Keeping the Team at the Top of Their Game
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Listen to Xerox Canada President & CEO Mandy Shapansky talk about the importance of nurturing employees.
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If your employees believe all roads lead to frustration, challenge and failure, guess what your outcome will be? Half the battle is “knowing you can succeed and knowing how”.
Xerox faced a major challenge keeping their work force fully engaged and enthused as they turned the company around. The lessons they learned have now become engrained in the company’s culture.
Mandy Shapansky runs Xerox’s Canadian company. It generates $1.2 billion annually and employs 3,600 employees. She believes building motivation and confidence is essential to keeping the team at the top of their game. She teaches her team that being surrounded by confidence and knowledge keeps you adrenalin up and your knowledge gain at full throttle.
When an employee first arrives they are mightily enthusiastic, but with time some of that thirst for knowledge and accomplishment wanes when their initial confidence gets attacked. It’s the responsibility of top management and her key lieutenants to not let this initial enthusiasm and confidence wane.
Shapansky believes it needs to be converted to a sustained enthusiasm built on:
- Knowledge that the company’s products offer real and needed value
- A personal self confidence that they can personally succeed and are essential to the team’s success
- A sustained confidence in the team that supports and leads them.
Confidence is enhanced and deepened through; skill development, an attitude of service, and a deep understanding that their ability and skill are critical to the team’s success.
To succeed at this, leaders need to be seen. They cannot lock themselves away. They need to be constantly instilling confidence in the value of the company’s service and products and the ability of every employee under them. People succeed when their confidence is built, not when they are terrorized or bullied. Success comes from success not from failure or fear.
At Xerox it is not just about confidence in the products and services they are selling but in the individual’s belief in them self.