Learn Google’s Famous 1:1 Employee Engagement Technique With Free Toolkit

As a manager or the owner of a business, how often do you get to interact with your employees on an individual basis? With busy and conflicting schedules, it can be hard to find times outside of team meetings or performance evaluations to talk more generally to an employee.

To help make sure that employees always have an open channel of communication with managers, we have weekly 1:1s, which is a 30-minute block of time for a manager to meet with just one person. The purpose of 1:1s isn’t evaluation or getting assignments, although those might be outcomes. Instead, it should be an chance for an employee to share projects, questions, concerns, and anything else with his or her manager.

Because the intention of a 1:1 is to have easy communication across levels, the employee should be the person leading the meeting, not the manager. Employees should provide the agenda and direct the discussion, while managers should make sure to listen and provide constructive feedback. Here are a few other tips to get the most out of 1:1 time:

• Prepare and share an agenda in advance to keep the meeting efficient.
• Use a running document to keep your agenda and notes in to refer to later, and make sure both the employee and manager can edit it.
• Discuss career development more broadly, and what skills you can gain at work outside of your core job.

If weekly 1:1s seems too often, try bi-weekly or maybe even monthly. You could also try scheduling a regular office hour on your calendar where employees can just drop in to talk. Does your business have another strategy that helps with communication?

Via- Jacinth Sohi, Google and Your Business Blog

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7 Essential Habits To Survive Your First Month At Work

Are you just beginning your career?  Have you newly joined this company having served in  a different company? The following tips will help you adapt quickly to your new workplace and avoid unnecessary culture adjustment problems.

Understand Rules Of The Buddy System

There is company specific lingo and codewords you’ll be expected to learn in order to make friends with other people. Don’t ask anyone directly. They will neither  share or appreciate your curiosity. If you had similar experiences at school trying to blend in and making friends, the workplace is no different. If at all, your colleagues are far more competitive and insecure. So tread slowly and intelligently - Try to figure it out indirectly by befriending a senior over coffee.

Don’t Try To Be An Expert.

Your seniors have much more experience in the company and know how it functions. So, don’t try to be an expert. If you see problems with the way things are run, do not complain even to a polite colleague or senior because they are trying to figure you out just as you’re trying to figure them out! Complaints can wait at least till the end of the probationary period.

To Avoid Confusion and Misunderstanding Learn To Clarify and Rephrase

Try to solve technical, work-related issues without taking too much help from your seniors. Learn to clearly ask what you want from them or what they want from you in order to avoid unnecessary confusion. Rephrase before parting just to make sure both you and your co-worker are in agreement over the issue.

Figure Out The Correct Procedures Yourself

As far as possible, try to understand the rules and procedures without taking too much help from others. However, in case of exceptional circumstances like sexual misconduct or bullying, try contacting the HR or the designated Complaints cell or ask a polite senior about ‘the right procedure’.

Do Not Ask Advice From A Peer

Your colleague could be just as new as you and is equally inexperienced. Try to figure it out yourself, ask the HR or your team leader- in that order. Be polite but firm and try to be helpful. Find potential people who will look out for you in times of trouble and begin making inroads into creating relationships by taking them for coffee.

Stay Neutral. Don’t Create Groups Or Join One.

REMEMBER, you have joined the company to further your career. So focus on bettering your skills rather than ‘reforming’ the company or fellow individuals.

LEARN TO NOT COMPROMISE ON YOUR WEEKENDS

Come early, stay back late if necessary but never agree to work on weekends. Cite personal, family or medical problems if necessary. Offer to do the work during the weekdays by staying back late if necessary.

Weekends are for you to enjoy with friends and family. You have earned it!

Follow all the suggestions for a month and see the results for yourself. Let me know how it works out for you! Share any other tips or secrets you learnt.

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Employee Engagement Secret from Vineet Nayar - Don't be a boss, be a leader!

Vineet Nayar - World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2009 (Photo credit: World Economic Forum)

Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL, has been one of my favourite CEO’s and thought leaders for reasons he explains here. In a new Harvard Blog he writes about the reasons for demoralization and disengagement in teams. He describes the following incident when a young manager tells him-

"I've tried using different leadership styles, but I can't seem to dispel my team's sense of disengagement," he confessed. "I don't understand what I'm doing wrong."

"Why don't you ask your team?" I asked him.

The reply surprised him.

Nayar believes lack of team engagement is primarily because the managers aren’t listening to their team members. He feels manager should do more of the following:

Call a spade a spade- Gen Y wants its leaders to "Let people know where they really stand. They know how to win if we tell them the score."

Stop telling me what I know. Give us "freedom, exposure, and guidance"

Gen Y is looking for role models- "Walk the talk and set me an example. I need to know that we are in it together," and "Do away with the lack of congruence between your actions and your words because I need to trust you." 

"Reward performance, not sycophancy."-  Stop playing favorites.

Don't be a boss, be a leader. "Stop trying to control people...," "A boss inspires fear, a leader inspires enthusiasm."

You can read his entire post here.  Also read my post  The Only Secret To Get Employee Engagement Right For Your Company where I disclose the secret to Employee Engagement, Team Motivation and Delegating responsibilities. 

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Employee Engagement- Learn The Only Secret To Get It Right For Your Company

 

Employee Engagement- Learn The Only Secret To Get It Right For Your Company

‘Having a manager who ignores you is even more detrimental than having a manager who primarily focuses on your weaknesses. Perhaps most surprising is the degree to which having a manager who focuses on your strengths decreases the odds of your being miserable on the job. It appears that the epidemic of active disengagement we see in workplaces every day could be a curable disease…if we can help the people around us develop their strengths’

- Insightful thoughts from a well known management training guru.

If you were to play tennis with your partner, would you like your partner to be superior or inferior to you?

If you want him to be slightly inferior to you, you will get a daily ego boost but you will not learn anything new!

If on the other hand you would like your partner to be a better competitor, you would have a better chance of improving your skill but unless you focus on working on your skills you will soon get demoralized.

What if your partner understands the value of a good playing partner and instead of simply deriving an ego boost would teach you some techniques as well as give you words of encouragement, wouldn’t you love playing with your partner everyday?

Now imagine you are the boss or the manager of a company and are wondering

How would I ever make my team feel motivated and empowered?
 
How on earth will I get my employees to love me?
 
How would I ever become a great boss?

I’ve given you the secret to Employee Engagement, Motivation and Delegating responsibilities.