The most important factors that determine how happy an employee is in her job and how effective and productive she is in it are:
- Does the person feel that she has the opportunity to do what she does best, every day?
- Does the person feel that she is given plenty of opportunity to get even better in her areas of strength?
- Does the person know what is expected of her at work, every day?
- Does her immediate supervisor have regular, structured, meaningful interaction with her that incorporates constructive feedback and acknowledgement?
Small business owners
Taken together, these are powerful insights for us small business owners. All of us are good at some things, and not so good at others, and worse, we actually hate doing those things. So we employ staff to do those things for us. But how do we get staff that have talent and strength in our own non-talent areas, and how do we get them to really excel and stick around for the long haul. To have a workplace where staff love to work and perform at excellence level all the time you need to start at the beginning:
- What comes naturally to you, what are your strengths, your talents?
- What do you always struggle with?
- Now put all the jobs that are part of your role in two columns, called talent (strengths) and non-talent (non-strengths).
- Specifically detail the talents and strengths you need for the jobs in your non-talent column.
- Find someone strong in those talents specifically. Look for indicators of their strengths, not their experience. Passion for something is a good indicator for example, as is willingness to learn. If someone has a talent for something they will learn very quickly. Hire for talent.
- Give them the role, and make sure they can use their strengths as much as possible.
- Spend time with them to help them develop those strengths further and further.
- Dont waste time training them up in areas of their non-talents it will make them feel unmotivated and you frustrated. (obviously there is some room for flexibility in this rule)
These are some of the secrets that ensure that an employee will answer with a strong Yes to the 4 questions above. When she does, she will love coming to work and getting stuck into it… and so will you!
