Posts Tagged ‘Workforce’

In the One Minute Manager , Ken Blanchard asks a series of extremely astute questions. “How many of you intentionally hire poor employees? How many of you have a quota for how many low performers you must have in your workforce. If you don’t have a quota for the actual number of employees that are low achievers, why do you have a quota for the reviews?”

Why is it that so many organizations force their supervisors to rank their staff? Why is it that only a percentage of a team can receive excellent reviews?

Organizations seem to feel that by limiting the number of positive reviews they allow, they will motivate their employees. They can also believe that a supervisor who praises his staff a lot is not tough enough. Finally, the one thing that they fear the most, is that giving someone a positive review will raise expectations for a salary increase. I can just hear the executives reporting, “We’ve managed to keep pay raises to 2 percent this year. We have had to de-motivate everyone and therefore cut productivity by 25% but we think it is worth it.”

We know that limiting praise is one of the least effective means of leadership possible. Common sense dictates that a person, who has worked hard throughout the year, will be motivated by praise and de-motivated by criticism.

If you, as a leader, are doing your job properly by motivating your staff, then you can expect that your team will have more outstanding reviews at the end of the year than the rest of the organization.
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