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Motivating Slackers |Leila's House of Corrections

How do you motivate a known slacker? By first looking in the mirror and admitting that some of your management practices may have allowed this employee to slide. Find out how to turn your laid-back, lackadaisical employee into a focused, valuable member of your team by being specific with your language and taking the time to coach them.

If you have questions or suggestions for future video topics, Leila wants to hear from you.

Speaker: Leila Bulling-Towne, Executive Coach, The Bulling-Towne Group

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Tags: Video, Corporate Communications, Team Management, Marketing, Leila's House of Corrections, slacker, employee, management, team, coaching, patience

 
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  •  
    1

    everalan

    04/15/09 | Report as spam

    RE: Motivating Slackers |Leila's House of Corrections

    usefull for me

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    2

    McColl

    04/16/09 | Report as spam

    RE: Motivating Slackers |Leila's House of Corrections

    I tried to coach my innept boss as I became disengaged with my work situation. I felt unsupported and unrecognized for my contributions. As time, cutbacks and lack of vision slowly erroded of my contract, work duties, etc., my boss stood there "stunned like a deer in the headlights". As things eroded around me I dug in and decided I needed to advocate for myself, since my union was utterly useless when it came to doing that for contract employess. It finally came to a point when every morning I would drive to work only to have a compulsion to drive right on past. When I didin't care anymore I wrote my boss a letter outlining why his workplace was falling appart and staff morale was teetering on mutiny. The result? You guessed it...deer in the lights! That's government for you!

  •  
    3

    LeilaBT

    04/16/09 | Report as spam

    RE: Motivating Slackers |Leila's House of Corrections

    Here's the hope that government can, will, and wants to change, eh, McColl?

    I'm hoping some of the professional leadership President Obama uses will influence the government to put *how* we get things done closer to the top of the training list.

    I'd love to be able to share some of my ideas with those doing professional development for *our* leaders.

    Thanks for the post,

    Leila Bulling Towne
    Executive Coach
    http://www.thebullingtownegroup.com

  •  
    4

    LeilaBT

    04/16/09 | Report as spam

    RE: Motivating Slackers |Leila's House of Corrections

    Hi everalan,

    Thanks for the post. Glad you found the video useful.

    Leila Bulling Towne
    Executive Coach
    http://www.thebullingtownegroup.com

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    5

    t7b

    04/26/09 | Report as spam

    RE: Motivating Slackers |Leila's House of Corrections

    Thanks for the post

    منوعات

  •  
    6

    Lawnwaru

    04/30/09 | Report as spam

    RE: Motivating Slackers |Leila's House of Corrections

    Thanks for the educative writeup. The problem is not with coaching the slackers, but managing the mischief makers among them. Those who are not ready to change, generally lazy and the ones that find the environment itself demotivating. They tender to spoil others with their bad influence.

    How do you manage such people?

  •  
    7

    LeilaBT

    05/19/09 | Report as spam

    RE: Motivating Slackers |Leila's House of Corrections

    Hi Lawnwaru,

    You start by telling those employees which behaviors are acceptable (and why) and which ones aren't (and why). Give examples. You have to call them on it.

    If you say nothing, people learn to do the same things, again and again. No news often is misunderstood as good news: I must be doing well because, well, my manager never tells me otherwise.

    If you start to point out behaviors that don't work, are distracting, ineffective, etc., it's going to take time for people to change, and it will also take your time as you remind them and coach them.

    If you tell me once that when I do X it doesn't help as much as Y, I'll forget. If you give me feedback once a week and explain what I need to do differently, ask for commitment, ask what you can do to help, explain how my actions are hurting the business, then you will begin to change my behaviors . . . or you will see that I need to be managed out.

    Regards from San Francisco,

    Leila

    Leila Bulling Towne
    Executive Coach & Organizational Development Consultant
    The Bulling Towne Group, LLC
    +1.800.789.8449
    http://www.thebullingtownegroup.com

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    8

    JO BO

    09/12/09 | Report as spam

    RE: Motivating Slackers |Leila's House of Corrections

    Lawnwaru; You must have worked in the same type of environment that I used to. Lazy,mischief makers who are sly enough to get managers to believe that they are the valuable employees in the organization by downgrading hardworking co workers. Brown nosing their managers so they are able to flaunt any and all rules the company may have. Morale ( for those engaged workers) could never take a greater hit than for that type of atmosphere to be allowed to exist. Since I left for that reason, 16 more have also done so. This is at a company that only has 42 full time employees. Unfortunately the slackers are prospering along as usual because those in charge will never lose the blinders they have on.

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Motivating Slackers |Leila's House of Corrections

How do you motivate a known slacker? By first looking in the mirror and admitting that some of your management practices may have allowed this employee to slide. Find out how to turn your laid-back, lackadaisical employee into a focused, valuable member of your team by being specific with your language and taking the time to coach them.

If you have questions or suggestions for future video topics, Leila wants to hear from you.

When you think about your team members individually, does one of them stand out as, well, a slacker? Someone who needs pushing along, someone who sits back more often than he sits up? If so . . . Come on managers, it s time to engage and motivate slackers.

People become slackers or disengaged employees because they have been working in an environment where their laid back, lazy, lackadaisical approach is tolerated. Assigning blame isn t very productive, but it s no use ignoring half-hearted efforts either. As a manager, slacker employees are your issue because you re allowing it to happen. Try these best practices.

#1: Look in the mirror.

Have you been ignoring this employee? What management practices have you been using that have fostered this lazy behavior? If you ve been overlooking a slacking employee for a short period of time, even just a few months, he s learned that his conduct is acceptable.

#2: Use appropriate, specific language.

When talking with this employee, use descriptive language to detail the new behaviors you need him to consistently demonstrate. For example, as arrive on time, complete projects ahead of schedule, notify me of changes ASAP, regularly volunteer ideas in meetings, and so forth.

#3: Delegate and get ready to coach.

Use SMART language to delegate. Be specific, measurable, action oriented, realistic and time bound whenever you speak with this employee. Help him understand what to do and why. Be prepared to devote time coaching him to change his behaviors. Use different ways to give him the knowledge and tactics to approach work in a timely and enthusiastic way.

It takes time for all of us adjust practices we ve become accustomed to. Slackers don t turn into top performers overnight. To turn around this behavior, you will need to invest a good deal of time and patience. The more consistently and actively you set goals and expectations and then follow up, the less time you ll spend with a disengaged employee. And I m not saying it s going to be easy.