Showing posts with label how to motivate an employee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label how to motivate an employee. Show all posts
Why do employees resist change?
They resist change because we all resist change. Every animal and plant on the planet resists change.
It’s instinctual, not really under our control. There are, however, ways to help encourage change and work past the resistance compassionately using well understood behavioral science techniques.
The task is to simultaneous eliminate the old behavior while training up the new one. This is a process that is done over time and has to be nurtured and supported. You can’t just do a training and expect everyone to change. That is not how it works.
The best advice to help managers succeed in a change management process is to not freak out at the resistance. Even people who want to change, resist it. Instead, plan for the resistance. Understand it’s not a rebellion, it’s just a necessary part of the transition and continue to put positive pressure toward change and to positively reward the people who do adopt the change. Positive re-enforcement works better than negative – in all cases.
Depending on the size of the organization, one of the ways to ensure success is to stage the transition using the people most likely to adapt to the new changes first so that you essentially have a proof of concept. You work to make sure the new way of doing things is well established before bringing in the next group.
For example, one of my first jobs was that of a volunteer manager. I had 10 volunteers at a non-profit who thought their job was to spy on staff. The staff/volunteer relationships were toxic. I started out small. Found 3 employees who were willing to experiment with the volunteers. We trained the volunteers on the new job we were asking them to do. Those that didn’t want to do it were let go. I worked carefully with both staff and volunteers for about 2 months making sure the staff felt supported so that they could establish good working relationships with the volunteers. It was a learning experience for both groups. Once those 3 staff members had volunteers they were working well with, other staff members started asking me to get them volunteers to help them with their work.
I had proved the concept and people started wanting to adopt. Was it easy? No – each new staff volunteer relationship needed to be nurtured and supported to be established right. Only then could I move on to the next group. Within a few years I had 500+ volunteers donating 20,000+ hours per year in every department of our organization.
Cultural change on a large scale is possible, if you know what you are doing and aren’t afraid of the resistance.
You must work with and around the resistance. Don’t fight it. Resistance is normal. Make space for it within the change management process.
To learn more take my online course: Why is Change so Hard.
It’s instinctual, not really under our control. There are, however, ways to help encourage change and work past the resistance compassionately using well understood behavioral science techniques.
The task is to simultaneous eliminate the old behavior while training up the new one. This is a process that is done over time and has to be nurtured and supported. You can’t just do a training and expect everyone to change. That is not how it works.
The best advice to help managers succeed in a change management process is to not freak out at the resistance. Even people who want to change, resist it. Instead, plan for the resistance. Understand it’s not a rebellion, it’s just a necessary part of the transition and continue to put positive pressure toward change and to positively reward the people who do adopt the change. Positive re-enforcement works better than negative – in all cases.
Depending on the size of the organization, one of the ways to ensure success is to stage the transition using the people most likely to adapt to the new changes first so that you essentially have a proof of concept. You work to make sure the new way of doing things is well established before bringing in the next group.
For example, one of my first jobs was that of a volunteer manager. I had 10 volunteers at a non-profit who thought their job was to spy on staff. The staff/volunteer relationships were toxic. I started out small. Found 3 employees who were willing to experiment with the volunteers. We trained the volunteers on the new job we were asking them to do. Those that didn’t want to do it were let go. I worked carefully with both staff and volunteers for about 2 months making sure the staff felt supported so that they could establish good working relationships with the volunteers. It was a learning experience for both groups. Once those 3 staff members had volunteers they were working well with, other staff members started asking me to get them volunteers to help them with their work.
I had proved the concept and people started wanting to adopt. Was it easy? No – each new staff volunteer relationship needed to be nurtured and supported to be established right. Only then could I move on to the next group. Within a few years I had 500+ volunteers donating 20,000+ hours per year in every department of our organization.
You must work with and around the resistance. Don’t fight it. Resistance is normal. Make space for it within the change management process.
To learn more take my online course: Why is Change so Hard.
Make Problems Interesting
“Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.” Paul Hawken
I came across this quote and fell in love with it. If you read my blog regularly you know I have address this topic before. Businesses are in business only if they solve problems. (http://humanisthappiness.blogspot.com/2015/11/what-does-it-mean-to-be-manager.html)
The challenge all managers and leaders have is how to get other people engaged in the work you need them to do. One way is to order them and threaten them. Do the work or else! This may gain compliance but it’s not actually a good management technique and people who manage like that aren’t managers, they are bullies pretending to be managers because – no one ever taught them how to actually manage.
A better way is to understand, you are in the business of solving problems and the problems you are solving are worth solving, or I hope they are. If there is a problem in how you are solving a problem, well, that’s worth solving too.
Do your employees even know what the problems are that you hired them to solve? Or did you just hire them and ask them to do a job but not explain to them why this job needs to be done? I ask because - the not explaining why the job is being done is a sin of staff management that is committed ALL THE TIME! (Yes I have a course on this - https://humanistlearning.com/7-sins-of-staff-management/ - Yes it’s worth taking- yes it will help explain to your managers what a manager is actually responsible for. Yes I can include it as part of an on-boarding training for new managers that includes sexual harassment training for )
If you want engaged excited self-motivated employees, start with making sure they understand that you are in the business of solving problems. Explain the problem you are solving. Explain the solution you have that is really constructive and helpful at solving the problem. What you will end up with is employees who actually get and understand WHY they are doing the work they are doing. Will all your employees be engaged? Of course not. That’s not a realistic goal. But more will be engaged by this approach than a – just do your job approach. Engage your employees in problem solving.
I came across this quote and fell in love with it. If you read my blog regularly you know I have address this topic before. Businesses are in business only if they solve problems. (http://humanisthappiness.blogspot.com/2015/11/what-does-it-mean-to-be-manager.html)
The challenge all managers and leaders have is how to get other people engaged in the work you need them to do. One way is to order them and threaten them. Do the work or else! This may gain compliance but it’s not actually a good management technique and people who manage like that aren’t managers, they are bullies pretending to be managers because – no one ever taught them how to actually manage.
A better way is to understand, you are in the business of solving problems and the problems you are solving are worth solving, or I hope they are. If there is a problem in how you are solving a problem, well, that’s worth solving too.
Do your employees even know what the problems are that you hired them to solve? Or did you just hire them and ask them to do a job but not explain to them why this job needs to be done? I ask because - the not explaining why the job is being done is a sin of staff management that is committed ALL THE TIME! (Yes I have a course on this - https://humanistlearning.com/7-sins-of-staff-management/ - Yes it’s worth taking- yes it will help explain to your managers what a manager is actually responsible for. Yes I can include it as part of an on-boarding training for new managers that includes sexual harassment training for )
If you want engaged excited self-motivated employees, start with making sure they understand that you are in the business of solving problems. Explain the problem you are solving. Explain the solution you have that is really constructive and helpful at solving the problem. What you will end up with is employees who actually get and understand WHY they are doing the work they are doing. Will all your employees be engaged? Of course not. That’s not a realistic goal. But more will be engaged by this approach than a – just do your job approach. Engage your employees in problem solving.
Motivated Learners
Are you teaching the right people the right thing?
I teach how to stop bullies using operant conditioning. In addition to teaching parents of kids who are being bullied how to help their kids, I also offer sexual harassment training to companies. The law requires this training occur in several states and for the rest of the states, this sort of regular training is highly encouraged.
Here is the problem. These laws general require that supervisors be trained on the law. A lot of bullying in the workplace is done by supervisors so it makes sense. If you want to stop harassment, teach the people doing the harassing not to do it. Right?
Wrong. People who bully have no incentive to stop. In fact, bullying benefits them. Telling them they could get in trouble or that it’s against the law isn’t enough to change their behavior. They haven’t had a negative consequence yet, so they aren’t worried about getting one in the future.
Most larger companies offer sexual harassment training. The supervisors or staff sit in a class for 1 to 2 hours learning about how it’s against the law. Pretty much everyone already knows this already. Most people consider these trainings a joke and are bored during them. And then once it’s over, everyone goes back to work and back to the status quo. Nothing changes. And yet year after year companies across America, Canada and Australia submit their employees to the same ineffective training. Why?
The reason the training is ineffective at changing behavior is because we are training the wrong people on the wrong material. Someone who is not personally affected by harassment might have a professional interest in it. But since they aren’t being negatively affected by it, it’s abstract knowledge. They aren’t motivated to learn it.
Who is motivated to learn? Victims. People who are being negatively affected have high motivation to learn how to get bullying/harassment to stop. But instead of teaching them the behavioral skills required to fix the situation, we generally teach them the same things we teach the supervisors. It’s against the law so don’t do it. And if it does happen to you, you should report it.
This doesn’t really do a victim any good. They already know it’s illegal. They also know if they report it, they are going to face retaliation. Yes, retaliation is against the law, but it still happens and everyone knows it. What victims want to learn is how exactly they get it to stop. This is why I teach what I teach and why people LOVE my trainings.
When I speak to prospective clients about my online training, they often want to know what sort of interactive elements I have in the training to keep people’s attention. In their experience, people are unmotivated to learn during your typical sexual harassment training so an effort has to be made to put some lipstick on that pig to keep people engaged.
What I tell them is that my courses don’t need all that window dressing. If you have a motivated learner and you are teaching them something they desperately want to learn, they are going to learn it. It doesn’t matter the format. A motivated learner will learn from a book, a video or through a live lesson. If they are motivated to learn and the material is helpful, they will learn it.
Teach the right people what they want to learn and they will learn it. If you really want to create change, you have to find people who are motivated to change and then teach them what they want and need to learn. In my case, I teach the victims how to get their harassers to stop using behavioral psychology techniques that are based in science and really work.
If your training program is ineffective, perhaps you aren’t teaching the right material to the right people.
If you want to learn how to create a sexual harassment training that actually works – consider taking my free 2 hour class - https://humanistlearning.com/sexualharassment101/ which is approved for 2 ours ce through HRCI and 2 hrs pdc through SHRM.
Or check out our compliance training programs at: https://humanistlearning.com/category/businesscourses/compliance/
I teach how to stop bullies using operant conditioning. In addition to teaching parents of kids who are being bullied how to help their kids, I also offer sexual harassment training to companies. The law requires this training occur in several states and for the rest of the states, this sort of regular training is highly encouraged.
Here is the problem. These laws general require that supervisors be trained on the law. A lot of bullying in the workplace is done by supervisors so it makes sense. If you want to stop harassment, teach the people doing the harassing not to do it. Right?
Wrong. People who bully have no incentive to stop. In fact, bullying benefits them. Telling them they could get in trouble or that it’s against the law isn’t enough to change their behavior. They haven’t had a negative consequence yet, so they aren’t worried about getting one in the future.
Most larger companies offer sexual harassment training. The supervisors or staff sit in a class for 1 to 2 hours learning about how it’s against the law. Pretty much everyone already knows this already. Most people consider these trainings a joke and are bored during them. And then once it’s over, everyone goes back to work and back to the status quo. Nothing changes. And yet year after year companies across America, Canada and Australia submit their employees to the same ineffective training. Why?
We are training the wrong people on the wrong material.
The reason the training is ineffective at changing behavior is because we are training the wrong people on the wrong material. Someone who is not personally affected by harassment might have a professional interest in it. But since they aren’t being negatively affected by it, it’s abstract knowledge. They aren’t motivated to learn it.
Who is motivated to learn? Victims. People who are being negatively affected have high motivation to learn how to get bullying/harassment to stop. But instead of teaching them the behavioral skills required to fix the situation, we generally teach them the same things we teach the supervisors. It’s against the law so don’t do it. And if it does happen to you, you should report it.
This doesn’t really do a victim any good. They already know it’s illegal. They also know if they report it, they are going to face retaliation. Yes, retaliation is against the law, but it still happens and everyone knows it. What victims want to learn is how exactly they get it to stop. This is why I teach what I teach and why people LOVE my trainings.
Motivated Learners make the difference
When I speak to prospective clients about my online training, they often want to know what sort of interactive elements I have in the training to keep people’s attention. In their experience, people are unmotivated to learn during your typical sexual harassment training so an effort has to be made to put some lipstick on that pig to keep people engaged.
What I tell them is that my courses don’t need all that window dressing. If you have a motivated learner and you are teaching them something they desperately want to learn, they are going to learn it. It doesn’t matter the format. A motivated learner will learn from a book, a video or through a live lesson. If they are motivated to learn and the material is helpful, they will learn it.
Teach the right people what they want to learn and they will learn it. If you really want to create change, you have to find people who are motivated to change and then teach them what they want and need to learn. In my case, I teach the victims how to get their harassers to stop using behavioral psychology techniques that are based in science and really work.
If your training program is ineffective, perhaps you aren’t teaching the right material to the right people.
Or check out our compliance training programs at: https://humanistlearning.com/category/businesscourses/compliance/
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