4 Rules To Follow To Achieve Your Professional Goals Quicker
We reveal the new rules for workplace positivity and how they can help you to achieve your goals faster.
A positive mindset can make a big difference to your productivity.
THE BRIEF
Time to read: 4 minutes
Time to action: 30 minutes (daily)
Mantra: Treat them like they pay you.
Main message: Approach your team like your clients for a positive workplace
Stat: 20% of companies with happy employees outperform their competition
Wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could spread positivity like an infection? The great thing is, you can.
It doesn’t matter whether your goal is physical, financial, or career-orientated – there is no doubt that if you can create positivity, the probability of getting to where you want to be (and getting there faster) increases dramatically.
With this in mind, we asked 5 business owners with teams between 10-50 people and an annual turnover above £1 million, how they talk to their teams to promote positivity. We then asked our resident occupational psychologists why their approach has worked.
Rule 1: Treat your team as clients
Team-As-Client (TAC) is a relatively new approach to team management that pushes equality as motivation. This isn't just a case of working for or working with.
“You are paying them to help you get to a goal, in the same way a client pays you for assisting them to get to theirs. When you think about the amount of motivation, planning, and positivity you put into helping others achieve their goals, it’s a no-brainer to put the same effort into your team to help them get you (all) to where you want to be.”
It creates the right “cognitive lucidity”. Both teams and managers remain more focused on the big picture than on more minor issues that disrupt happiness and, by proxy, productivity.
Rule 2: Create expectations for everybody
“The more a team thinks they will enjoy a work environment or training session, the more they will. The key to this stage is transparency. The good news is you do not have to sugarcoat it. Instead, highlighting what is challenging about rule 1 and the benefits of achieving it is often as simple as that. It is also appropriate to introduce rule 3 here.”
The idea that you should reward at each phase must stop being scary. It doesn’t have to be financial. It could even be as simple as public recognition of a job well done, but make it transparent. If there is an incentive to be shared, share it. The idea that management, not the workers, should share the prize is a hideous Gen X legacy we all need to delete.
Rule 3: Don’t expect too much too soon
“Pushing too much too soon simply creates unhappiness, especially when it is not linked to a time frame or framework of application. Some notions are outdated: entry-level workers need to work twice as hard to push themselves; middle managers need to push themselves twice as hard to become senior managers; senior managers must work twice as hard to hit the CEO-prescribed bonuses. These are things that need to be relegated to a bygone era.”
The triumvirate to consider instead is called CRC – competence, reliability, and communication. This acronym tells you more about the person behind the metrics. Consider someone who needs to increase productivity by 30%, and hits 28%. Is it an excuse not to reward them for the 2% or to hear ideas on how to hit 30% next time?
Old-school motivation says no reward for failure. New school success says to reward people for making things so much better. Perfectionism as a base level is a potentially dangerous thing.
Rule 4: Create a positivity placebo
“There is a theory that we tend to get exactly what we expect – and we expect positivity and proactivity. We are in a time of agile working, promoting collaboration and iterative development. The cross-functional means more frequent feedback and a focus on delivering value incrementally. It’s as inherent to achieving a goal at work as turning on your computer, or putting your trainers on to go for a run. It isn’t going anyway. Nor should it.”
It means the possibility of enhanced efficiency and innovation within teams must be coupled with enhanced transparency and simplicity. Treating your team like your clients just helps ensure this is ever-present.
Remind yourself that you work for your team and turn that mantra into 20% of your working day, every day. In that case, the much-desired positivity virus has a greater chance of spreading into institutional proportions.
It’s one of those rare times when we can say the 80s and 90s are over. So let’s follow the leaders in what works well today.
DR DOG
A cognitive psychologist specialising in those most 21st Century of issues: anxiety and depression. Dog is especially good at delivering actionable answers, removing the rhetoric and hyperbole, and focusing simply and directly on practical information that can be used to help mental health on a daily basis.
ANTHROPOLOGY ANTELOPE
Sociology may have been that degree way back when, but can you honestly think of a time when we needed to understand our society more than we do today? Antelope is a respected and published author of numerous thesis on the human condition and the nature of human interactions.
