From the course: Recognizing and Rewarding Your Workers

Optimizing recognition in meetings to maximize performance

From the course: Recognizing and Rewarding Your Workers

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Optimizing recognition in meetings to maximize performance

- How do I motivate my team? A common question, but a bit broad. Let's get more specific. What's the best way to use recognition in meetings to help motivation thrive in ways that drive performance? We'll get to that, but first let's keep in mind what motivation science reveals as three important goals for you as a leader. Number one, optimize autonomy. Two, balance resources. And three, increase mastery. Optimize autonomy. Our natural desire to steer our own ship. Studies claim that more autonomy results in increased motivation, but only up to a point. Too little direction feels like disorganization. And some employees need more direction than others, especially when they're new or tackling new challenges. Number two, balance resources. When we think about resources at work, we think about things like vacation days and health care. But we mostly think about income. Income motivates, but only up to a point. Beyond that point, we like it, but a higher income isn't a motivator. Low income negatively affects motivation, suggesting that income must be balanced between floor and ceiling. And finally, increase mastery. Mastery's a powerful motivator. We want to get better at what we care about. Mastery requires feedback, so here's a tip. Recognize progress on high-performance activities that your employees want to master. Keeping your three motivation goals in mind, let's get to how to use recognition in team meetings and in one-on-ones to create motivating environments optimized for high performance. Team meetings. Necessary, and often tedious and demotivating. But they don't have to be. Share the agenda ahead of time. Get feedback on the agenda. Ask things like, what's missing from our agenda? What assumptions should we question? What's our biggest opportunity this month? Begin each meeting by recognizing team accomplishments. Save individual recognition for larger organization meetings, one-on-ones, and casual interactions. Recognize the content of feedback versus the person who provided it. Let's say team member, Daniel, sent feedback suggesting that performance would be better if layoff rumors were addressed at the meeting. If you can address the layoffs, great. But at a minimum, recognize the feedback. You can recognize Daniel later. You may have heard praise in public, scold in private. Scolding in private is a good idea, but although public praise can be an extrinsic motivator, it can also become a demotivator when important individual accomplishments are left off. Recognizing your team's accomplishments minimizes this and prevents negative competition from eroding team cohesiveness and performance. Sacred one-on-ones. These are different from one-on-ones that you initiate to recognize performance, for example. Sacred one-on-ones with you belong to your employee. They schedule it, set the agenda, and they send it to you in advance. Anything goes. Do they want your feedback on their performance? Do they want advice on how to deal with a challenging coworker? You never cancel, and rarely reschedule. It's sacred. You listen. Do no more than 10% of the talking. Use your 10% to draw out key issues. Ask questions like, if you were me, what changes would you make? What's one thing you want me to know about you? What's interesting to you? Recognize your talent with respect by starting meetings on time. Done properly, team meetings and sacred one-on-ones provide recognition that taps into autonomy and mastery in ways that motivate high performance.

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