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Monday Morning Motivation

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Cottrell, David. Monday Morning Motivation: Five Steps to Energize your Team, Customers, and Profits. New York: Harper Business, 2009.

The single greatest influence on your organization’s energy is the leader…you are the ultimate energizer. The energy you create can be positive or negative, and that energy is multiplied in the organization because of your impact on every member of your team.

Your organizational energy is not the sum of your individuals. It is dependent upon the ratio of energizers to sappers. If you have more sappers than energizers, the energy will be drained, and in fact the energizers may eventually become sappers. As unfortunate as it is, a negative, cynical person has a far greater impact on the energy of the team than a positive person. He or she will deplete far more energy than a positive person will add.

Consider the effect on a team if their leader speaks negatively about her boss’s decision to change a particular process or policy. Will the members of that team be energized about and supportive of the change? Not likely, because they see leadership chaos above them. On the other hand, when employees see that everyone in their line of leadership is on the same page, they are motivated to get on board also.

With respect to your team, are your organization’s values actually practiced or merely posted?

When conflicts are ignored, tremendous organizational energy is diverted from moving forward to dealing with the conflict. The rule illustrates how a small issue can grow exponentially if left unchecked. The longer it persists, the more difficult and time consuming it is to fix–and the more of your organization’s energy it will waste.