Motivate your employees

This post came out from The New Paper (21 January 2016)
Title - Motivate your employees

Some pointers that I've got are:
1. Focus on the behaviour, not the person
2. Give constructive feedback
3. Be generous with compliments and cautions with criticism
4. Acknowledge effort

On Focus on the behaviour, not the person

• When giving positive or negative feedback, supervisors should focus on the behaviour of the employee, and not his or her character.
• Give specific feedback. Telling a staff that he or she is incompetent is not going to help. However, telling the employee that he or she needs to work harder and be more task-oriented may produce positive results.

On Give constructive feedback

• Feedback should be delivered in a way that does not damage the relationship between the subordinate and supervisor. 
• When giving feedback, supervisors should make it clear that the comments are intended to help the employee improve.This is easier if the relationship between the supervisor and employee is healthy to begin with.
• When the relationship with their supervisor is strong, employees will be more prepared to listen to feedback objectively, and find ways to improve themselves.

On Be generous with compliments and cautious with criticism

• While it is important to help employees improve, supervisors should not find fault with everything that an employee does, as it will demoralise him or her.
• If employees are only called into the supervisor's office to be given negative feedback, they will soon start feeling that there is nothing they can do to please him or her.

On Acknowledge effort

• When an employee shows improvement, the supervisor should acknowledge this publicly, as doing so will encourage others to perform better. 

Yours,
Something Small Thinking Big