7 Keys To Effective HR Leadership And Motivated Employees

Great HR Leadership results in employees who are motivated to strive for excellence. To be an excellent manager or a great business leader isn’t always charging ahead first – because if you charge ahead and no one is following you, you aren’t really leading, are you?

So, what does it take to be an excellent leader? How can an HR leader motivate employees to work more effectively? Are there steps to achieving leadership that helps employees function in the workplace?

7 Steps to Motivated Employees:

1. Share a clear vision.  If you have a roadmap, share it.  Post it in places where employees can view it, like an intranet or on a shared board.  Make the goals clear. Define the steps to move forward. If you consider Steve Job’s legacy, you can be sure that Apple has a roadmap that can take them into the future.  Are you as prepared?
2. Communicate, communicate, communicate.  Spend time among your employees and ask and listen. The rules of active listening include getting others opinion and seeking their buy-in to your plan.
3. Engage your team.  Do your associates feel that they are empowered to make decisions and do they feel that they have ownership of their actions?  By creating a sense that you have control over your environment leads to more active engagement in the workplace.
4. Determine the route.  Having a plan and mapping it out will keep everyone on track. Don’t keep changing the destination.  If everyone knows where you are going and how you will get there, there’s a greater chance of making it to the destination.  This doesn’t mean being doggedly inflexible if the parameters change, but just like a GPS that can “reroute” if necessary having a destination is paramount to know if you are getting there.
5. Reward and recognize.  Saying thank you in a number of ways means that you’ve noticed a job well done, or going above and beyond.  When these actions are recognized it encourages and flourishes.  Pay it forward and catch people doing things right, and thank them.
6. Think, breath and share “success”.  People want to do well, but may need a bit of coaching or guidance to stay motivated.  Coaching and encouraging associates to a better way to do things by giving them feedback and showing them has incredible power, especially when it comes from someone in a leadership position.
7. Be fair.  Real things happen in a real world, and one size does  not fit all. Make exceptions if warranted, but be consistent and fair.  Take circumstances into consideration – as a leader you are expected to have great wisdom and the perception of being fair goes a long way to establishing that.