The first line of a post titled “Mastering the Art of Motivation” on BNet.com grabbed my attention: “According to the Harvard Business School, 85 percent of companies report that employee motivation drops after the first six months on the job.” Wow!

I suppose that shouldn’t come as a great surprise. We can all remember back to when we started our job for the first time… It was new! Exciting! Challenging! Invigorating! By the time you’re six months in, it’s familiar. Routine. Mindless. Exhausting. That’s just one side of the story, though. Look at what else happens to new hires within the first six months on the job:

1. They become more familiar with their boss and co-workers… and they realize they are all helplessly flawed!
2. While they love the core responsibilities of their position, they realize there are some necessary activities (TPS reports?) that just aren’t as much fun… and they seem to take more time than the work they love.
3. In the midst of the “routine,” they lose sight of the purpose of the organization and even their position which initially connected with their passion.

The list goes on, but these are all very real issues. As the BNet post indicates, it is largely the responsibility of managers to watch over their employees and make sure their motivation does not reach dangerously low levels - and there are plenty of preventatives and remedies at the managers’ disposal. One “tool in the toolbox” should be a connection to personal and professional development authorities who can help business leaders create and maintain a workplace that fosters motivation for all employees. For each of the toxic issues noted above, there are speakers standing by with the exact antidote. For example:

Rick Brinkman, co-author of Dealing With People You Can’t Stand and a very funny, yet relevant, keynote speaker on “Conscious Communication,” is a great help in addressing situation #1 above. It is inevitable that we will cross paths with people we “can’t stand” in the workplace, but Rick’s message hits home with situations that people find themselves in every day and empowers them with practical solutions.

Marcus Buckingham, author of the bestseller, Go Put Your Strengths to Work, and co-author of bestsellers such as Now, Discover Your Strengths, is in high demand by companies seeking to bring the strengths movement into their organizations. Those employees who find themselves bogged down with activities which are not their strengths within six months will only experience further deterioration of their motivation level as time goes on. Within a few years, they’ll only be a shell of the person they were when hired. Marcus can help leaders and managers create a business that plays to the strengths of its greatest assets - its people. The measurable benefits of creating a “strong company” are amazing.

What about employees who lose sight of their - and their company’s - purpose? It is a sense of purpose that drives each of us. Take it away and we are lost. Kevin Freiberg and Jackie Freiberg, co-authors of books such as Boom! 7 Choices for Blowing the Doors Off Business-As-Usual, can be great resources to leaders, managers AND their employees. Reminding their audience members that they are “designed to choose,” they help individuals reclaim their sense of purpose and as a result, boost performance to levels higher than ever before.

And for a universal solution to keep everyone running at optimum levels, consider Harry Paul, co-author of the book, REVVED! An Incredible Way to Rev Up Your Workplace and Achieve Amazing Results (and also co-author of the popular FISH! book series about the Pike Place Fish Market).

These are just a few examples of speakers who can partner with business leaders to prevent the motivation drop-off of new/recent hires, and maintain peak levels of motivation for everyone in the organization. The investment in a speaker can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, but what might the benefit be from having a motivated workforce showing up every day? Or, alternately, what might it cost to have an unmotivated workforce showing up every day?

Posted under Organizational Excellence, Planner Tips, Speaker Recommendations

Did you see Marcus Buckingham’s “I Hate My Job” interventions on Oprah on Friday? The show was essentially a follow-up report on four women who had been a part of Marcus’s strengths workshop and coaching in Chicago over the past few months. These women all faced different circumstances in their lives, but they were all “burned out” in one way or another before Marcus came on the scene. After he had helped them discover and pursue their strengths, though, it was amazing to see the change in their lives - more energy, more hope, more vibrance, more passion… more happiness!

Have you ever thought about how many of your employees may hate their jobs? According to the stats shared on that Oprah show, more than 80% of people are unhappy in their jobs. Odds are, some of those people work for you and your company.

As business leaders, we have a responsibility to take care of those who have placed their lives in our hands. And of course we have a responsibility to ensure that our business remains profitable and successful. But don’t the two go hand-in-hand? How successful can your business really be if 80% of your employees are dissatisfied at work? Or, how much more successful could your business be if 80% of your employees were satisfied at work? Perhaps that is the bigger question!

I had the opportunity to spend a couple of days with Marcus Buckingham on his Go Put Your Strengths to Work book tour last year, and as I watched audience members stay “tuned in” throughout his presentation about the strengths movement, and as I saw people stand in line to meet him and thank him for the work he was doing, it was clear that this man was on to something that could change lives, and change organizations.

If you want to take your organization to new heights, sure, you should check your profit margins, rethink your marketing strategy, sharpen your sales tactics, and so on. But don’t overlook how much could be gained by taking the time to see if your people are working in areas of their strengths every day. If not, they’re likely to be unhappy and working at sub-par performance levels. It’s not easy to re-align people and their duties, but since when does being easy have anything to do with being right? When you set people up to play to their strengths every day, you’ll have stronger employees, who make a stronger organization.

Don’t take my word for it, though. Just look at the four women on Oprah. Look at Marcus’ research statistics. The proof is out there.

Posted under Keynote Speaker Reviews, Speaker News

Marcus Buckingham, best-selling author, popular conference keynote speaker, and leader of the Strengths Movement, will be on The Oprah Winfrey Show on Friday, April 18. How did this come about?

Last year The Oprah Winfrey Show called The Marcus Buckingham Company and asked what the “Strength Movement” was all about. To demonstrate, Marcus and his team went to Chicago, filmed a three hour Workshop and then coached the participants - talented women from all walks of life - over the following five months.

On The Oprah Winfrey Show on Friday, April 18, these workshop participants will share their stories of how they’ve been able to significantly increase their performance, at work and in life.

Here’s a preview of the show from Oprah.com:

Are you unhappy in your job? You’re not alone. Four out of five people quizzed in a CareerBuilder.com survey are unhappy at work—that’s 84 percent of the nation’s workforce!

Business expert and best-selling author Marcus Buckingham has helped millions of people reach new levels of success and happiness at work—including employees at Coca-Cola, Gap and Microsoft—with his radical “strengths training” approach. His key to success is simple:
Stop spending so much time trying to fix your weaknesses. Instead, focus on what makes you special and unique. “A strength is an activity that makes you feel strong,” he says. “If you want to know what your strength is, you’ve got to pay attention to how you feel. It feels like
focus. It feels like concentration. You feel invigorated. Energized.”

Another way to think of strengths training is to look at it as a report card. When a child comes home with a report card, Marcus says most parents would focus more on an F than an A. Really, they should give more attention to the A. “You grow the most in the area where you already show some natural advantage, some natural area of talent or strength or passion. That’s where you start,” Marcus says.

Marcus says being dissatisfied with work can filter into other areas of your life. “Your family [and] people that are the most important to you in your life are the ones that hurt,” he says. “If you’re going to win at life—if any of you or any of us are going to win at life—we’ve got to flip that switch.”

A YouTube video clip highlighting the show is available on the Marcus Buckinham on Oprah page on Squidoo.

Posted under Speaker News