Get Energized Now
Sep
10
Energize Your Youth Program, Kid’s Birthday Party or Community Event
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Have you ever been in charge of coordinating a children’s birthday party or did you just find yourself hosting a house full of neighborhood kids for the evening with nothing for them do to? Or are you a Youth Services Director, Camp Counselor, or just in charge of doing a special event for your community and don’t know what to do with the children? Hold onto your hat, we’ve got just the ticket for you with our newly revised: Pennypincher Playbook of Activities: 350 Events & Ideas For Adults & Children – Fresh Ideas For Leisure Programs That Don’t Break The Bank
I’ve expanded it and revised it with even more ideas. When you order online at www.Funcilitators.com/parafunalia, within the next 10 days, I will send you a bonus report compiled from practitioners who are community special events coordinators. You get extra ideas for monthly programs complete with what equipment it takes, how long, for how many people and other details for putting on a special event in your community…all at no charge to you as your special bonus….priceless!
The download of the Pennypincher book contains over 350 ideas for low-cost and no-cost interactive exercises, games, & ideas for social activities. Some with detailed activity descriptions and some one-liner ideas for events. This book is compiled from over 25 years working in the leisure and recreation fields – oodles of ideas to jumpstart your kid’s programs.
You know…. even though these programs and activities are meant for kids, I have successfully used them with executives during retreats and with military officers during workshops. Let your inner child come out and play and use these ideas for corporate training too!
To Your FUNomenal Success!
Gail
Sep
8
Here you go, the final installment of how to torment your team members. Be sure you read this in the mirror so you know that if you do everything backwards that this article says, then you should be successful at creating a motivating and meaningful environment for yourself and your team.
41. Have all the answers ready for them so they don’t waste their time and brain power figuring it out themselves. They can be more efficient if they aren’t testing new solutions and just do it the way you said it should be done and trust that your answer is the only right answer.
42. Don’t compliment their work. It can only lead to over-inflated egos and you certainly don’t want another peacock strutting around fluffing their feathers thinking they’re better than anybody else. That’s why you’re there- to show them that none of them are heads above the rest.
43. Take care of your own career and reputation before those of your colleagues. Be the one to kiss up to all those above you, emulate them and talk trash about your teammates so you look better in the eyes of your boss.
44. Act more privileged than your employees, after all, you’re a manager that is above them- you’ve earned it. Come in late, leave early and take your fair share of longer lunch breaks. Show them your importance by letting them know you’ve got other things to do and people to see.
45. Let it be known just how busy you are by constantly checking your cell phone or Blackberry during meetings, interviews or over lunch. Show others that you can multi-task with the best of them- there’s no need to lose productivity by focusing on just one person at a time.
46. Hire insecure people so you can easily manage by intimidation and through your tone of voice and snide comments. They will just be grateful to have a job at all- remind them that their paycheck is their reward.
47. Just for fun, use all the industry acronyms you can think of during the first days of orientation. Play practical jokes on the new hire for your version of disorientation just to see how their sense of humor will fare in your work environment.
48. Proceed to tell the new recruits the background stories, gossip and history of everybody on your team to get them up to speed on their co-workers. You will save them the hassle of getting to know people and making their own informed decisions.
49. If you need to discipline a co-worker, do it in front of the whole team. That way, it will give everybody an idea of what you don’t want and will save you the effort of disciplining others who may have been thinking of doing the same thing. Getting everything in the open shows a sense of family.
50. Have a suggestion box, use comment cards, solicit input and feedback, then do nothing to carry out the comments and pay no attention to complaints.
51. Employ the one strike and you’re out mentality. It lets them know you mean business. No second chances for first impressions. Do it right the first time or don’t do it at all. No sense in encouraging experimentation, we’ve been doing it one way for years and it hasn’t been half bad.
So there you have it: fifty-one ways to ditch your X (or your Y) generations in the workplace. Fifty-one because you should always give a little more than expected and over-deliver what you promised you would provide. If you implement these fiftyone items, you will certainly be dubbed a tormentor who infects the workplace rather than a mentor who affects the workplace.
Being mindful of how not to manage can be just as affective as being aware of how to manage. If you should hear the words “micromanager” being uttered as you walk by, know that it is not a term of endearment and take heed. Read through this list again and see if any of these nifty fifty (one) items sound familiar. Then do what you must to turn it around, or else you will watch your new recruits turn around and head out the door. One last sobering thought, if you think you can just replace those who do walk… it costs one to three times an average salary to replace an employee, not to mention the downtime, stress and team development curve. Pay attention to your people and it will pay off.
To Your FUNominal Success!
Gail
Sep
7
How to Drive Your Team Out the Door
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Here you go, yet another installment of how to irritae, aggitate and finally drive mad, or at least drive away your Generation X and Y employees. Heck, this behavior may even drive away the Baby Boomers or the Traditionalists to boot. Employ these tactics and don’t be shocked if you have no employees after a while.
31. Only approve in-house professional development if absolutely necessary. Choose all courses for them. No need to worry them about all those choices. Don’t bother them with the hassles of packing and traveling to training or conferences in desirable locations.
32. Develop a serious all-business work environment. There’s no room at work for a sense of humor or fun when people are trying to be productive.
33. Ensure employees work in isolation with very little personal contact. Working as a team creates too much trust, open communication and understanding. After all, they may discuss what’s really going on in your organization and gang up on you with quality suggestions after a collaboration session.
34. Avoid getting personal with colleagues at all costs. Draw a thick line between personal and professional and don’t allow anybody to cross that delicate line.
35. Demonstrate strictness and strong disciplinarian tendencies. Avoid any pretense of being relaxed, approachable, casual and people-oriented.
36. Keep employees in the dark about how they contribute and make a difference. They needn’t be bothered with such distracting details.
37. Offer only one benefit plan for all staff regardless of their personal situations. A menu of options can be too time consuming and confusing.
38. Only promote externally to keep new blood flowing into the system with a continuous flow of new ideas and methodologies. Demonstrate to your team that if they want to move up, they’ve got to move out.
39. Don’t tell your team what you expect from them. Keep them on their toes by keeping them guessing. They will be exercising their imaginations and creative thinking by trying to figure out what is expected of them.
40. Eliminate anybody who isn’t 100% behind you. Show them you reward blind loyalty by not even entertaining a hint of conflict or confrontation with your ideas. They will enjoy only needing to learn one company policy: “My way or the highway.” They needn’t jumble their minds with ambiguity…..
To be continued with the last segment of 50 Ways to Ditch Your X (and Y) Employees by being a tormentor rather than a mentor to them.
What are you doing to create a meaningful workplace filled with empowered employees?
Gail
Sep
6
Surefire Ways to Chase Employees Away
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In our continuing series of how to ditch your X (and Y) generation team members, here’s your next installment of how to be a tormentor rather than a mentor. These are surefire ways to chase away your top talent….even your middle of the road talent.
21. There’s nothing like the use of hype to capture their attention. They’ve been exposed to over-inflated marketing claims all their lives from all media outlets. Why stop over-promising and under-delivering now?
22. Keep up the pretentious attitudes. After all, you’re older and have been there and done that. Never mind that they’ve virtually done that and been many other there’s through cyberspace.
23. Keep changing your incentive programs. After all, you’ve heard that these new generations are adept at handling change. They would probably like a flavor-of-the-month program to keep them guessing.
24. Say one thing and then demonstrate the exact opposite with your behaviors. Throw that role model notion out the window.
25. Be extremely judgmental about the new generations in the workforce. Keep a closed mind about how and why they do things differently than you.
26. Don’t worry about handing out rewards and forget the phrase “What gets rewarded gets repeated.” A paycheck is all they need.
27. Invent new policies often to cover behavior demonstrated by one person. Give inconsistent treatment or ignore inappropriate behavior by one person. Either end of this continuum will cement your role as tormentor.
28. Enforce inflexibility in the work schedule and demand all employees report to work at one time and leave on schedule without any interference from life outside work.
29. Arrange to be flexible about quitting time only when it benefits the organization and overtime hours are needed to finish a project, but for heaven’s sake, don’t compensate them for putting in the extra effort and missing a personal appointment. Chalk it up to paying their dues and being a team player.
30. Ignore personal development for your staff- they can get that on their own time.
If you want more ideas on better ways to really motivate your team – check out some of the articles on my resource page at http://www.funcilitators.com/resources.htm or subscribe to Live Wire ezine while you’re there for regular infusions of fun and effectiveness at work.
Until next time…..remember that mentors affect teams positively and tormentors infect teams with negativity. What are you doing to be a mentor or a tormentor?
To Your FUNominal Success!
Gail
Sep
5
Unmotivating Your Workforce & Creating Disgruntled Employees
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In the second of a series of how to be a tormentor and not win the boss of the year award; here are tips to make sure you keep your turnover high and your employees disgruntled.
11. Give group thank you’s, never be specific or personal and by all means be insincere and late with your praise.
12. Throw your front line to the wolves without proper prior qualifications, training or orientation into the culture of your organization. No need to waste time learning the job when they can practice on the job training and be creating an image of your company to the public.
13. Don’t waste time cleaning up the workplace, especially the back area and bathrooms. Why bother with these things that are outside of your job description? They’re just going to get dirty again anyway.
14. Ignore opinions and ideas from new staff. They’re too young and inexperienced to have fresh suggestions. Forget that they’ve been day-trading stock online, managing a credit card, and designing websites for their soccer and debate teams for several years.
15. Be in their face and on top of their every move to second guess their decisions. There’s nothing like micromanagement and hand holding for new recruits.
16. Depend on the annual performance appraisal with the numeric grading scale to suffice for management/employee relations. Forget that Generations X and Y are used to constant communication and feedback every sixty seconds on computer games to know how they are performing so they can change course if necessary.
17. Limit career growth and divide the labor responsibilities up into miniscule tasks so there is no way to guess how it fits in with the big picture. To have such a tiny job in the organization ensures limited professional growth in a dead-end job.
18. Keep the pay low for entry level positions and avoid promotions. No need to get them excited about advancement and delusions of making a living wage.
19. Don’t turn them soft by giving them too much recognition and acknowledgment. They may get too big for their britches and think they can actually take on more challenge.
20. Create a high-stress environment especially from understaffing to prepare them for the work environments they will encounter the rest of their lives…..
If your aim is to created gruntled employees, then don’t do any of these tips. Until the next installment of 50 Ways to Ditch Your X (and Y) Employees…..have a great gruntled day!
Gail
