Highly motivated employees can, if nurtured, bring an extraordinary exuberance and pep to your business. These are the vibrant individuals who can drive ideas forward – perhaps with even as much passion and zest as you can!
They’re the ones who love your brand and put their heart and soul into making it work. Others may have talent. These people bring something extra to the table – creativity, ideas and keenness.
It’s a worst case scenario when one of your most passionate employees goes quiet. As Tim McClure, professional speaker and brand and leadership consultant observes, ‘Passion is contagious, and so is not having it’.
Dealing with highly inspired, smart people can take all the emotional intelligence skills you have. And showing them how valued they are is critical. Because the last thing you want, as a business owner, is to fail in recognising when such individuals are feeling undervalued - and disengaged.
In a changing and innovative world, retaining top potential and keeping employees engaged and fulfilled is the flame you need to keep kindled. If you find yourself faced with the challenge of silence, here are our top three tips to get your most passionate people energised once again.
COMMUNICATION – KEEP IT COMING!
Great communication with your employees has to be given a red hot go pretty much all the time. The effects can be electrifying - charging workplace dynamics, building relationships and trust. Communicating openly and in detail with your team demonstrates that you understanding their input, needs and projects in their every detail and nuance. This is confidence inspiring, and it shows great capacity on your part.
Bad communication and indifference is like a power outage. Connections fail, progress stops, and everything goes dark.
To communicate well, be candid and open – and that means listening. If one of your mission critical people or projects have gone off track, you need to know what’s going on. And the individual at the centre of it all will most certainly have insights about it. So stop, and pay attention. Create a comfortable space and time where they have the chance to talk without negative comeback. Respond but don’t interrupt. You’ll learn something, and you’ll have started to equip yourself with the knowledge you’ll need to fix things – with your employee alongside you.
SWOOP IN!
Problems can manifest overnight or in moments around the lunch table. If they gain traction, they can become contagious and even toxic. If you value your team and the individuals within it, act on discontent the moment it manifests. Those special players within the ranks will respect and thank you for banishing discontent, so that they can get back to what they love – making progress and building your brand!
LEAD AND INSPIRE!
Tim McClure talks and writes about why passionate employees lose their mojo. Often it’s down to an issue with your leadership – you’ve breached trust, you’ve been inconsistent, you’ve overlooked something or something. Be open to any changes you might need to make, or ground you might need to make up. Resolve problems decisively, and most importantly get the buy-in of that team member. The way in which you handle their grievance will determine whether they continue to love your brand - or move on to love another one.
Passion is infectious, and it’s noisy. So when passion goes quiet and you know there’s a problem, respond! Your response as leader is what those vital employees will remember, and it’s what underpins their loyalty to you and your brand. So break any silences before they morph into something bigger. Get your collective mojos back - and it could take everything to a new level!
