Use specific language to reinforce your message. You don’t say ‘I,’ it’s always ‘We.’ Things are very much nonpersonalized so it’s ‘a plan’ or ‘the plan’ or ‘we did this.’
You never really single somebody out for any kind of negative reinforcement. You’ll single people out for positive reinforcement when they do something good, things that you wanted them to do. But if things don’t go well, you’re very careful not to do that.
Now, if somebody makes mistakes every day, they’re going to get reprimanded and we’re going to take care of it, but in general, people make mistakes because they don’t have enough information or because there was a misunderstanding on what they were supposed to do.
For us, if you look at it positively, then that’s the training opportunity.
Involve employees in positive opportunities. One of the ways, if an idea comes up, without scaring the person half to death — this is the old, parent-teacher-organization (model) — if you bring up an idea, you’re usually in charge of it. A lot of times, people won’t bring up ideas because they’re scared to be in charge, but along that line, if people bring up ideas, you want to encourage them to find a way to break it apart small enough that they feel good starting to take it on. There’s another training opportunity.
If someone has an idea, then you start asking them questions about, ‘Well, what do you mean? How would that work? How would that affect our customers? How would we move forward with it? Have you thought through those sorts of questions?’ You get people comfortable with solving problems and just sort of logically thinking through issues and ideas that they have.
There’s a lot of people with ideas, but that doesn’t mean a lot unless people know what to do with them.
How to reach: Gateway EDI LLC, (800) 969-3666 or www.gatewayedi.com
