Eliminate Saboteurs to Your Success

In today’s economic reality, you simply can no longer tolerate saboteurs to your success.

As Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, has been quoted as saying: “We live in a global economy. To have a fighting chance, companies need to get every employee, with every idea in their heads and every morsel of energy in their bodies, into the game.”

That advice has never been more true than today. Unfortunately, all too often senior leadership in a firm aren’t even on board with the CEO’s mission, much less the lower and middle rank employees they lead.

To achieve the company’s objectives, likely with fewer and more overworked employees thanks to recent rounds of layoffs, executives must get all employees willingly investing their full measure of effort. More importantly, employees need an understanding of how their efforts help to meet those objectives and then be reinforced in a positive way – such as through a simple thank you – so they want to repeat those efforts.

A second saboteur is the office bully. Every workplace has their share of bullies, some tolerated and overlooked, some very stealthy in their bullying tactics. Even superior managers can become bullies, however, under the pressure of rising expectations in a worsening economy. A recent survey by the American Management Association showed those that have unkind managers do not put forth maximum effort at work – 70% of those who worked for kind bosses gave maximum effort whereas only 54% of those who reported to bullies.

What are you doing to root out and eliminate saboteurs in your organization? Are you applying the basic principles of strategic recognition – saying thank you frequently while tying appreciation to desired outcomes? Tell us about it in comments.