Archive for the Motivation Category
25 Lessons on Working Happy From My German Father
My father owns an electrical contracting business. He built a strong company that has lasted for over 40 years. He has never advertised in his life. He went out and proved he was good and his customers referred him to other friends and contractors all over eastern Pennsylvania. Seth Godin would have been proud.
I worked for him in the summers when I was out of school. Working with him was a pleasure and a pain. He was born German and insists on everything to be perfect. He always set the bar higher than I could reach.
I look back on it now and realize how much I’ve learned. I was lucky to have a father who owned his own business and wanted his son to tag along. I was probably more work then a help, especially in the early years.
As you read this list try to picture a German man with a graying black beard, a tool belt on and a pair of dirty jeans as he says each one. It makes it more fun.
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Never worry about the time, all it will do is make work go slow.
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Take time to hang out with co-workers, it makes work interesting.
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Be able to laugh at yourself because people like to be around someone that doesn’t take himself too seriously.
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A good cup of coffee is worth the price it costs.
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Do it right the first time.
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Why take a longer break then you really need?
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If it works then you did well. If it works and looks good then you did great.
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Be able to explain how you made the mistake. No one wants to hear how you’re not sure.
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The earlier you wake up the earlier you can get home.
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Nothing wrong with daydreaming as long as you pick the right spots.
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Don’t worry about how a customer looks, just worry about their ability to pay on time.
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Always lend a hand to another contractor because you are going to need them to help you before the job is done.
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Set the bar higher then you can presently reach because one day you’ll reach it if you keep trying.
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Buy coffee for everyone every once in a while. We all need to spread good will.
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Can’t force a person to care about their work. It’s really up to them to make that decision.
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It’s only money. The real joy is in the accomplishment.
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The customer doesn’t always know what he wants. Sometimes they need to be enticed with good ideas.
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Don’t walk too fast and don’t walk too slow because you’ll either wear yourself out or you’ll look like a slacker.
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Even if you don’t know how to do it, give it a try because you may surprise yourself.
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Eat lightly during the day because you’ll weigh yourself down if you eat too much.
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Always have a system for each task because then you can do it without too much thinking, which frees your mind up for planning the next task.
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Never be afraid to walk away. Not every relationship will work.
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You can enjoy your work or you can think about going out tonight. It’s up to you.
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Don’t do what I do unless you really love it.
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Hard work may make you tired, but it’s a good tired.
Happy Father’s Day!
I love you Baba (German name for Dad). My friends always made fun of me for calling him that and now they ask, “How is Baba?” It’s cool how unique things stick in people’s heads.
What is one lesson you’ve learned from your father?
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Image courtesy of Nikki Staib. It’s an image of my father holding his grandson (My nephew Kris).
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10 Secrets to Motivating Teenagers
We’ve all been teenagers, but as we age we forget how to connect with young people. We think that we can just tell them what to do and they’ll do it. Wouldn’t that be great?
Most teenagers are a different kind of human until they get a few years of work experience or college under their belts. They think differently and feel differently than adults do. Try to remember when you were young and you had hormones pushing through you and all you could do was think about sex. That’s the first trick.
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Put Yourself in Their Shoes
When you can put yourself in their position you can learn how to motivate teenagers. Teenagers may be weird, but they have emotions just like you and me. They’re just a little more intense. When dealing with a teenager make sure you are sympathetic to their needs. Make sure you see #4 Don’t Be a Push-over because they will take advantage of you if you let them.
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Show Them Their Mistakes and How to Improve Them
Teenagers don’t pick up on adult concepts as quickly as adults. Well, duh. You will be surprised by how many business owners don’t understand this concept. Teenagers may be geniuses on the computer or multi-tasking, but they learned these things like everything else. When they make a mistake, explain what they did wrong and how they can improve it. This may need to be done a few times before they catch on.
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Give Them the Respect They Seek
Giving a teenager the respect that he or she deserves will go a long way in earning their trust. Most adults treat teenagers like teenagers when all they want is to be treated like the man or woman that they are trying to be. Talk to them like an adult and they will raise their level of work.
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Don’t Be a Push-over
A teenager will take two feet when given a foot, so make sure you set boundaries and if they cross them then document it and let them know. If they continue to cross the line then don’t be afraid to let them go if they you need to.
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Enjoy a Good Laugh
There is nothing a teenager likes doing more than enjoying a good laugh. Yes they may be moody, but when a teenager is in a good mood it can be down right infectious to the rest of the staff, so allow them to get excited and have a good time.
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Listen to Them
Teenagers want to help. They may be selfish, but they aren’t stupid. They can see things that you can’t. Listen to their suggestions. If they give you an idea that won’t work then let them know why and show appreciation for their efforts. If they have a good idea, tell them that you want to hear more and ask them to come up with a plan on how to implement it.
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Have Patience with Their Learning Curve
Their learning curve is a little steeper than most adults, but their potential is greater too. Once a teenager catches on to a concept they make it their own.
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Reward Them
The Gen Y generation and younger grew up being rewarded for blowing their nose. They don’t take well to harsh discipline, so when they do something good even without your approval, reward them. Give them an extra hour for lunch or a $20 bonus. Their idea might have saved you hundreds of dollars, so disperse the wealth.
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Don’t Yell at Them
Teenagers hate to be yelled at. They get enough of that from their parents, teachers, and friends, so speak with an even toned voice when you’re upset. Make sure they understand that you never want to see such behavior, but don’t make a scene out of it.
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Train Your Staff to be Patient
Many retailers employ young people because they are cheap labor and as a result, they are treated as “second class” employees by the rest of the staff. Big mistake. Train your staff to treat them as equals. When the rest of the staff gives them respect they will be more respectful to the customer.
Managing Teenagers Review
Teenagers want to do good work if they are given the right atmosphere in which to do it. They will need a little more attention, but you will find a few gems that make it all worth the effort. Who knows, that one little gem of a teenager might one day help you run your company.
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Photo courtesy Cavier
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Mini Sabbaticals Should Be Mandatory
Accenture refused to layoff their employees when they hit a rough period because they didn’t want to go through a whole new batch of hiring and training. So they decided to pay the staff that they would have laid off 20% of their pay with benefits while they waited for the economy to bounce back. The catch was, they couldn’t work for a competitor. When the economy came back around they rehired the employees they couldn’t afford to keep.
“Accenture has a great solution for a temporary downturn,” said Bill Coleman, senior vice president of compensation at Salary.com. “You don’t lose the people you worked so hard to recruit and train, you’re not doing what everybody else does, you look terrific to those large alumni communities, and in some ways it’s really a loyalty-builder.”
This kept their employees happy and it also gave some of them a mini sabbatical. This made me think about the company I work for and the various incentives they offer to keep me happy. They don’t do enough, but what company really does?
I would like to take a sabbatical, and wouldn’t it be great if my company provided such a program as an incentive to stay with them. I believe all companies should offer mini sabbaticals to help with employee retention. I’m not talking about the normal time off that each company provides, but an additional incentive to keeping employees happy and motivated. So here is my idea…
5 Years
If you’ve been with a company for five years then you are eligible for a two week sabbatical. During that two week sabbatical the employee will be paid 20% of her/his salary. If the employee can show that the reason for their leave was work related and how it will improve the company then the company will pay 40% of the employee’s salary during those two weeks.
10 Years
If you’ve been with a company for ten years then you are eligible for a one month sabbatical. During that one month sabbatical the employee will be paid 40% of her/his salary. If the employee can show that the reason for their leave was work related and how it will improve the company then the company will pay 60% of the employee’s salary during that one month.
15 Years
If you’ve been with a company for fifteen years then you are eligible for a six week sabbatical. During that six week sabbatical the employee will be paid 60% of her/his salary. If the employee can show that the reason for their leave was work related and how it will improve the company then the company will pay 80% of the employee’s salary during those six weeks.
20 Years
If you’ve been with a company for twenty years then you are eligible for a two month sabbatical. During that two month sabbatical the employee will be paid 80% of her/his salary. If the employee can show that the reason for their leave was work related and how it will improve the company then the company will pay 100% of the employee’s salary during those two months.
Good Example
Ok, so lets say you’ve been with the marketing department of a grocery store chain for 15 years. You decide to use your sabbatical to travel the country to see the various marketing campaigns and advertising other grocery chains do to reach their customers. You come back with 15 good ideas. You write a plan on implementing 3 of them and present it to your manager. They are all quality ideas and for your effort you are rewarded 80% of your pay.
If that was me and I was given this flexibility to make my company better my loyalty would increase exponentially.
Why Mini Sabbaticals Should Be Implemented Today
Wouldn’t you take advantage of such a program? If you would break down your company’s cost of hiring and training employees each year this program would probably pay for itself in less than a few years. Your company would be sending the message to its employees that they want to help them to become successful, both at work and away from it.
Would you be more likely to stay with your company if they offered a mini sabbatical program?
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Active Managers Win the Race
You’re leisurely jogging toward the finish line in your khakis and button down shirt when you look back and all the other managers from your various competitors are on your heels. You thought you were leading the pack by a good distance, but they caught up. You look forward again and the finish line got pushed so far away that you can’t even see it. 12 swear words pop into your head, you ease up and everyone passes you by.
This attitude has struck down the greatest companies because they stop pushing for innovative ways to separate themselves from the pack. The best way managers can help a company flourish is by dedicating themselves to professional growth. We all need to keep moving or we become a bucket infested with mosquitoes, attacking others to stay alive. The only way to avoid the blood suckers is to keep moving.
Complacency will wreck any company, especially one that relies on the same tactics that they used last year and the year before that. If marketing companies kept putting out the same ads then the audience would learn to tune them out. If managers keep using the same techniques their voices will fall on deaf ears. That’s where continual learning fits in. Whether it be classes, conferences, meetings, or consulting companies, there are ways for a manager and his employees to learn new tactics that rock the world of their customers. It’s the only way to stay alive in this hyper competitive working world.
Chris Bailey wrote Four Professional Growth Issues For Managers (And How To Address Them). My favorite line was:
If you are a leader, know that a key responsibility of leaders is to produce more leaders.
Managers should be creating people that can help a company grow. They should never fear that they are producing someone more capable than them. If that does happen then the manager should be happy. The company will only prosper if it beats out the competition. The only way to do that is to have great people around you. Every master should be ready for the day that his pupil surpasses his abilities. If you taught them right, they will respect this relationship and treat the company and the manager with respect.
Chris wrote four reasons why managers don’t further their professional development as well at their staff’s. It’s a good read for any manager wanting to overcome obstacles that might be preventing them from growing.
My biggest obstacle to continual learning was convincing upper management to buy into the idea. They don’t want to spend money when they think they are doing fine without it. If they were having a bad quarter they sure as hell didn’t want to spend money on professional development. They wanted to cut back on every extra expense. The only thing I can say to this is to keep trying. Most sales people get rejected between 8 and 16 times before a client agrees to do business. Consider yourself a salesman and keep after your bosses. If you keep trying, they will start believing.
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Working Unhappy in Retail
A great question from a reader arrived in my inbox last week and I wanted to share it with all of you. Many of you probably like your job to some extent, but maybe a manager or co-worker is difficult for you to deal with. We all have our problems, but dealing with a difficult manager is tricky.
Her summarized question went like this:
I just started working at my current job in March. This is my first job period, other than two jobs I’ve gotten by being default (’student helper’ for both jobs).
The problem is, I’m only in this job because it’s a job, and one of the managers is in this job as a lifestyle. He consistently harasses us to sell more (or so it feels like to me). We’re either behind and have to sell more, or are ahead and have to sell more. Within the past week, I can count three separate times that he’s harassed me about asking each and every customer to buy a certain product from the registers.
It’s gotten to the point that I don’t even bother asking the customers if they want the certain product. I figure I’ll get reamed about not selling enough later anyways, so why bother?
I love my job (it’s rewarding), I love my coworkers, I get on well with the other two managers and the two supervisors, it’s just him that I don’t get along with.
How can I manage to work happy? He often excuses himself saying it comes from corporate, but the other two managers don’t harass us like he does. Is it maybe because he’s not that good of a leader, or is it just our differing personalities?
On the training front, should I ask to shadow one of my coworkers (there are two that are really good at selling stuff)? I figure I can’t flat out say, “The training I’m being given is bogus, I know it and you know it, are you able to give me any actual *realistic* training?” And I’m not very good with people to begin with (to the point that I honestly can’t think of a way to rephrase that last question in a people-friendly way).
My response was:
The first thing to do is get your thoughts in order. You are a good writer. Your question was well constructed and I think you should use this talent to write a mock letter on how he could be a better manager. It will help you see his perspective. You should not give him this letter, but it will help you prepare for a talk.
I believe you should talk to this manager. It doesn’t sound like you want to confront him, but I think it’s your best bet at improving your situation. Don’t make a big deal of it, but just ask him if he has a minute to talk. I would ask him how you can improve. If he is human he should be willing to help you become a better employee. If he is stumbling around or doesn’t suggest anything helpful then tell him that you have something that might help. I think you had a great idea. See if the two of you can create a schedule, during slower times, to shadow some of the top sellers for a few weeks.
If this manager is still busting your chops after a few months and you are selling better, I would try confronting him on his managing tactics. Sometimes managers need to be shown how to improve. Try to be tactful and constructive, so he knows that you appreciate his style, but it could use a little work. Hopefully he will put his ego aside and listen. If this makes your relationship worse then look for another job. You should never be afraid to chalk up a job to a good learning experience and move on to something better.
Everyone is different and some people can tolerate a bad manager if everything else is good, but I can’t. I need a manager to be supportive and understanding. Believe me there are plenty of them out there.
If you have a question that you would like for me to answer on this blog you can contact me on my question page or at Karl (at) workhappynow.com. Believe me, there is probably someone else going through the same thing right now, so if you ask a question it will probably help other people.
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