The Smart Manager -- How to motivate bad employees

A nice article published in Forbes.com (and reproduced in Rediff.com) talks about 'How to motivate employees'.As I read through the article,a lot of things made sense to me.

A few tips that I noticed in the article:
-Try to avoid bad employees by hiring carefully.
-If you made a mistake in hiring, then you have to understand why the employee isn't performing well. It can be a lack of training, a poorly defined role, lack of feedback, shifting organizational priorities or something deeper,

Micromanaging is frustrating
I remember when I started my career as a software trainee,I had a supervisor who sat next to me as I wrote the lines of code.I found the Micromanaging to be extremely frustrating.!
Micromanaging is the surest way to kill an employee's enthusiasm. To succeed, employees need to know that they're trusted and their work is valued.


A smart manager:
-Is responsible for the finished product.Good managers quickly learn how to concentrate on outcome and leave the process to others.

-Sets goals and lets employees perform within clearly defined parameters. Gushy praise is instantly recognized as fake and won't cut it.

-Thanks his employee individually for his or her contribution and repeat the thanks at a staff meeting.He makes sure that he always uses outstanding performance to jump to the larger issue:"Here's how we solved the problem, or here's how we beat the competition."

-Rewards top performers with more challenging assignments. Many managers fall into this trap: Top performers are inundated with routine tasks because the work will be handled quickly and well. That soon becomes a disincentive to excel.


Remember,Employees need to know that their contributions are noticed, valued and part of expanding the enterprise. .