December Ascend Newsletter 2014
JANUARY 2015 Newsletter
Welcome to Ascend Training Solutions
Headshot

    Happy 2015 everyone! I hope everyone is back at work, rested, and still working on those New Year's resolutions and that your motivation is not waning. Speaking of motivation, this month's Competencies of Effective Supervisors topic is Motivating Employees. Every manager struggles at some point with motivating her team whether it is motivating the team to stay focused on the mission, to be innovative or to accept and participate in the success of organizational change.

As leaders, sometimes it takes a bit more than explaining a task to get an employee to complete it effectively and efficiently with a focus on excellence. Certainly, financial incentives and rewards can be effective in motivating employees, but studies have shown that there are many ways to motivate an employee beyond financial rewards. One of them is training. Most employees are receptive to learning new skills and strategies and consider having that opportunity a highly valuable benefit of their job. Being sent to a workshop or seminar can help an employee step out of his or her comfort zone and think about things with a different perspective or with renewed energy. In addition, it is a clear sign that the organization considers the employee valuable enough to invest in his or her success.

This month, we provide you with variety of ideas and suggestions for motivating employees. I hope that you will take them to heart and try some. Remember, your team needs more from you than task lists and instructions.

If you have feedback or comments on any of our articles please send us an email or post your response on our blog (see link).

Wishing you a great start to your new year!

Sue
In This Issue
TIP OF THE MONTH
How to Effectively Delegate

A very effective method of both motivating and developing your team members is through delegation. For delegation to be most successful, follow these pointers:

 

▶ Ensure the person you are delegating a task or project to has the skills, desire, and time to complete the delegated task.

▶  Take the time to train the person on the task, or carefully review the details of the task or project you are delegating.

 

▶  If delegating a task, clearly communicate the allotted time frame, the expected endpoint, and the resources available to him or her.

EFFECTIVELY DELEGATE

▶If delegating a project, clearly communicate the allotted time frame, the details of your expectations, the resources available to him or her, and any limitations.

 

▶Offer the delegated project or task because of your confidence in the individual instead of "dumping" because you don't have the time to do it yourself.

 

▶Consider the career goals of the individual in determining what to delegate and to whom - delegation is an opportunity to empower individuals to develop and practice skills needed for their next career step.

 
_______________
OUR SERVICE

Follow us on Twitter

View our profile on LinkedIn
Competencies of Great Supervisors

Part 14 - Motivating Others

For those who lead others, what better way to start a new calendar year than with a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and highly motivated team? Don't have the budget for wage and salary increases or bonuses? No problem. Though conventional wisdom points to the fact that employees work for money, above all, in the long term non-cash motivators are also highly effective for motivating employees. In fact, it has been asserted that strong leadership is most closely tied to employee motivation. But how does a strong leader create engagement, enthusiasm, and commitment among her team? 

 

MOTIVATING OTHERS  

As we continue with our series Competencies of Great Supervisors, we offer eight principles for leaders to immediately adopt, principles than can motivate employees beyond money:

 

1. Be the Energizer Bunny on your team.
Rather than being an energy vampire, sucking the energy out of others, resolve to be the kind of leader who works to bring passion and positive energy to the workplace every day. Uplifting energy is contagious and will circulate throughout your team.

 

2. Religiously practice self-care.
Great leaders have deep reserves of physical, spiritual, and emotional energy, and that energy is typically fueled...
 
Read Entire Article....
JANUARY Spotlight  

Spotlight on Motivation in the Training Room

Motivation is not just something a manager must do for his or her team; it is an important component of training too. All of our trainings incorporate a number of strategies designed to motivate our learners to engage, participate, consider new approaches and put them into practice. Most of our motivational strategies stem from what we know about adult learners. We know that adult learners are:

▶▶ Knowledgeable: adult learners are motivated by the opportunity to share their experiences and knowledge with others.

▶▶ Independent: adult learners prefer to feel that they have control over their own decisions. For a trainer, this translates into providing guidance and tools for solving problems or developing responses or plans, instead of providing answers and boilerplate solutions.

 

▶▶ Goal Driven: adult learners tend to be goal oriented and need to understand the purpose and value of what they are being asked to do and to learn in a training event. They need to know that the work ADULT LEARNERS they do in the workshop or seminar is directly related to the stated goals. 

 

▶▶ Respected: adult learners want to be respected by the trainer and their peers. This is accomplished by asking the participants to share their perspectives while encouraging a sense of equality in the room and growing together as a cohort.

▶▶  Relevant: adult learners need to know how the new information and skills are going to benefit them in their jobs or life. We provide direct connections to the learning content and their work responsibilities. In addition, we try to work directly with the leadership of an organization prior to the training to identify relevant, real or realistic scenarios and case studies, which we incorporate into the workshop tasks and activities.
 
▶▶Interactive: adults learn better by doing something themselves than by hearing it in a lecture. Trainings must include opportunities to interact with the instructor and the other participants in order to ensure engagement but also to share ideas and apply skills.

We know that training takes people away from their day-to-day functions and that can be a strain on their team to get work done without them. For time away from the office to attend a training to be worthwhile, the attendees must be motivated to learn, remain engaged and to put what they learn into practice when they return. We consider it our responsibility to make these things happen and to do so we incorporate all of these characteristics of adult learners into our course development.

 
Unified Cert Program      WOSB  DBE