How to Tap into the Mindset of Your People to Drive Results

Designing an environment where people thrive doesn't have to be difficult, and if you can practice essential steps to tap into the mindset of our teams by creating a thriving employee experience, you’ll accomplish great things. 

When people are inspired, they share a common goal. To inspire a team, successful leaders consistently seek ways to understand their people and when using methods to tap into their mindset, like using anonymous surveys to get feedback or investing in the employee experience, you can propel their growth.

Here are five ways to jumpstart the mindset of your people and begin driving results.

1. Encourage Risk

It’s natural for people to hesitate when trying new things. A safe and comfortable position can be more attractive, but this stifles growth and slows down results. The best way to combat this is by creating an employee experience that encourages risk and accepts failure. 

When people are no longer afraid to fail, they’ll be innovative and find ways to be more efficient at their jobs. They may analyze a situation and question if there’s a better way to do it. If their leaders make it known that it’s okay to fail, they’ll keep stretching the limits for the benefit of the company.

How do we treat failure? First, identify the boundaries of risk as there are times where it’s appropriate and times when it’s not. This can be typically found in areas where there’s a potential for financial losses or safety hazards. 

But once those boundaries are communicated, people can be free to fail. The more your team tries new things, the better the chances of success. When there’s failure, you can use it as a teachable moment and establish a way to avoid it next time. 

A more innovative team that’s willing to pioneer ideas will provide more chances for organizational growth. 

2. Identify Everyone’s Strengths

All employees have responsibilities and roles, and they also have skills they excel in. By identifying high-performing skills, you can leverage and maximize their abilities for the better of the company and themselves as a professional. Find more opportunities where they can continue to grow their skills and contribute to the company vision. 

Everyone has weaknesses, but if by focusing on strengths you’ll have the chance to multiply your output. This doesn’t mean to ignore areas of weakness. Be aware of weaknesses but see people for their potential rather than who they are and what they can do at this moment. 

When you see people for who they can become, you fill them with encouragement and opportunities to improve. If teams feel their manager sees the best in them, they’ll work hard to drive results. 

For a productivity boost, practice giving regular feedback to people based on their strengths. Strength-based feedback is a proven method for confidence development, which leads to productivity growth. 

To help everyone in the organization succeed as a team, analyze what everyone’s abilities are and practice aligning their strengths with your company's goals. People inherently crave positive feedback, and the more you praise them for their skills and letting them know their work is contributing to company success, the more they’ll be motivated to continue their outstanding performance. 

Is there a break room in your office? Keep a special board in the room where you can display each person’s strong points, if the space allows for it. Another idea is to send an email newsletter at the end of each month where you give recognition to individuals.

3. Connect with Your People

Leadership expert, John C. Maxwell, is famous for saying “Everyone communicates, few connect.” By transitioning the employee experience from communicating to connecting, you create a whole new world of opportunity.

Communicating: to share or give information to others. [Communicating tends to be what we want others to understand.]

Connecting: the ability to identify and relate to people in such a way that it increases your influence with them. [Connecting is not about us, but all about others.]

When you connect with your people, everyone gains influence. People are inspired. This all creates a powerful employee experience that encourages motivation. 

Ways You Can Begin Connecting with Your People:

• Ask about their passions
• Learn what excites them
• Identify the areas they’re improving in
• Ask where they see themselves in five years
• Show interest in their family
• Talk about their hobbies
• Offer ways you can make their day better
• Ask what changes in the workplace will equip them for better results

When you connect with your team, you show them that you care. A team of stronger people produces stronger results.

4. Promote Transparency and Vulnerability 

When the workplace experience is transparent, this encourages honesty and input from people. Countless companies struggle to get authentic employee feedback, but it doesn’t need to be difficult. A transparent environment that allows others to show vulnerability and share ideas will increase engagement.

First, you must encourage employee feedback. When management seeks out the input from others in an authentic way, they’ll see more candid responses. Once it’s established that employee feedback is welcomed, you’re demonstrating that it also has value. Listen and let others voice their opinions on opportunities and ideas. Address each suggestion, realistic or not, and curate the best components to develop a new solution. 

Creating a welcoming environment like this increases the sense of ownership across the board. If people feel they can be candid and know that their voice matters, they’ll be more likely to provide their freely. 

So, how do you ensure that employee feedback will be unfiltered? How can you know that people are offering their true opinions?

5. Make it Easy to Provide Feedback

When people find it difficult to provide feedback, they won't bother. Furthermore, if they feel there’ll be consequences, they might not provide the unfiltered information you’re hoping to get. The best way to knock down this barrier is by making feedback submission easy to do. But there’s one crucial thing: people must not fear of possible repercussions, and this can be done with an anonymous survey.

Olumo provides text message surveys that can be done in under 30 seconds. They’re anonymous surveys that promote employee engagement through simple features. With these surveys, you get actionable data to make an impact on your team and organization. Using a simple but powerful tool like this equips you to get the most out of your feedback.

When you receive honest, candid responses, this can make a big difference in driving results for your company. You can use the data to make improvements to many aspects at individual or organizational levels, choosing from Olumo’s 400+ questions regarding workplace experience topics.

When people are happy and feel heard, they’re eager to produce better results.  

Start Driving Results Today

By following these steps, you can jumpstart the mindset of your people and drive better results. Using anonymous surveys to obtain candid employee feedback can equip you to identify areas where the workplace experience needs improvement. 

By connecting with your people and identifying the passions that align with your company, you can empower them to innovate and increase their performance. A high-performing team will always drive effective results. 

Invest in your people. Jumpstart their mindset to bring you one step closer to better results.

Test out Olumo for free today and discover all the data you can gather on our simple platform. Yet, remember that data has no value if you don’t use it. Take action from the insights you gather and watch your company grow and thrive.