7 strategies to turn negativity & passiveness into initiative

Brain Rule 3 for teams: to Increase the Initiative in your Team

Your employees are complaining that there is a lack of direction. They don’t feel motivated anymore.
Especially now, it’s important that they take initiative and do a better job than ever before.
Brain Rule 3 helps you get the initiative back in your team and increase the productivity.

As a leader you feel that your strategy is clear and you don’t understand why your employees don’t get it. Sales are lacking behind and something needs to happen. Otherwise, it is even necessary to start a re-organization and dismiss people.

You have tried a lot: you spoke with them, gave them clear assignments and maybe even a training. However, nothing really changed.

What is going on?

-Your employees really don’t know the direction. Leaders think that everybody knows it, but this is NOT the case. Research (CIPD) showed that out of 2000 employees only 29% knew the values and strategies of their company.

-It could well be that your team feels that the management goes into a direction they do not want to identify with

-Or maybe some of your team members know that they are nominated to be dismissed

-Or they feel that they are not valued anyhow

In all cases, this means that the connection between your employees and the company is lost. They do not feel that they belong to the company anymore (although they are employed).

You are not meeting one of the strongest forces in universe: ‘social belonging’. The importance of belonging to a group is not always immediately recognized. However, it has disastrous consequences for a company if this aspect is lacking. Our mental system is programmed to belong to a group.  If this does not happen, our brain sends signals that feel like a punishment.

This leads to negativity, passivity, feelings of burn-out and demotivation. The loyalty to the company will drop with a negative impact on sick leave, employee turnover and productivity.
This can last for months and even years. No wonder that the clients feel this; with a negative effect on the bottom-line.

So, how can you get all noses into the same direction?
How can you make everybody feel responsible and take action?
How can you turn negativity & passiveness into initiative?

Restore the connection and make use of:

Brain Rule 3 for teams: create a sense of belonging

This is a proven recipe

Click here if you want to know how you can use brain rule 3 for clients.

7 strategies for leaders to turn negativity & passiveness into initiative:

1. Make clear what you stand for and what is your strategy

Communicate this message consistently and show it in actions. In the end, nobody wants to stay behind.

2. Be even clearer about what you expect of your employees.

Tell them what their added value is. Even in a period of re-organisation.

3. Create an enthusiastic (and big enough) group of pioneers, if you want to introduce new strategies.

Others will follow.

4. Mention the commonalities in your team and make clear where you are different than others.

People always prefer their own group above others.

5. Make clear to what group they belong if they take the wished actions.

Make also clear that you are also part of the group and lead by example.

6. Set concrete short-term objectives, so everybody can immediately notice the effect.

This way, you are positively influencing the intrinsic motivation, satisfaction and output. This does not work with abstract objectives that are too far away.

7. Give regular feed-back about the progress that has been made.

This way, people function in the best way (Amabile, Harvard University).

Do you know more strategies? Share them in the comments.

If you implement brain rule 3 in your team, you will immediately notice the impact on the productivity, teamwork and motivation. If this is lacking, this will lead to loads of stress, dissatisfaction and demotivation.

With connecting greetings,

Karin
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