Page 203 - Build a Culture of Employee Engagement with the Principles

174 Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work

Best Practices and

Turnkey Strategies to

Increase Consideration

Although it is difficult to teach empathy, there are specific con-
crete strategies that will increase your employees’ experience
of being treated with consideration. This list is not all-inclusive,
and you should work to create and develop your own repertoire
of ways to be more considerate. As a starting point, I encour-
age you to think about times when a supervisor treated you or
another team member with consideration. You might even ask
your employees directly how you could be more considerate.

1. Know your employees. The more you know about a per-
son, the more opportunity you will have to be considerate.
Therefore, you want to begin storing up information about
your employees. If asking questions and learning about your
employees is not natural to you, approach it with the attitude
of being curious about the people who work for you. For exam-
ple, ask yourself, “I wonder what this person enjoys doing out-
side of work?” The most effective way to store the information
you gather is by using a program such as Microsoft Outlook,
which allows you to create specific data fields and set calendar
reminders. If Outlook is not an option, you can also use Excel,
Word, or various online tools such as Google documents. You
can even go old school and use oversized index cards.
Regardless of the collection method used, begin by record-
ing the employee’s birthday and start date with the organiza-
tion. Next, record any information that you know about his
or her family members, such as names and ages of children.
Write down what you know about his or her hobbies and