Sharpen Your Team's Skill

Let say you were attending a job interview for a position of a manager and were asked the following question:

You are given one afternoon to chop down a tree, what would you do?
Are you going to say:

1. You are going to start straight away - the earlier you start, the better as you would have more time.

2. analyse the type of the tree and come up with a plan,

3. Other action?

When this question was put to a group of 100 managers, this is the result:
- start the work straight away -- 35%
- analyse and plan -- 60%
- other action ,get help and ask the expert -- 5%

Take the clue from Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest President of US, this is what he said, " Give me 6 hours to chop a tree, I will spend the first hour to sharpen the axe,". Given the situation of his time, and the fact that he was an expert trees chopper, having chopped many trees when he was young, he knew how to be effective.

It is very different from the situation of the interviewed managers, a manager can be defined based on the processes of planning, resourcing, implementation and control. It can also be noted that managers get the jobs though other people. So for that 35% who go straight to chop the tree in fact acted like a gardeners.

In business, it is important to get the best assets for the job. This simple strategy has deep implication to todays executives working in their complex environments.

Getting the works done are through peoples. There are two basic issues in getting works through people, the willingness and the ability. Jobs will be done properly if the peoples are willing and able.

Productive Approach
It is very important to equip the workers with the necessary skills and knowledge for them to do the jobs. As such proper development planning is required, the set of skills are to be identified and a directory of available competencies are kept.
The practice of negative motivation or punitive implication will normally result to unsatisfactory industrial relationship. A more productive approach would be to equip the staff with the necessary thinking skills, problem solving, decision making and customers services techniques as their readily available tools set.

Instilling The Desire to Perform

Having the necessary tools set, the required skills and knowledge are not sufficient to get the jobs done. The staff must be mounded to want to perform. Studies had shown that motivated and confident staff will produce better outcomes.

There many ways to motivated staff but unfortunately there are as many methods to demotivate staff. So if you are leading a company of a group, you need to know both the positive and the negative elements on motivating staff. Unfortunately most managers are not very concerned about the motivation of the staff, they are focusing to highly on the task performance.
There many ways to make the staff feel motivated. One of the method is to make them felt being belonged to the organization. Not job activities can help. Get them involved in the social work representing the company will definitely help. A sense of achievement will boost their morale, things such as open praise will make them happy, as long as it is done sincerely and fairly.

Building Positive Leadership

Experiences had proven that a positive manager that willingly shows thankfulness and optimism rather than being spiteful or sarcasm, tend to achieve results easier. The work place is now full with educated and able managers who look forward to a challenging and satisfying working life.