Do you feel as if you don’t always get the results you want? If you are constantly struggling to get the best out of your staff, it could be your people skills that are the culprit.
Even though people in a job role are required to do what their manager asks of them, the way they are asked can have a lot of influence on how they actually carry out the request. It relates to the old ‘I’ll do it but I don’t have to enjoy it’ attitude.
A good way of making sure you get your team working for you instead of against you is to look at the title of this piece again and replace the word ‘persuasion’ with the word ’motivation’.
Now we have a different image – instead of seeing a manager trying to persuade someone who isn’t that interested, we see a manager motivating someone and upping their level of interest by doing so. That almost always leads to a desire to do the job that is asked of them and doing it to the best of their ability as well.
Motivating staff should always be a number one priority. People tend to mirror the attitude of the person they are speaking with, so if you come across as just wanting to get the job done without having any interest in the person who will be doing it, you can hardly expect to get a good job done in return.
Staff who have motivational bosses with good people skills tend to look on them for leadership and advice all of the time. If this isn’t the case in your office, try operating an open door policy and encourage members of your team to use it.
Staff motivation shouldn’t be an occasional activity that only gets rolled out when something needs doing. It should be an ongoing activity that helps to bolster confidence and drive the team forward. It helps to create a far more positive workplace, and you’ll achieve far more together as a result.
In this sense, although persuasion techniques have their place, motivation and interest in your staff should always take the upper hand. Of course you still need to maintain your position as manager, but provided the lines between you and your team aren’t blurred the motivational technique (with a dash of persuasion thrown in for good measure now and again) will reap rewards again and again.
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