Improve Employee Performance Idea 99 – February 10, 2010: Link Teamwork to Personal Needs/Interests

If you want to encourage greater teamwork, you might want to identify some factors that motivate employees to work with team members. 

To identify these factors, first think about the needs/interests of your individual employees.  For instance, you might have some employees who feel insecure making decisions alone.  Since teamwork offers the opportunity for joint decision-making, explain the positive benefits of teamwork from this perspective.

The key is to know what motivates your employees; then focus on the one or two aspects of teamwork that might match their needs/interests.

KEY REMINDER:  To improve employee performance, you have to conduct effective performance discussions, give effective performance feedback, reinforce employee performance, and use effective performance phrases to write effective performance appraisals. 
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Barbara Brown, Ph.D. shows managers how to improve employee performance by linking performance to results. She publishes handbooks that contain phrases for discussing performance and for writing appraisals. Dr. Brown also provides training and consulting. Visit www.LinkToResults.net