November 1, 2010

Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose: Motivating Employees without Money

As a communication coach, I often work with people who lack motivation in their current job and they seek the people skills to make and effective career change. This is how I’ve learned there are a lot of de-motivated employees out there and a lot of companies which pay a huge cost for this.

Motivation and Money

We are typically taught to believe that money is the perfect motivator, to which all people react very well, every time. If you want an employee to work harder and to be more productive, give them more money for their good work.

Well, reality is not that simple. As modern research in psychology, sociology and economics clearly points out, money can only motivate employees up to a certain point. Beyond that point, we need to consider motivating employees without money, using other incentives.

This doesn’t mean that you can pay an employee a crappy salary and still have them motivated. Some employers need to understand this as well: a decent salary is a hygiene factor.

However, once an employee has a good salary, you often won’t be able to motivate them further with more money. This applies especially in complex, non-linear jobs.

I think Daniel Pink, the author of the book “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” puts it nicely in this video, when he says (4:55): “The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table”. After you do that as an employer, the next step is mastering motivating employees without money.

Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose: The 3 Keys

There are 3 essential non-financial incentives which modern research consistently points out to work best. Daniel Pink also talks a lot about them.

  1. Autonomy. People want the freedom to work how they like, to set their own rules and conditions. They have the need to direct their own lives and their own work. This is why micro-managing employees is a bad idea.
  2. Mastery. People want to improve their skills, they want to continuously learn and get better at what they do. I’ve seen this many times as a coach: when a person feels they’re no loner growing, it’s the beginning of the end for their present job.
  3. Purpose. People want to contribute to something bigger than themselves. They want to feel their life/ work is meaningful and it serves a higher purpose, aligned with their highest values.

When employees have autonomy, mastery and purpose, extraordinary things happen, both for them and the organization. They are happy with their jobs, they are engaged and they deliver peak performance.

Going Beyond Talk

Autonomy, mastery, purpose – these are some shinny words. In practice, creating a work environment around these three non-financial motivators is not easy. It takes creativity, commitment and overcoming all sorts of obstacles.

I will often have a talk with a manager about people skills and using these motivators with their team, and I will hear an objection such as: “I would have to restructure the department to create purpose for my team. I can’t do that! That’s the HR’s job.”

No, it’s the manager’s job! I firmly believe that a good manager goes the extra mile to motivate their team, to help create autonomy, mastery, purpose. If the HR is in charge of restructuring a department, go talk to the HR and do all that you can to get their aid in motivating employees without money.

Many managers need to realize the real degree of influence they can achieve in a company, if they have the confidence, the people skills and the drive to really support their team. In my view, that’s what being a manger is all about.

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Filed Under: Career, Psychology, Success Tagged With: , , , , , , 9 Comments
October 27, 2010

The Worst Job in the World and the Way Out

One of the things I like about coaching is that it creates insights not only for the client, but also for the coach. I recently had a mind blasting insight during a communication coaching session about what is truly the worst job in the world.

It’s not pool cleaner or pig farmer. It’s rather a type of job than a job, which impairs people’s lives in a very cruel way and they often have no idea what’s going on. The worst job in the world, as I see things, is a warm job.

What Is a Warm Job?

You know: it’s not hot, it’s not cold – it’s warm. You may like the company and get along well with your colleagues, but you find the job kind of boring and it’s not really what you want to do. You don’t love it enough to say you have an awesome career but you don’t hate it enough to quit it.

There is a huuuge practical problem with a warm job, because a warm job keeps you stuck. If you truly hate your job, you desperately try to find a better one. I’m not a big fan of negative motivation, but I have seen cases where it helped people move forward to much better jobs.

However, if you have a job which is kind of OK but not really what you want, you will tend to stick with it for a long, long time. The worst job in the world is in my view a job that keeps you in your comfort zone without being highly rewarding, and this is exactly what a warm job does.

I know people who for the past 5-7 years or more, every time I meet, they tell me they would like a better job, as their present one is OK but it’s not exactly their dream job. Nevertheless, they are still in that same job. It is a warm job and it makes these people waste many years.

Escaping From a Warm Job

Because of the odd emotional dynamics it creates, a warm job is probably the hardest to get out of. This is precisely why I say it’s the worst job in the world. However, there are ways to motivate yourself and get out of it.

Working with people to help them improve their people skills and make meaningful career changes, I discovered 3 action steps work best:

1) Have a clear vision of what you want. Know your values, your motivations and your passions very well. This way, you will be fully aware when you are not in your ideal job, instead of just having a vague impression that you’re not.

2) Set big, bold career goals for yourself. You won’t get the motivation to leave a warm job until you make a firm decision to aim for the best job possible for you, to be all that you can be in your career. Big, shinny goals are a prerequisite for good motivation.

3) Set small action steps. I believe this is the most important part and what will truly get you out of a warm job. Small, step by step action steps create that continuous drive to keep moving forward. Set them daily and act on them.

For example, you may aim to spend 30 minutes each day looking for a new job on the Internet, and 2 hours each week networking with people who may be able to help you find a better job.

If you look purely at short term benefits, a warm job is certainly not the worst job in the world. However, if you look at things in perspective, a warm job is one hell of a way to sell yourself short. It’s important to keep improving (not only in terms of people skills) and keep moving.

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Filed Under: Career, Inspirational, Lifestyle Tagged With: , , , 10 Comments
October 21, 2010

Savior Complex Anyone?

Here’s a fairytale gone badly, as it sometimes happens in real life: There was once a little girl who believed that all good things will come to her if she is really nice and always helps other people.

She was always there for her aging parents; she even refused a dream job because it was in another town and she didn’t want to move too far from her parents. She would always help her friends, lend them money, give them advice and get them out of trouble.

Her colleagues at work could always rely on her and she would often get behind on her projects to give them a hand with theirs. She also had this affinity towards guys with serious problems (jobless, alcohol abusing, emotionally imbalanced), the kind of guys that desperately needed help.

After about ten years of doing this, she felt miserably. She wasn’t getting the love, appreciation and recognition she wanted, most people had started taking all her help for granted, her life did not look the way she’d hoped it would.

When I discussed with her in our first communication coaching session, focused on identifying the key social skills to improve, after about 15 minutes of conversation, bells started ringing in my head going: “Savior complex full throttle!”

What Is The Savior Complex?

The savior complex is a psychological construct which makes a person feel the need to save other people. This person has a strong tendency to seek people who desperately need help and to assist them, often sacrificing their own needs for these people.

There are many sides to a savior complex and it has many roots. One of its fundamental roots, in my experience, consists in a limiting belief the savior person has that goes something like this:

“If I always help people in need, I will get their love and approval, and have a happy life.”

This is of course, a nice sounding fairytale.

Houston We Have a Problem

Often, in real life, a savior will have such an unassertive way of helping others that instead of becoming grateful, they get used to it and they expect it. They feel entitled to receive help from this person, simply because they need it and they’ve always got it.

On top of this, always putting other people’s needs first makes a savior not take care of their own needs. So while they may feel happy because they are helping others, at some level, they feel bitter and frustrated at the same time.

Reframing Nobility

Here’s where things get worse: many people with a savior complex I’ve met, although they realize at some point that they have a savior complex and it is not worth it for them, they will not try to combat it.

They’re not masochistic; they have another belief that even if being a savior will not get them the recognition they want and will not make them happy, it is the noble thing to do. They believe they are somehow better than others because they help people all the time without getting anything back.

Do you have any idea how dim-witted this is? There is nothing noble in sacrificing yourself for others while you are starving at a psychological level. If our ancestors would have willingly done so 50.000 years ago, our species would be extinct.

If you think you have a savior complex or at least something close to it, I believe the best thing you can do is to face up to the practical consequences in has in your life. Being a savior is neither noble nor practical.

Learn to give and to ask for what you want, to help and to be helped. This is the healthy way to use your people skills and to interact with others.

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Filed Under: Attitude, Psychology, Relationships Tagged With: , , , 33 Comments
October 18, 2010

How to Deal with Controlling People

One variety of human beings we tend to have too many of in our lives (too many as in, more than zero) is controlling people.

Considering the stress they can create, knowing how to deal with controlling people effectively is serious business and it requires a key set of people skills.

Controlling People Explained

Fundamentally, controlling people have a powerful need to control others (doooh!). This need is reinforced by their belief (conscious or subconscious) that they can bend the will of other people to their own and use others to get their way.

Having lots of practice, most controlling people are real masters of pressuring and manipulating others. They often have very good people skills (the bad kind) and may initially come off as very charming.

The basisof beingable to deal with controlling people effectively, from my perspective, is making them understand that they cannot pull your strings. Thus, you are shaking one of their core beliefs and you have the best chances of them backing off.

4 Principles for Dealing with Controlling People

Starting from this basis, there are 4 key people skills principles I encourage you to apply, in order to deal successfully with controlling people:

1. Distinguish pressure from persuasion. When someone presents facts and logical arguments for doing something, while allowing you the freedom to choose, that is persuasion.

When someone uses lying, exaggeration, manipulation, drama and tries to take away your freedom to choose, that is psychological pressure. “If you care about me you’ll help me, nobody cares about me, oh poor little me” is not a persuasive approach, it’s a manipulative one, often used by toxic people.

Practice analyzing how people try to influence you and what methods they use. You will sharpen your skills of distinguishing pleasure from persuasion.

2. Say “No”, “Yes” and “Fuck you”. Firm personal boundaries are often set using firm, strong words. It may not sound polite, but trust me, when you are dealing with controlling people, this is how to get the job done. Honesty and directness in communication have a mesmerizing power to convey confidence and create results.

Practice saying “no” when you don’t really want to do something instead of trying to bail out subtly. Practice saying “yes” when you want to do something other’s don’t want you to do, and learn to tell people off sometimes.

3. Do not submit to pressuring behavior. When they can’t pressure you with words, controlling people will resort to pressuring behavior. The logic of the game is simple: whenever you don’t play by their rules, they withdraw a certain positive behavior or insert a negative one.

Controlling people may stop talking to you, helping you, doing their chores, having sex with you etc., in an attempt to get you to play by their rules. If you submit, you lose. There are only two ways to deal successfully with this kind of behavior: either not reacting, or withdrawing a positive behavior yourself.

4. Do not seek the approval of one person. We all need to be approved and loved by people. It’s a human thing. However, we never, truly, really need the approval of one specific person.

One important attitude lesson I’ve learned is that no one person is irreplaceable in your life. Realize this, let it sink in, and you have the freedom to piss off a controlling person without feeling bad. Thus, they lose their major source of power over you.

Learning how to deal with controlling people usually requires at least some serious self-coaching. In all this process, if you find it hard, keep in mind that you are improving a set of people skills with a positive influence that stretches into many areas of your life.

PS: I now blog and share advice over here. Connect with me.

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Filed Under: People Skills, Psychology, Relationships Tagged With: , , , 11 Comments
October 14, 2010

Improving Sleeping Habits and Change

Hey People Skills Decoded fans!

Interesting news: Steven Aitchison from Change Your Thoughts has just released an ebook called “How to Become an Advanced Early Riser” which I encourage you to check out.

I’ve read a pre-launch version of the ebook (I know people) and it really got me thinking about some of my sleeping habits, which is one of the best things a book can do in my perspective.

How to Become an Advanced Early Riser is a practical guide for sleeping less and feeling fantastic (at the same time). It covers some of the most important factors that influence the quality of your sleep, and it provides easy to understand and well structured advice for changing your sleeping habits. Find out more about this ebook here.

Speaking of change, there are a few YouTube videos I’ve found so valuable that I’ve bookmarked them. Some of them are from the area of people skills, some from related areas.

Today, I want to share one such video with you. It’s called “Who Moved My Cheese?” and it’s a short cartoon version of the best selling book with the same name by Spencer Johnson.

It’s a wonderful story about change, inertia, courage and personal beliefs which can provide real inspiration to both individuals and organizations in need of embracing change (who isn’t, right?).

Food for thought: What are the most important you want to make in your life? Are you trying to deny the real value some of them?

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Filed Under: Lifestyle, News Tagged With: , , , 7 Comments
October 11, 2010

How to Ask For a Raise at Work

I get a lot of questions on how to ask for a raise at work. This, I believe, is a good thing. People want the people skills and tools to make the best of life in general, and getting more money for their work is one particular manifestation of this.

There is plenty to be said on using people skills to get a raise at work. I almost did a whole day training once on how to ask for a raise at work. However, at this point, four important points come to mind as the key people skills tools to apply when asking for a raise. Here they are:

1. Schedule a special discussion just for this

You don’t want to just drop a hint that you would like to make more money while chitchatting with your manager in the elevator. Subtle hints like that are easy to ignore by an employer, especially those hints that suggest taking more money out of their pocket.

Instead, what you want to do is tell your manager you want to schedule a 30 min. private meeting with them, for an “important discussion” (yeas, the discussion can take that long). Preferably, don’t go into all the details of the discussion right then. Focus on scheduling it and leave the rest for the actual moment when it takes place.

2. Back up your request with solid arguments

The way I see it, a good request for a raise starts like this:

  • You thank your manager for the time they’re giving you;
  • You tell them the discussion concerns a potential salary raise;
  • You present the arguments for a raise;
  • You state the exact raise you want.

From there, a negotiation will frequently take place.

The most important step in this first phase is the third one: presenting the arguments. You want to back up your raise request with solid facts. You want to prove that your value for this organization has increased, present real results and indicators of performance. Your value for the organization is in my view, the only real justification for a raise.

3. Ask for more than you think you deserve

Once you decide how big you want your raise to be, set a slightly higher raise that you will ask for. I know that you may have the opposite impulse, to sell yourself short, but it is important to push yourself and ask for more, not less.

I say this is important for two reasons. The first reason is that you may get more than you actually deserve simply because you’ve asked for it and done so in a way demonstrating confidence and good people skills. The second reason is that it leaves significant room for negotiation.

4. Don’t let excuses get in the way of your raise

Many employees will present objections for a raise which have nothing to do with fairness and equity, but with more emotional factors. I call this making excuses. Practice distinguishing excuses from solid objections and do not let excuses make you abandon a raise request.

For example, many employees will bring this excuse: “If we give you a raise, your colleagues who will have lower salaries will want one as well”. The fact is, this is not your concern. If you deserve a raise, you should get one no matter how your colleagues will react.

Ultimately, I see getting salary raises as a natural part of work and a result of increasing the value you provide. It’s best not only to know how to ask for a raise, but also to realize you are entitled to it.

I have seen many times as a communication coach how with good people skills and a big dose of confidence, you can create incredible salary increases for yourself.

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Filed Under: Career, People Skills, Success Tagged With: , , , 2 Comments
October 6, 2010

Regrets of the Dying / Living

I’ve recently read this article called ‘Regrets of the Dying’ which I found to be breathtaking. The author worked for many years in palliative care, with patients on the dying bed, and the article synthesizes the most common regrets these people had.

Not only that I enjoyed this article, but it also inspired me to write my own reply article to Regrets of the Dying, with a focus on the regrets of the living.

Regrets as Life Lessons

I’ve never worked with people on their dying bed and I hope I never will. However, as a communication coach and a (sometimes) social animal, I did have my share of interactions with people who:

  • Were getting old and becoming highly aware of the passing time;
  • Were getting sick and becoming highly aware of their fragility;
  • Were seriously contemplating their lives and deaths for some reason;

Being sort of a collector of life lessons and people skills wisdom, I was curious to find out what regrets these people had looking back at their lives, to extract valuable lessons. So I asked many of them about this and consequently, I got my data on regrets of the living who are contemplating dying.

The Essential Three Regrets

Since I have a passion for people skills, the regrets I focused on finding out were of course in the area of people skills and how these persons interacted with other human beings. Here are the 3 essential regrets I’ve discovered:

1. I wish I did what I wanted instead of what others wanted.

I had many people telling me things such as:

  • “I wish I didn’t study and work in Engineering because my family wanted me to do so. I whish I had chosen Sociology instead, which was my real passion.”
  • “I wish I didn’t get married so fast because all my friends were getting married and expected me to do the same soon. I wished I had stayed single longer.”

In moments of meaningful contemplation, almost all the people I know seem to discover that living the way they want is or would have been much more rewarding than living a life pleasing others, no matter who those others are.

2. I wish I didn’t take what others thought of me so seriously.

When people look back at how they have lived their lives, many tend to discover they’ve spent a lot of time worrying what others thought of them. Of course, they also discover this was a huge waste of time, because most worrying was pointless.

Knowing they are going to die soon gives people a lot of perspective on how important others’ opinions about them are. Almost every time, they discover they’re not important. You could probably piss off half the people you know and that still wouldn’t have any serious negative consequences on your life, so it wouldn’t really matter.

3. I wish I’d spent more with the most valuable people in my life.

A vast number of people discover they misallocated their time resources. They didn’t spend enough time interacting with the most valuable people in their lives and they’ve spent too much time interacting with part of the rest. Why? Because they falsely believed they didn’t have a choice.

If you think about it, your life is a sum of experiences. So the quality of your life is fundamentally the quality of those experiences. If you realize at a deep level that you’ve wasted your most valuable resource on secondhand human interactions, then no excuse for doing this seems sufficient.

There is one key difference between the regrets of the dying and the regrets of the living. The dying don’t really have the time left to correct their mistakes. They can only teach others valuable lessons, about people skills and life.

The living on the other hand do have the time; but they need to stop every once in a while, look back at their lives and ask themselves: Is this how I want to live the rest of my life?

Yes, I’m talking about me and you…

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Filed Under: Attitude, Inspirational, Lifestyle Tagged With: , , 10 Comments
October 1, 2010

Email Etiquette at Work

Email is a form of business communication significantly different than any other form invented before. It’s not as fast as phone communication but it’s not as laborious as fax, it has a unique combination of communication features.

For this reason, we sometimes find it hard to discover and use the right email etiquette at work. I believe this is a highly relevant people skills topic particularly because we are becoming more reliant on email in the workplace. Thus, good email etiquette at work significantly improves our overall results.

With this is mind, here are 9 essential rules of email etiquette at work which I encourage you to put into practice.

1. Reply in a timely manner. My basic rule about email reply speed is the following: reply to any email in less than 48 hours and ideally, in less than 24 hours (weekends do not count). This kind of email expediency will be greatly appreciated by colleagues, clients and collaborators.

2. Use an auto-responder. When you’re away from the office for more than 2 days, with the exception of weekends, set an auto-responder to automatically reply to all emails, letting people know you are away and you have limited or no access to email (if this is the case). Also, leave them your phone number or the email of another colleague for emergencies.

3. Only add people in Cc if necessary. Just because someone added another person in the Cc field when sending you an email doesn’t mean you have to keep including that person in the discussion. Before putting a person’s email in Cc, ask yourself if that person really needs to get that email.

4. Do not ask confirmations for every email. There is this function which requests an email receiver to send a receipt that confirms they’ve read the email. Do use it with very important email you send, to make sure it has been read, but do not use it with all your email. It’s pointless and it will quickly annoy people.

5. Do not spam people. I do not want to receive on my work email address jokes, requests for donations, motivational stories, satirical Power Points or other such crap. Unless I want to avoid working, such emails are only clogging my Inbox. I don’t care about those things at work! Keep them for my private email address.

6. Put your name in the signature. This may seem obvious. However, you would be surprised how many emails I receive from addresses type “office@…” and no one has signed the email. So initially, I have no idea who I’m talking with and I get the feeling I’m talking with a machine rather than a real person.

7. Spell check your email. You don’t have to be a perfectionist about this; after all it’s just an email, not a resume. However, after you write an email, do read it once head to bottom before clicking the Send Button.

8. Keep it focused on business. Work emails are not for office gossip or sharing your entire life story with others. It’s OK to communicate in a human, authentic way using email at work, it’s not OK to fill an email with useless details which make the relevant business information hard to find.

9. End emails in a friendly way. Do use ending formulas such as “Best wishes” or “Have a great day”. Even if you use the same formula with everyone and it’s more of a reflex, it will still help. People like it when an email ends in a warm and positive way, wishing them things like the ones above.

In my view, email etiquette at work is definitely an evolving topic. As technology evolves, so does email and so do the rules of email etiquette at work. It is up to you to always use your head, keep your people skills in general sharp and seek to make the best use of email communication in the workplace.

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Filed Under: Career, People Skills Tagged With: , , 17 Comments
September 27, 2010

Quitting a Job with Style

I’ll tell you one thing many people seriously consider after working with me in a communication coaching program: quitting their job. I usually couldn’t be happier about this, as I believe that quitting a job is a natural part of career progress, which we often postpone unnecessarily.

Most people tend to find quitting a job as a delicate subject. They see all sorts of risks involved and they wanna do it right.

I think it’s a challenge to give generally applicable advice for quitting a job, as the context can vary a lot: some people quite a job because they absolutely hate it and they run like the wind, other people quit a job even though they love it, because an even better opportunity arisen.

However, I can think of 3 people skills principles which apply in most cases when quitting a job. They focus not only on doing it right, but on doing it with style. Here they are:

1. Don’t say you’re quitting your job at first

Many people are quitting their job for only slightly improved conditions, such as a slightly bigger salary or slightly more important responsibilities.

Often, if your employer knows about these extra benefits you want to leave for and values you as an employee, they will make you a counter-offer which you might want to consider. I have many examples of this happening and the employee deciding to stay after all, with improved working conditions.

This is why I believe in these cases, it’s best to not tell your employer directly that you’re leaving. Instead, tell him at first that you’re considering leaving and mention the extra benefits which are motivating you to do this.

Then, mention that you would like to stay with them if they make you a good counter-offer. Only if they do not, you can decide and announce firmly that you’re quitting your job.

2. Phrase it in the positive

One manifestation of good people skills I find highly valuable is talking about improvements rather than about solving problems. This technique works especially well when announcing that you’re quitting a job.

Preferably, don’t say: “I don’t like this job and I want to get the hell out of here”. Instead, say “I’m interested in a job which is closer to my passion and I think I have the best chances of finding one somewhere else”.

The main point is to talk about the improvements you aim to achieve through another job, rather than the problems you aim to get away from. This gets the best possible reactions from others and allows you to leave an employer without senselessly breaking the relationship.

3. Throw a farewell party

I bet you didn’t expect this one, did you?

Many times, people will quit a job although they get along well with most of their colleagues. Their reasons for quitting have to do with something else. So it makes sense to say goodbye to your colleagues in a fun, memorable way which communicates how much you appreciate them.

I call this a P-A-R-T-Y! You don’t have to through a big party and invite all the company. A small office, house, pub or club party with your dearest colleagues will do.

By the way: when I see ‘colleagues’ I’m including here your manager, clients, and collaborators – anyone you respect and have worked well with. Believe it or not, a farewell party when quitting a job can be a very good business networking and relationship building tool.

I believe it does make sense to try ending a work relationship on a positive note and good people skills will help you achieve this. At the same time, I think the best mental frame to have is that quitting a job is not a big deal.

With this mind frame, you can make quitting a job a simple, constructive and even enjoyable experience. Who knows, you might even make a hobby out of it…

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Filed Under: Career, Communication Skills, People Skills Tagged With: , , 12 Comments