How to Motivate Employees & Increase Your Leadership Skills by Giving Workers More Responsibilities
Do not think that it is just low financial reward that gets employees wishing things were better, workers feel de-motivated at work for many reasons. One such de- motivator named by most workers is the lack of adequate responsibility within the teams and organizations they work in now. It is one of the top 8 ranking issues which employees state as having a detrimental result on their motivation at work. It is also a challenge for managers to give appropriate levels of responsibility to workers at various skill levels and ranks whilst ensuring that they stay in control and do not divert workers from their core tasks and every day jobs.
The consequence of lack of adequate responsibility will show up as low productivity, lack of commitment, staleness, boredom, lack of enthusiasm, disinterest. In more severe cases workers may become interested in other things like finding a new job, doing anything but their job, dissatisfaction and displaced anger. In worse cases there can be lateness, sickness, disharmony and conflict, feelings of unfairness and unwillingness to do as instructed.
All of these levels of de- motivation will have an impact on your company's productivity and your standing as an effective manager.
You can turn this around to create a working environment which allows appropriate levels of responsibilities in more creative ways than you thought were possible and creativity is the key. Try out some of these instant motivating ideas:
• Delegate routine tasks that do not require decision making but gives opportunities for workers to be in different forums; there are many such meetings where you can send a delegate or where training or information giving can be done by others in your team.
• Set up "a working party" to solve a problem or feed into an existing higher level meeting: An example is your team is expected to use the new computer system but there have been inconsistencies in the roll out program, all workers have had problems with the design. The working party can meet regularly and obtain all the information which you as the manager can then feed back at a more strategic level.
• Create "Super Users" who build up knowledge in certain key areas and then help out others within the team or to other teams.
• Set work plan goals which stretch workers current responsibilities and ensure they lead on the steps which will get them to achieve appropriate results.
If you do this as a leader you will benefit because you will have a team of workers where there will be more trust, interest, commitment, and increased problem solving abilities, workers developing and creating therefore being stimulated. You will see these motivations permeate individual workers, the team, and the company.
There maybe some fear for you about training them up and then loosing good workers but do not be worried about this as this is just a good reflection on your managerial skills which you will always be able to tap into with new staff, or when you start the new job which you will obtain from your hard work. You will also see that as a manager you will also be developing leadership skills which will stand you in good stead and increase your managerial repertoire.