Piece of Mind

In a recent leadership survey, the Hay Group examined over 75 key components of employee satisfaction. They found that trust and confidence in leaders were the single most reliable predictors of employee satisfaction in an organization.

If your employees seem to lack motivation and drive (key measures of employee satisfaction), ask yourself if they have cause to trust you and have confidence in you, your decisions and your own motivations. You are a trustworthy person - maybe you are just not communicating your intentions and ideals the way you intend.

Effective communication by leaders in three critical areas was the key to winning trust and confidence:

1. Helping employees understand the company's overall business strategy.
2. Helping employees understand how they contribute to achieving key business objectives.
3. Sharing information with employees on both how the company is doing and how an employee's own division is doing - relative to strategic business objectives.

Effective leadership at work is not about how "good" a person you are but rather how effective you are at communicating.

-jde