How do you know when your employees are feeling disengaged or demotivated?

The following behavioural markers should give you a clue:

• Following the letter of the instruction rather than the spirit as evidenced by, ‘But you didn’t tell me to do X” when X was implied by the instruction and necessary to the completion of the task.
• Going early and coming late, using up all sick days and even taking unpaid leave days. Days off are mostly on a Monday or Friday.
• Increase use of social media, youtube and instant messaging at work.
• Silence – not contributing to discussions or dialogues.

When I am conducting workshopswithin an organisation I hear the following complaints from dis-empowered of demotivated employees:

• “My boss doesn’t listen.”
• “Why isn’t my boss here as he needs to hear this stuff?”
• “Why don’t senior management do what it says in the value statement?”
• “I can’t influence head office in USA/Europe and they make unreasonable demand on my time and resources.”

Motivated and enaged employees are more creative and productive; disengaged employees will lose customers, money and have more accidents at work. Therefore to re-engage employees you should talk to your staff and listen to the answers. Ask questions like;

• “What do you like best about working here?”
• “What do you like least about working here?”
• “What would you change if you could?”

Of course if you ask these questions you must be prepared to do something about the answers otherwise it will increase cynicism.

And what if you are feeling de-motivated and disengaged? Then get back in touch with what your work means to you above  and beyond the paycheck. What about your work gives you an intrinsic sense of achievement? Ask yourself, “if this was my company, how would I behaving?” Above all look for the fun and pride in what you do because your work is an extension of who you are (see posts on Self Leadership).

A lack of effective presentation skills (public speaking) will seriously harm your career prospects. Whether you are starting out in a company or are the CEO, you will be judged on your ability to present ideas in way that engage the audience.

But fear not! The ability to present or speak well is within everyone’s grasp. I have coached the most boring of CEO’s and the most timid of junior staff to speak and present with impact.

Firstly, realize that we live in a multi-sensory interactive world and your audience will respond warmly if you remember this. So an effective presentation in the 21st century is NOT just talking AT your audience, nor is it ‘DEATH by POWERPOINT’.

My first rule of effective presentations is “NO Engagement NO Interest.”

This is plainly intuitive, if you have sat through a boring presentation, your interest will first wain then wander. So the question is, “how to get engagement?”

The easiest way to create engagement is to create involvement. Your audience is not a passive receptor of your message; they are a dynamic part of it. Right at the beginning of your presentation, pose a question or use a quick activity that causes the audience to think about and feel the importance of your message.

The question or activity, must ‘pace’ the audiences current reality. If I am presenting to a group that has been told, “You HAVE to be there” I might ask “What would you rather be doing rather than be at this presentation?” Or I might ask the audience to show their partner, using body language, how they feel about an issue related to my presentation topic.

Having created some engagement through involvement we can link this to the subject of the presentation like this, “Realising you think or feel ‘X’ about ‘Y’ let’s talk about ….”

My second rule of presentation skills is, “Confidence + Competence.”

I have seen competent people lack confidence in presenting and confident people lack competence (nothing is as dangerous as a confident fool!).

When coaching people to feel confident to present well, I use the NLP technique of finding a trigger of something you are already confident doing such as boiling an egg, riding a bike etc. and amplifying this feeling of confidence so that you can access this feeling in your mind and body before presenting. With some rehearsal it is possible to feel confident and apply this confidence to the act of presenting. For those with an actual fear of presenting click here. It is a catch 22 that we must feel some confidence to attempt to present well and only when we do this will we gain the competence; and with competence comes confidence!

An effective presenter is also competent in the subject matter of their presentation. Sometimes this just means you are competent to share your perspective on a limited piece of information. My daughter started a playschool drama class when she was just 18 months old. One of the first things they were taught was to confidently and competently respond to the question, “what’s your name?” She is now 3 years old and is competent to speak on a number of topics including, Barbie and the movie ‘Mama Mia’.

If you must present, learn everything you can about the subject and Prepare, Prepare, Prepare. You may only speak about 2% of what you know but your competence will show when you can make the complex simple.

This brings me to my third rule, “Make it Sticky”

People will only remember one or two or three points from your presentation, so plan your presentation so that those 2-3 points will stick with them. Techniques for making a point stick include:

• Repetition – remember kinder garden and repeating your ABC’s over and over.

• Gestures or Actions – get the knowledge from the mind into the body with a powerful physical trigger.

• Visuals or Video – we live in a multimedia world so use powerful graphic or short videos to create a visual link to your sticky points.

• Humor – if you can make them laugh you light up their brain with feel good chemicals (endorphins) and increase retention.

• KISS – keep it super simple is an acronym and acronyms can be great memory triggers.

• Summarise – tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them and then tell them what you told them.

So in Summary, here are my 3 Rules for Effective Presentation Skills

1. No engagement = No interest
2. Confidence + Competence
3. Make it ‘Sticky’

And for those of you who want to know more I am available for coaching and training in how to create powerful and persuasive presentations in Singapore and Australasia and we have specialist trainers on how to handle the media.

How often do you hear someone say, “I love my job?”

Our career coach, Jass Malaney says, this is rare.

Conversations at work are more likely to be along the lines of, “Thank God it’s Friday” or “When my lottery numbers come up I’m out of here”.

Confucius said, “Man who loves what he does, never does a day’s work in his life”.

Is it possible to love your Job? Do you know someone who does?

People who love their jobs rather than just turning up for the pay check, are engaged by it and gain meaning from it.

Research by the Gallup Organisation has identified that employees need the following to feel engaged by their work:

• Role clarity: Employees know what is expected of them at work.
• Talent utilisation: Workers have opportunities to use their talents in their roles every day.
• Recognition: Employees receive recognition regularly and feel cared for.
• Communication: Workers receive ongoing feedback on their performance and have regularly scheduled progress discussions.
• Bonding: Employees have strong bonds with their coworkers.
• Development: Employees have opportunities to learn and grow.

You might consider these factors to be the responsibility of your manager or your organisation to provide. It is true that organisations that value their employees and managers who understand people leadership will have these factors in mind; however you do have a self leadership responsibility for your own engagement.

Psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studied thousands of people and discovered that we bounce between two extremes: during much of the day we live filled with the anxiety and pressures of our work and obligations, while during our leisure moments, we tend to live in passive boredom. The key to happiness is therefore to challenge ourselves with tasks requiring a high degree of skill and commitment and to become fully engaged in these activities.

When we are fully engaged in an activity we enter into a state of ‘flow’, a state where time goes away and the task seems effortless. We tend to experience such ‘flow’ moments when playing a sport or engaged in a hobby. Imagine skiing down a mountain with all of your attention focused on making the turns, you are unlikely at this moment to be worrying about trivial issues. Another aspect of a flow moment is that feedback is immediate; the mountain climber knows he or she is one step closer to the goal.

So how do you create more flow moments in your job?

1. Constantly find challenges that will stretch your skill level, especially if it requires learning something new.
2. Set goals and request feedback that lets you know how you are doing in the short rather than long-term.
3. Find meaning in what you do

Meaning
A craftsman knows why he does what he does. The industrial revolution, with its soulless assembly lines, robbed many workers with the sense of meaning for what they do. Victor Frankl, who survived a Nazi concentration camp, suggested that we can stand any “what” if we have a big enough “why”. Find the meaning in what you do; what does your work mean to you? To others? To the world?

For example a teacher might find meaning in that they get to share what they have learned and the more they teach the more they know about the subject. Their teaching impacts a generation of students and those students will change the world, even if only a little bit at a time.

To find meaning at work, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What does this work mean to me?
2. What does it mean to my clients, customers?
3. What does this work mean in the context of my life?
4. How can I give this work more meaning?

When we combine meaning with our actions we become self-actualised, our life has purpose and passion and we can truly love our work.

Often when we think of someone who loves their job we think that they are engaged in a vocation rather than work (think doctors and nurses).

Aristotle said, “Where talents and the needs of the world cross, therein lies your vocation.” Today we might use the word passion rather than vocation.

The needs of the world are not just for excellent health care, but also for excellent customer service, sales people, accountants, technicians, builders etc. etc. etc.

Sometimes we think we will be happiest sitting on a beach doing nothing (passive boredom), but in truth we are happiest when we are doing something useful.

So do you love your job? Feel free to comment.

Andrew