teps to increase employee happiness and marketing metrics

How can you create a high-performance team in marketing? It all starts with employee happiness and ends with an incredible rise in your metrics. Are you ready for your team to reach new heights in performance?

Marketing executives must raise the performance of their entire team. Cracking the whip is an outdated form of team management. You need to get to know your team. Your team must feel understood by you.

Do you really need to worry about feelings when there are so many responsibilities? Definitely. You need to be concerned about how your team feels if you want to deliver results. Complex people are hard to understand. This complexity is magnified when everyone tries to row in the same direction.

Ever feel like you are trying to navigate between Charybdis and Scylla? You can use the happiness rating method to bring together divergent qualities and create a team that can conquer the impossible. It all starts with one simple question.

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Happiness is productivity and performance.

Aristotle says that happiness is “mostly thought to be [the ultimate goal], for which we always choose for its sake and never with any view to anything else.” Are you the same?

Happy employees are more productive. In one-on-one meetings, I ask one simple question to direct reports.

“What is your happiness rating?” It is a scale of 1-10, and there is no right or wrong answer.

You might not get an exact answer, at least not on your first attempt. You might believe that your direct reports will respond based on what you want to hear.

You may be right. This isn’t just about hearing. It’s also about listening. Your job does not end with answering a question. Listening is a way to gather information. This is vital because it will help you connect with your team and build a high-performance culture.

Therefore, it is important to dig beneath the surface and discover how each person feels. Emotions and feelings are more than surface-level. You might find that rational employees can be highly irrational. It’s okay, because you are just as rational as your employees.

Intellectual circles have discussed the irrationality and illogicality of human beings throughout history. For example, the Scottish philosopher David Hume believed that reason alone could not be a motive for any action of will and that passion “never opposes” will.

Damasio believes that emotions are a key factor in your decision-making. It’s one of Damasio’s somatic marker hypotheses. It might also help you to understand your team. Damasio wrote that feelings “point us in the right direction, take us into the decision-making space where we can put the tools of logic to good work.”

Understanding the interconnectedness of emotions, feelings, and reason will help you see the importance in a leader-focused approach.

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How to link feelings and performance

These eight steps will help you to connect emotions and performance with productivity.

1. Ask for a happiness rating from 1-10

Is happiness possible to quantify accurately? It is unlikely. However, that is not the point.

Learn about the priorities of each member of your team. You will also build trust and develop connections, which will help you set the stage for high-performance.

2. Ask why

After you have received a score, it is time to find out the “why” behind that number. You want to get a more complete answer.

Ask your feelings about the score. This is just an anchor point to a deeper conversation.

3. Feelings should be validated

Validating your feelings is a crucial step in any process. Validate your direct reports’ feelings when they talk about them.

Avoid giving advice or minimising their feelings. Instead, say something like “I understand why your feeling that way” or “I know how frustrating that can be.”

Frustration is a part of the job, even if it’s inevitable (e.g. pulling reports). It’s important to recognize that frustration is part of the job. The mood shift that follows may surprise you.

4. Invite lower scores

Your direct reports may have different opinions depending on corporate culture, motivations and personality traits.

Make every effort to ensure that each person feels comfortable giving an accurate answer (to the extent possible). It’s okay to give any score.

Let your direct reports know you are a leader and your goal is to make sure they are happy.

5. High scores can be improved

Your direct report will simply inform you that you need to improve if you score a high score, such as an 8 or 9. While a nine may sound appealing, this is not about how you value a number. You should follow up with another question.

“What can be done to make this number a 10.”

Even if your score is 10, you should still ask yourself if there are any ways to improve your happiness. You might find that even a 10 is not the best.

6. Minor grievances can be addressed

You might find that employees are happy but frustrated by minor details. Discuss each grievance as soon as it is brought up.

It is crucial to identify minor problems early so that they don’t become a bigger problem. Your team will be happy to know that you care about even the most trivial aspects.

7. Create a cadence

Marketing leaders will likely hold regular one-on-one meetings with each member of their team. You should ask your team members the happiness rating question at every meeting. This is only for private meetings that follow a predetermined schedule.

8. Keep your rating high with psychology

Despite your best efforts, your team insists that their high ratings are true despite all your efforts. It’s now time to create a psychological drive to reinforce that belief for a longer time.

Robert Cialdini (respected psychologist and author) says that consistency and commitment principles can be used to facilitate compliance because of “our almost obsessive desire for being consistent with what has been done before.” This belief will likely grow over time, if you encourage your team members to share why they love their jobs.

9. Find out what motivates them.

Your team’s motivations will likely differ greatly. They facilitate goal setting and give you the perspective to see the outside world.

What motivates your direct report? Some people are motivated by money and titles, while others seek validation and appreciation.

Ask your direct reports questions about their motivations and ensure they are comfortable answering.

10. Ask them what they require.

Ask each member of the team what they can do to make their lives easier. Focus on the needs, wants and desires of each member of your team if you want them to perform at a higher level. What can you do to make your direct reports happier?

11. Change is possible.

Take a moment to evaluate your management style as you gather information from each person. You may be able to get a little critique if you are lucky.

Understanding what your employees might think is wrong can help you make improvements to your communication and management style.

Your job is not to solve all problems. It’s to have a dialog with everyone in the group and validate their feelings.

Communicate with your team

Market to your customers by creating audience-specific messaging Your team should be no different. You might adapt your message to reflect the needs of each person after you have gathered information during your one-on-1 meetings.

Fluid one-on-one conversations are a great way to gather information. Wouldn’t it be great to have that kind of exposure to customers? You can use your insights to help everyone move in the same direction, with more intensity, by understanding their motivations and feelings.

You’ll notice an increase in happiness ratings as you validate your feelings using the above framework. Your team’s performance will skyrocket when this happens.

My team? What about my team? We don’t know the answer. One thing is certain: their performances are unmatched.

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11 steps for increasing marketing metrics and employee happiness appeared originally on MarTech.