Brought to you by Jeff Thoren, DVM, ACC  

Many businesses and organizations today are looking for ways to unlock the discretionary energy of their employees.  At the same time, employees want their workplace to provide them with a sense of meaning and they expect work to engage their abilities and develop their potential.

In this edition of the Gifted Leaders e-Newsletter, we’ll look at eight factors that create the positive emotional state of mind that leads to long-term commitment, peak performance, and low turnover.

Here’s this month’s feature ...

Eight Employee Needs You Must Address to Create Passion at Work

From The Ken Blanchard Companies Ignite! Newsletter - December 2007

Highlights from the article:

• New research by The Ken Blanchard Companies, Employee Passion: The New Rules of Engagement, has identified eight needs that employers must address if they want their employees to perform at their best.

1. Meaningful Work: People need to be connected to both the organization and its larger purpose, consider their work to be worthwhile, and to be proud of their individual actions and contributions that help the organization serve its customer.

2. Collaboration: People need to work in an organizational environment and culture that enhances collaboration, cooperation, and encouragement between all organizational members.

3. Fairness: People expect to work in a place where pay, benefits, resources, and workload are fair and balanced and equitable, people treat each other with respect, and leaders act in an ethical manner.

4. Autonomy: People want to have input and influence over how their tasks are performed and they need to feel that they have the ability and information necessary to make decisions about their work.

5. Recognition: People need to be praised, recognized, and appreciated by colleagues and their leaders for their accomplishments and to contribute to positive relationships with others.

6. Growth: People want to have opportunities to learn, grow professionally, and develop skills that lead to advancement and career growth.

7. Connectedness with Leader: People need leaders who they can trust and who make an effort to form an interpersonal connection with them.

8. Connectedness with Colleagues: People hope to work with colleagues they trust and want these colleagues to make an effort to form an interpersonal connection with them.

• Employee Passion is the positive emotional state of mind resulting from perception of these eight factors in the workplace, all of which lead to standards of behavior that include discretionary effort, long-term commitment to the organization, peak performance, low turnover, and increased tenure with the organization.
    

• All eight factors of Employee Passion must be present to influence individuals’ commitment and passion about their current job, their intent to stay with the organization, and their intent to recommend the organization to others!

  
For the full text article, go to ...
http://www.kenblanchard.com/ignite/dec_2007/december2007_main/

   
Creating Employee Passion

Five questions designed to measure the affect or positive emotional state of mind of respondents correlate to Employee Passion.  The higher the ratings, the more likely that Employee Passion is being manifested.  Ask yourself or others to rate to what extent each statement is true (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree):

1. I am committed, enthusiastic, and passionate about my job.

2. I am committed, enthusiastic, and passionate about my organization.

3. I put in overtime without being asked or paid to do so.

4. I intend to stay with this organization as long as I can.

5. I would recommend this organization to others as a great place to work.

If you are looking to create an environment that energizes and develops the people you work with, consider these questions as a starting point:

1. To what extent have you successfully energized each member of your team?

2. What specific things could you do to engage individuals more effectively in the work of the team and the organization?

3. Are you connecting with the people on your team?  Do you care about them at both a personal and professional level?

4. How are you encouraging the development of the people around you?

  
Next Month

The desire to be good managers has compelled many people to be earnest students of measurement.  A critical question to consider is, “Does what you measure determine what is meaningful, or does what is meaningful determine what you measure?”  Learn the importance of using measurement to give you the kind and quality of feedback that supports and welcomes people to step forward with their desire to contribute, to learn, and to achieve.

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