiving the training, direction, resources, authority, information and cooperation needed to perform well.
4. Perceived importance of the employee’s job. - an enthusiastic employee feels strongly that his efforts are important and provides value to the organization, to the customer, and to society.
5. Recognition received for performance. - the enthusiastic employee needs and appreciates both monetary (compensation) and non-monetary (simple “thank you” from boss or customer).
6. Working for a company of which the employee can be proud. - it’s easy to motivate employee teams when employees have pride in the organization’s purpose, products, business success, ethics and the quality of its leadership.

The staff at Leadership-Tools.com highly recommends The Enthusiastic Employee. In the back of the book there is a useful tool that a leader might want to leverage to motivate employee teams – The Readiness Questionnaire.

The Readiness Questionnaire is a short survey that can assist a management team to come to terms with its own views and policies on the subject of employee morale and motivation.

Read The Enthusiastic Employee, motivate employee teams more effectively and enjoy the self-fulfillment you’ll receive when supporting people that are happier in their roles, more productive, stable and effectively inspired.

”As they say on my own Cape Cod, a rising tide lifts all the boats. And a partnership, by definition, serves both partners, without domination or unfair advantage. Together, we have been partners in adversity – let us also be partners in prosperity.”
- John F. Kennedy, June 25, 1963, West Germany

Let’s get started right now! Find out just exactly what each employee would like as a special reward by requesting a Free “My Favorites Tool”. This simple tool will provide a way for you to know what each employee would truly appreciate and see value in when they are being recognized. Don’t worry, these aren’t costly items, rather they are tokens that will tell each employee that you value him or her and took the time to ask them what their favorite items are. It works!

See below how to receive your free PDF file containing the MY FAVORITES TOOL.

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» The Secret Behind Motivation In The Workplace.
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We're constantly on the lookout for highly effective ways to motivate employee teams, using tools and resources that we can recommend to our readers. Share your own helpful hints and tips here.

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