Bringing the Best Out of Your Team

by Dan Angelo

Good leaders find ways to bring the best out of their teams. Motivating the team with money is one way to do it, but setting clear expectations and sharing feedback are actually more important, according to Barbara Khozam.

Khozam, an internationally recognized speaker and trainer dealing with customer service, used her second session of the Monday education block to deliver that message at CAMEX26 in Phoenix, AZ.

“Your employees have two needs,” she said during "The Empowered Leader: Inspire, Motivate, and Get Results" presentation. “They want to know what’s expected of them, and two, they want to know how they are doing, both good and not so good. So, as a leader, are you clear on the expectations and did you tell them how they are doing?”

For Khozam, giving employees a purpose, particularly student workers in a campus store, is vital. College students have their own set of goals as employees, but their motivation to succeed will be much higher if those goals happen to align with the store’s mission.

“When your students see the bigger picture, and how they fit into it, motivation goes through the roof,” she said. “I’ve talked to a lot of younger generation folks and they told me that what motivates them is not a job description, but the goal, the purpose of the store.”

The next step is transparency. Khozam pointed to research by leadership expert Ken Blanchard that showed that management believed that money and job security were the most important factors in job satisfaction for their employees. In truth, those employees rated feeling like they were in on things happening in the store as most important to them.

“Another thing to note is that the top three motivators for employees, managers saw as the bottom three,” she said. “See how we’re not in sync with how we’re trying to motivate our people?”

One-on-one meetings done regularly are one way to build that connection with the employee. They should be regularly scheduled, no matter how often they take place, because they provide the opportunity for two-way communication, as well as to build relationships. Daily huddles, even for just a couple of minutes, also offer the chance to talk to employees about what’s happening in the store that day.

“It’s a touchpoint,” Khozam said. “You’re checking in on your employees, asking them questions.”