A Message to all People Managers

As a manager, how do you see your staff? Do you see them as the talented creative human beings that they really are, or do you see them as a drain on your time and energy? 

When you are working on your staffs appraisals, do you restrict their talents to what you have already seen or do you expect them to step up and be empowered members of your workforce? Be honest, what vision do you hold of each of your staff members? Empowered or Disempowered? 

Each individual on the planet has the ability to create their own reality. We can create a reality filled with joy, wellbeing and happy productive employees, or we can create a life full of struggle, disappointment and poor performing staff. Your individual perception of your staff and your expectation of how they act is more important than you think. As a People Manager, you each have the powerful ability to see your staff in a different light. In doing this, your staff, will then start to match up and resonate to the positive view that you have created for them. This is an extremely powerful exercise that anyone can tap into, whether it is in their career or personal life. Without getting into too much detail, this is a world based on vibration and energy. Therefore, when you start to see people in a new positive light - they will then match the vibration you are offering to them (or in some cases, move away from your experience altogether).   

I recently ran a professional development workshop on this topic for a large hospitality organisation. They have a large amount of people managers, some of which are dealing regularly with poor performing employees.  
As an exercise, I asked them to write down a new vision for each of their team members. However, the new vision had to be a positive one, a vision where the employee was a real asset to the company or were a joy to manage. I also asked them to see their employee engaged, empowered and enjoying work. Finally, they also needed to create a list of the 'positive aspects' of each of their employees.  

Yes, I admit, some people found this quite difficult but at the end of the exercise, all of the people managers stated that it felt so much better to have a positive expectation of employees and see their employees in a new positive light.    
Part of the homework for these people managers, was to continue to see the positive aspects of their employees and expect each and every one of them to 'step up' into the new vision that the manager had given them.  

Three months later and I met with the group again. The results were as follows: 
1) 90% of the People Managers were now enjoying working with the more 'difficult staff members' - and interestingly, no longer perceived them as being difficult!
2) 80% of People Managers could see evidence of the alignment of the staff member, to their improved vision they had created for them.  
3) 3 Employees had left the company.  
​
Please don't take my word for it - try this out for yourself. Words don't teach, experiences do, so why not create a new vision for someone and see what happens! Better still, why not encourage your employees to create a new vision for themselves?  

Lisa Phillips is a Professional Speaker, facilitator and coach based in Northamptonshire UK. Lisa is regularly asked to run wellbeing days for employees and run professional development days. For more information, please see www.amazingcoaching.co.UK or www.howtoempoweryourstaff.co.uk