Fire Up Commitment Now!
Guest Blogger-Tim Silvera
As the country starts recovering from the worst economy in over 20 years, leaders need to start firing up commitment! Great leaders understand that over the last year, talented employees have become disillusioned with their current employers. Even if you think you did a great job connecting with your employees during the downturn, you need to understand that you still need to repair the damages caused by the environment and practices in your company.
Leaders should not rely on loyalty or morale to retain top talent. Loyalists actually cause big problems because they resist change which can kill your company. If high morale is a leader’s goal, failure will soon follow. High morale can only be an outcome of achieving results. Loyalty helps you retain mediocre employees, whereas results are powerful motivators for top performers to continue to drive business success. Loyal employees do show up to work every day, but committed employees invest themselves fully in their work and deliver dramatic results.
Commitment energizes, empowers and inspires people to achieve great results. So, how can great leaders fire up commitment now? It all starts with you… You need to have passionate commitment, which will draw people to you. Your intensity, tenacity, focus, drive and dedication will create commitment in others. You also need to supply your employees with a strong purpose. If you give your employees a vision that they can identify with and rally around, you will see how commitment can grow and accelerate your team’s success. In addition to your personal passionate commitment and strong purpose, you also need to connect with your people, recognize and reward achievements, create a top club and be intolerant of weak commitment.
By connecting with your people, managers fill their employee’s longing forbelonging! Feeling needed warms people deep inside and adds more heat to their fire of commitment. Managers must discover what fires up commitment in each of their employees and spend time with every valued person to convince them that his or her contribution adds value towards the company’s success.
To create a climate of greater commitment, managers need build an environment where people can achieve great results. Every good employee wants to work on meaningful assignments and be recognized and rewarded for delivering tangible results. So, managers need to energize their employees by giving them a piece of the action though meaningful work, recognition and rewards!
By creating a top club with membership hard to come by, commitment grows naturally. Tough initiation rites create a common bond of experience for all that make it into the club. On the other hand, stiff admission criteria cause the weak-hearted to de-select themselves out of your company. Wow!
On a related topic, managers need to be intolerant of weak commitment!Managers need to make it clear that commitment is a top priority on their teams. Managers need to make commitment count for something by rewarding employees who try the hardest and contribute the most to the team’s success. And finally, it is crucial that managers weed out the uncommitted and mediocre employees.
By focusing on the power of commitment, you have a great chance of increasing the engagement factor of your valued employees. Mark my words… it really works!
What have you done lately to inspire commitment and employee engagement? Please share your stories in the comment section at the end of this blog.
Human Capital – Love it, do it, prove it!
Tim Silvera - A business savvy senior human resources executive with extensive experience driving profitable revenue growth by integrating effective human capital principles with business practices and culture. Known for global human resources leadership and expertise in areas including organizational effectiveness, talent management, and total rewards that result in strategic alignment and innovation.
