Monthly Newsletter

May 2010

April showers did bring May flowers and we're welcoming the Summer with a warm embrace. But, beware: It's also a time when employees become a bit more lax on enthusiasm, energy, and creativity. They also start drifting off while planning summer vacations, checking up on kids out of school, and extending their internet surfing time. The majority of our readership is in managerial positions and budget cuts have everyone overworked and juggling too many hats. The question is, "How do you keep your managers engaged and motivated during pressing times?"

Employee Engagement - that's our topic for this month's newsletter. It's an issue that always remains a 'hot topic' in the workplace. The Influens motto is to engage, motivate and inspire. How can we help organizations, such as yours, accomplish this?

We are grateful and thankful for you allowing Influens into your workplace every month. Our training approach and methods have inspired many companies to develop resonant leaders and we hope to bring that experience into your environment as well. Your company's training needs will always remain our priority. Please continue to direct all inquiries to our Relationship Manager, Dan Oropesa. We love to hear from you!

The Influens Team

Influens News
Achim Nowak to Present at ICF Conference in Ft. Worth

We're pleased to announce that Influens founder and president Achim Nowak will be a presenter at the upcoming ICF (International Coaching Federation) conference in Ft. Worth, Texas, October 26-30. His topic: Muscle Memory Coaching - What we can learn from Sports and Acting Coaches.

The main thrust: Yes, sports and acting coaches got it right. They know that to help their coachees reach peak performance, cognitive shifts will only get them so far. Especially when a client wishes to access a more expansive self, the shift needs to happen in and through the body. If you are a performer or an athlete, you know the power of muscle memory. Achim's session will show how creating new muscle memory can instantly accelerate anyone's progress. Come join us in Ft. Worth!

What Motivates Us?

Achim Nowak At the just ended ASTD (American Society of Training and Development) conference in Chicago, Daniel Pink, the insightful and irreverent author of Drive, addressed a crowd of roughly 8000. His topic - so what is it that really motivates employees?

Autonomy. Mastery. Purpose.

These three words are Mr. Pink's mantra. What about money, you may wonder? Well, "just pay them enough to get that issue out of the way" would be the response. Yes, bypass the extrinsics and return at once to intrinsic motivation.

We all march to a different motivational drum, but on a gut level these answers immediately made sense to me. Autonomy is a wonderful thing when it is granted. Mastery is a wonderful thing when it is encouraged, Purpose is a wonderful thing when it is inherently part of a job. But I think of a conversation I had with friends this weekend. All of us travel a lot, and we chatted about our trials and tribulations with customs officers and TSA staff.

If you travel at all, you know that this is a rich terrain for war stories.

But I remember some delightful and surprising encounters I had with TSA staff just this last week. There was the officer in Boston who engaged in light banter about the fact that the line at his counter was empty. There was the smile from the officer In Chicago who wished me a wonderful journey. There was the sigh from the officer in Ft. Lauderdale who told me that he was trying to spread cheer to travelers like me.

Do TSA officers have autonomy in their work? Likely not. But they clearly have a measure of autonomy about how they engage, moment-by-moment, with a traveler. This past week, in my very fleeting TSA moments, something beyond the routine happened. It happened because each officer chose to engage with me. Yes, I may have sent friendly signals, but their engagement, and the manner in which they engaged, was the choice. Each individual found a purpose and mastery that reached beyond the routine act of verifying my ID. And this purpose came to life within the autonomy of each moment.

Mr. Pink's mantra is sweet. As leaders, we can encourage it in everyone we work with. Autonomy. Mastery. Purpose. We can offer a conducive environment or helpful guidelines to encourage our colleagues to sing this sweet song. But in the end it's really very simple - every one of us can choose, at any time, to claim a part of this mantra, no matter how small or expansive the claim may be. And when we do, we begin to shift the energy of our workplace and contribute to a more motivated environment!

Are They Engaged?

Dr. Robert Hernandez As the newness and excitement of spring has arrived - and in some places the waves of heat have indicated that summer is peeking in - companies try to maintain the focus of their employees and keep them from wandering off into vivid daydreams. How does an employer motivate an employee?

There are many ways of motivating your folks, of course. How about beginning with a vivid mission, as vivid as their thoughts of playing on the seashore? Spring is already a time of motivation and new ideas.

Your company's mission statement and values can be revisited in a way in which employees contribute to the goals your leadership has envisioned. Take a short break from your regular schedule. Place employees into groups where brainstorming sessions can be held, change the usual block schedules, and allow line staff to feel they have ownership in the direction of their company. These groups can be cross- functional or homogenous. Either way, your employees know the tasks before them very well. This knowledge of the immediate tasks may generate invaluable ideas of how things could be done more efficiently, and in a mire employee-friendly manner. The administration and senior officials often have eagle vision; employees, however, have the mouse vision of the day-to-day operation.

Both of these ways of seeing the greater good of the company need to be engaged, if not indeed married. Joined together, they will help your company to not only survive but strive for excellence. And your staff will feel more engaged in thequest!

Employee Engagement
2010 Trends

With a year of punishing business conditions, successive layoffs and negligible pay increases behind them, many companies will face enormous employee-engagement challenges in 2010.

The environment is stark: It's hard to engage employees in growing your business when there's a recession on (although at least there's hope you've already hit bottom). It's difficult to keep talking with your employees through a steady stream of bad news. And for many employers, it's been impossible to reward employees for their heroic efforts to save the business as the company's pay-for-performance algorithms zero out.

"What has been shattered in the recession is the value proposition between employer and employee: You do this, and I give you that," says Ilene Gochman, an organizational psychologist with consulting firm Watson Wyatt.

But if your company is to have a shot at mounting a recovery in 2010, you've got to engage your employees, to keep up the quality of products and services and to meet the challenges of a rapidly evolving marketplace.