- Welcome to "The Journey."
Today I'm gonna talk about how to empower your employees
to be more productive.
Did you know, did you know,
75% of people don't quit their jobs, they quit their bosses?
- What?
- What does that tell ya?
- That is true.
Right?
We never ever quit a job
because we don't like the company, everything else.
It's usually that one person, that boss,
that just gets under your skin.
You can't deal with them, so you bounce.
Well, we've got a lot of tips for you
on how to really empower your employees,
and make them happy, essentially.
- Empower them.
- You ready to jump into the tips?
- Yeah!
- All right.
- So, first thing I wanna share,
just my own personal experience with my boss,
that I love and will keep me around,
is he constantly provides support and motivation,
and in a way that is also intertwined
with some constructive criticism,
'cause we always need to be growing.
- Absolutely.
- And I think he leads by example, as well,
most the time, so for that case it helps me
to be on the right track, and it empowers me to stick around
and do the best work that I possibly can.
- Yeah, that supportive leadership is absolutely crucial
for you as a business owner,
and that means talking with your employees,
finding out their why.
Why do they come into work every day?
What do they care about?
And you can go and have regularly scheduled one-on-ones.
I know in the corporate setting,
it's a little bit more common.
Maybe in the retail or service industry it's not,
but you can really wow your employees
by just taking the time, even 10, 20 minutes.
Figure out what they're doing, help them grow,
give that constructive criticism.
- Absolutely.
And then encourage them to think forward,
past the current position that they're in.
That's been another huge thing that I do as a manager myself
and then also the conversations I have with my bosses.
Okay, this is what you're doing now.
Where do you see yourself in five months, or in a year?
- Right, and that's, again, any setting, any business,
any company, even if you're a small, small company.
Help them figure out what that next step is,
and for one of my employees, that next step was to leave
the company and do something else
that really inspired him, and that's okay.
As a leader you're not gonna always keep them there.
I still have conversations where he calls me to say,
"Hey, I'm doing this with my team,
"can you tell me a little about what you did?"
And it really builds them up and inspires them
because they're all people, right?
- All right, Nealey, so I think this ties in really nicely
with the next point we want to share,
which is to empower individual employees.
What comes to mind when I bring that up?
- Well, with this, it's all about the individual person
and letting them shine, right?
Letting them hold leadership positions
with different projects. - And that's a key word--
- It may not be a boss-- - Individual.
- But they can take leadership roles.
Help them be autonomous with their workday
and their work flow or their desk.
Let them be them,
'cause then you'll really get their best work out of them.
- Yeah, that's one thing I notice as I'm a manager,
as I mentioned, and having really taken the individual
and honing in on that with the individual employee
and letting him decide when, hey, you wanna do a half day,
just to like start your weekend early?
Totally, go for it.
- I'm here for it.
- You wanna do your spin class at lunch?
Yeah, let me know how it goes.
Really listen to them, their schedule, their needs,
their wants, and treat them as the individual that they are,
and express themselves.
- All right, so another way you can empower your employees
is to really create that positive work environment,
and I talked about it a little bit before
with those one-on-ones, but it's really opening up
and treating everyone like family.
I like to tell my guides, my peers, that we end up spending
most of our time together, even more so than our family,
let's treat each other like family, let's make this a place
that we like to come to, right?
- More than a co-host.
- More than a co-host, we're friends!
- Like family.
Or friends.
- Awkward.
(laughing)
- And, yeah, Nealey, one thing I know I like to do
as a manager is keep this sort of open-door policy,
and make it a safe place where you can share things,
and you won't get made fun of, or shunned,
just really keeping that a neutral environment, welcoming.
Tell me what's up.
- Right, and if people make mistakes, it's okay, right?
Failure is feedback and we're not gonna ever grow
if we don't get out there and test things,
and get out of our comfort zone,
so encourage your employees to fail, and that's okay,
because they'll learn from it, and they'll get better,
and then your results will get better,
your company will grow because of it.
- Empowering.
- Empower them.
- One of my favorites, to empowering employees,
a healthy work environment.
I know I love the GoDaddy office here in Kirkland,
because of the natural lighting, it's by the water,
and they have a ton of windows.
- It's so beautiful.
I'm super jealous because all we have is just desert
everywhere on the outside to look at.
- But also, it's great to just take a break
and walk outside, you can walk, it's gorgeous here,
walk along the water,
but maybe that's not where you're located, right?
Just make a conscious effort to change up the scenery,
unplug for a little bit, and also eat a well-balanced meal,
and not at your desk.
When I see my employees do that, I'm like, "No, no, no!
"Get outta there!"
- You have to reset.
- You gotta reset and separate the two,
so if you see someone eating at their desk,
have 'em take a break, go outside, have a picnic,
enjoy some natural light.
- A lot of the one-on-ones that I do with my guides
when I was a supervisor is, we just had walking one-on-ones.
We got to talk about each other and figure each other out,
help each other grow, but we would just take a walk
versus being in a stuffy room.
- Next one, all about joining forces,
encourage teamwork and collaboration.
I know what we always say, teamwork...
- Makes the dream work.
- That's right. - Super corny.
(both laughing)
- And so with that, think about how you can leverage
your teammates, projects you can do together.
- So I had a sales team when I was a supervisor,
and what I used to do to kind of just build a little bit
of competitiveness, I would split the team up in two.
All right, this team versus this team,
and we used to play a game called dodgeball.
So how it worked is every time one team made a sale,
they gotta knock someone else out on the board,
and last team standing wins.
- Yeah, I loved that when I was a sales rep back in the day.
We had different teams, team names, we had flags,
we really embraced the team, the comradery.
And then we would do these competitions,
kinda like what you're talking about,
which just, you already love what you do
and you're motivated in certain ways,
but it just had a little different flare to your motivation
that day, to beat that other team,
or maybe win a really cool SPIFF,
and you bond with some of these other teammates
that maybe you don't normally talk to or go to lunch to,
et cetera, and it just helped everyone to take collaboration
to the next level.
- All right, so another way you can empower your employees
is to reward their successes, right?
We're so quick to point out criticism and say,
this is how you could do better.
Suck less, do better, do all these things, right?
But when they do a good job, you need to tell them.
And when I gave my kudos, I wouldn't just say good job,
or, hey, that was nice, or whatever else.
I would say, hey, that was a great job.
And then give this specific example of what they did,
that way they know, cool, I'll keep doing that,
'cause that's right on the money.
And I know you have a story of your rewards and successes.
- Yeah, I was thinking back to when I worked
with Main Street Hub, which was before GoDaddy acquired us,
and I was a sales rep, and one of the things
that we really embodied and pushed was our core values,
and we had five of them.
And every year, they would give out this cool trophy.
It was really pretty, it was glass,
for each of the core values,
and it would be company-wide.
And so one person, or maybe two would get,
hey, you demonstrated this core value of,
maybe like taking ownership.
And it was just a really cool way to keep the core values
top of mind, but also reward an employee,
and it felt awesome.
I got it a couple of years, different core values,
and it made me feel very, it made me feel heard,
it made me feel seen, and it made me feel empowered.
- That's so awesome, and with these rewards,
it doesn't always have to be a monetary reward like,
yes, I would love you to throw money at me all day,
but just that thank you,
or great job with that specific statement,
or just doing a call-out to that person
goes a tremendous way.
- Another one of my favorites to empower your employees,
eliminate the negatives.
Negativity, it's...
- It kills.
- It kills, it pollutes the environment, and your team.
So one thing I would say, and we kind of mentioned this
earlier with keeping an open door,
is let your employees know they've been heard,
let them know you're gonna do whatever you can to neutralize
whatever this negative thing that is happening,
or the feedback that they're giving you.
'Cause that's a brave move on their part, too.
They're speaking up and that's definitely
one of our core values.
Speak up, if something is going on
that you're not cool with, and then, in hopes of that,
it'll be heard, so let your employees know
you're gonna neutralize that.
- Yeah, and negativity comes in all shapes and forms,
like if you have an employee that is constantly complaining,
that negativity will spread on to the next employee,
and the next employee, and then the whole office
or wherever you work just becomes this negative experience.
So if that's the case, isolate the issue, right?
Bring that person in and figure out
what is their actual concern, 'cause they're complaining,
but do they have a valid complaint?
Are they frustrated about something else,
and things are just snowballing down, right?
Figuring out what that is, and making sure that
that one issue doesn't spread to everywhere else,
because then one of your employees
will run into a similar issue, and then that negativity
gets brought up again, and it's over and over and over,
and that's not something that you want.
Isolate those quick and early, and just have a conversation
with that person behind closed doors, or just one-on-one,
so that way you really figure out what their concerns are.
- All right, and last way to empower your employees,
update your technology.
Make sure it's very easy for them to see the success
that they're doing, how successful they are,
where they need to be in their day.
How to achieve their goals.
- Right, and having outdated technology just holds them back
from being as productive as possible.
I know that we at GoDaddy did something
what seemed pretty small at the time,
but was a huge success, we updated our guides' monitors.
They were just these normal-sized monitors,
we ended up giving them these giant monitors
so they can see more and do more,
and that increased productivity.
- Makes a big difference. - It made them happier.
And it was something simple like that.
But think about if you're running
some super-outdated software that always crashes, has bugs,
it's slow, it's clunky.
That employee has to deal with that all day,
and if it's frustrating them,
they're not gonna get any work done.
I know I wouldn't be.
- Yeah.
Rather than empower them, it's just gonna defeat them.
- But that's all we have for you.
Go ahead and like this video,
and leave a comment on your favorite way
to empower your employees.
- Or maybe it's something that you're doing
that we didn't talk about.
Also be sure to ring that bell so you'll be the first
to know about our upcoming videos and future content.
- Awesome.
This is "The Journey."
We'll see you next time.