Spiritual encouragement is a profound, widely used, and highly influential management practice. In enterprises, spiritual encouragement involves decision-makers and managers skillfully fostering employees' ambition for progress. By providing incentives, they help employees eliminate negative impacts from all aspects, allowing their enthusiasm to be maximized. This is a management method.
■ Timely Recognition
Recognition affirms a certain behavior and encourages its continuation. Most enterprises implement the following practices:
1. Skillfully combining material and spiritual encouragement for complementary effects.
2. Creating a good psychological atmosphere for recognition. To play its role, a "bad is detestable, good is enviable" atmosphere should be fostered.
3. Timely recognition. This not only fully leverages the effect of rewards but also increases employees' appreciation of them. Delayed rewards can weaken their motivational impact or even make employees indifferent.
4. Differences in recognition and reward content. Some value material rewards, others prefer spiritual ones, and sometimes giving employees time off is better than any other reward.
5. Appropriate recognition. The degree of reward should match the recipient's contribution; greater contributions deserve higher-level rewards. Only genuine rewards can win credibility.
6. Varied methods of recognition and reward. Regular rewards often lose their effectiveness because they can be predicted. Unpredictable, intermittent, and ever-changing reward methods yield better results since employees must continually work hard to frequently receive rewards.
Mary Kay Ash, chairman of Mary Kay Cosmetics, once said about the importance of recognition: "What does it mean to step on stage and show oneself? Frankly, I believe that for a woman, stepping on stage to receive praise from peers is far more important than receiving an envelope with precious gifts, because no matter how valuable the gift inside the envelope is, others won't know! Once she tastes the sweetness of being praised, she will hope to step on stage again next year to receive even more praise!"
Senior administrative vice president Bet Ford of Rockefeller's company once suffered a catastrophic failure in his South American investment due to negligence. However, Rockefeller's attitude astonished him. Instead of questioning the details of the failure, Rockefeller encouraged him by saying, "Great job, Bet. We just heard about your situation in South America." Bet thought he would surely be criticized, so he said, "It was indeed a tremendous loss, we only managed to retain 60% of the investment." Rockefeller replied, "That's already quite good. If it weren't for your proper handling, how could we have retained so much?"
Rockefeller changed his usual demeanor in front of a subordinate who deserved criticism, finding something praiseworthy and sincerely expressing it. The result is understandable when putting oneself in Bet's shoes. In times of failure, instead of being scolded, Bet received encouragement, wouldn't he work harder afterward? Money is earned by people, and since no one is perfect, who can avoid mistakes? Rockefeller truly deserves his reputation as a top-notch entrepreneur for his deep understanding of the art of winning hearts.
Praise is an effective way to gain and maintain goodwill, but its unique significance goes beyond that. The strongest motivation for continuous effort is self-confidence. And this confidence can easily be established in subordinates' minds through appropriate praise and trust from leaders.
Of course, for those who become arrogant and overconfident after receiving praise, leaders should adopt a cold approach, giving them timely and strict criticism to keep them clear-headed.
■ Caring for Subordinates
Walmart, based in the United States, now has over 26,000 employees and ranks fourth in the U.S. retail industry. The company’s sales increased from $45 million in the 1970s to $1.6 billion today, with the number of stores growing from 18 to over 330.
The company's general manager, S. Walton, is very concerned about his employees. He requires all managers to wear buttons engraved with the words "We care about our employees." At Walmart, employees are called "partners" rather than employees. S. Walton listens carefully to the opinions of his employees, saying, "The key lies in going deep into the stores and listening to what each partner has to say. The best ideas often come from the clerks and assistants."
To ensure employee rest, Honda headquarters has a rule that employees must obtain approval from their supervisors to work overtime. Additionally, there are strictly defined 60 days as "no-overtime days," during which employees must leave the factory by 6 p.m. If individual employees have too much workload and need to extend their working hours, leadership will adjust their workload accordingly.
Moreover, Honda shows concern for employees in small ways. Later becoming the general manager, Kume Akira caught a cold while leading the development of the European market and unexpectedly received a telegram from Japan, reading: "Don’t worry about the loss, health is paramount. Honda."
■ Respect and Trust
World 500 entrepreneurs believe that the fundamental energy for mobilizing human resources comes in three categories: first, material energy; second, spiritual energy; third, informational energy. Spiritual and informational encouragement includes several aspects:
Promoting equality - corporate positions form a hierarchical structure, with unequal upper and lower levels, which is easy to overlook. Some excellent companies do well in this area: at Disneyland in Los Angeles, USA, all employees wear name-only badges without surnames, addressing each other by name regardless of rank; administrative staff must participate in a week-long "delegation" annually, selling popcorn or collecting tickets in the amusement park to personally experience the realities of subordinate employees.
At HP Computers in the USA, everyone from top to bottom addresses each other by name without using titles. The chairman and general manager's office doors remain open, welcoming visits from employees at any time.
Toshiba Corporation's president, Shikimi, regularly visits grassroots employees and their families, sitting in his open-door office every morning at 7:30 to listen to employee suggestions.
At Motorola, all levels of leadership keep their office doors open, allowing employees to enter anytime to voice opinions or complaints. On birthdays, company leaders offer congratulations. These practices demonstrate openness and transparency, showing that leaders focus on work within the company and handle personal matters outside. Employees’ personalities are respected, which helps create harmonious interpersonal relationships and motivate employees.
At Volvo in Sweden, groups of 10-25 people are responsible for a work area, where all tasks are independently decided by workers. Carefully designed soundproofing allows workers to discuss interesting topics in normal conversation tones.
In the process of encouragement, trust plays a very important role. For leaders to assign subordinates specific responsibilities, corresponding authority must be granted. This allows leaders to focus on major issues, enhances subordinates' sense of responsibility, and fully unleashes their initiative and creativity. Whether or not to delegate power is a significant measure of a leader's ability to use people effectively.
If leaders do not delegate power or interfere excessively after delegation, it leads to chaotic management. On the other hand, subordinates who don't receive necessary trust may lose motivation and develop dependency, turning to leaders whenever problems arise, leaving leaders overwhelmed and neglecting major issues.
■ Inspiring Over Directing
How to stimulate enterprise employees' vitality is a unique art practiced by Panasonic Corporation in Japan. The founder, Konosuke Matsushita, motivated his subordinates by loudly reprimanding them. Even in public, he didn't hesitate to criticize subordinates harshly. Matsushita had his own perspective on this method. He believed that a single unforgettable reprimand was more effective than repeated criticisms, provided it was justified rationally. "If there's a 60% chance, go for it!" was another of Matsushita's motivational methods.
To ensure that encouragement truly fulfills its intended purpose, World 500 companies usually address different situations appropriately, varying by person and circumstance, and properly handle the following issues:
1. Pay attention to the hierarchy and timing of encouragement. For example, some employees face financial difficulties at home, so monetary bonuses might be awarded during recognition. However, for those with high household incomes, monetary rewards may not be very motivating. They may particularly desire honorary awards, which enterprise leaders should strive to provide. In most cases, rewards should be consistent and promptly implemented.
2. Combine material and spiritual encouragement. Both are indispensable and cannot replace each other. It's impossible to solve various ideological issues by merely talking without addressing material needs, yet relying solely on material rewards to boost motivation is unstable. The secret for leaders implementing encouragement lies in appropriately applying both methods, cleverly combining them, complementing each other, and filling gaps.
3. Help employees understand and manage the relationship between satisfying needs and assuming responsibilities. Satisfaction of needs drives the assumption of responsibilities, and assuming responsibilities is the basis and condition for satisfying needs.
4. Adhere to the principles of moderation and fairness. Goals and indicators should neither be set too high nor too low, ensuring that employees can achieve them with effort. The conditions for achieving goals should be equal. Outstanding achievements and data should be authentic, withstand verification, and stand the test of time. Rewards should be fair and reasonable; punishments should balance leniency and severity, be rule-based, and convince through reason.