SAN DIEGO, Feb. 17, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Ken Blanchard Companies®, an expert in leadership development and employee engagement, aims to help organizations address the growing decline in employee engagement by explaining the source of disengagement. The enhanced training solution Optimal Motivation®, developed by Blanchard®, is rooted in Blanchard's innovative approach to motivation as outlined in Why Motivating People Doesn't Work … and What Does, the best-selling book by program coauthor Susan Fowler. Optimal Motivation helps organizations understand that the key to engagement is the quality of an individual's day-to-day motivation.
Many top-level executives dedicated to measuring and improving employee engagement have no idea how people become engaged or disengaged in the first place. "A top-level executive recently confessed to me," said Blanchard senior consulting partner, Susan Fowler, "his 'organization is spending a fortune to measure and implement engagement initiatives, but nothing seems to be working; in fact, our employee engagement numbers are getting worse instead of better.'" This is because organizations are trying to fix a problem after it has occurred using techniques based on outdated approaches to motivation. Organizations need to intervene before people are on the road to disengagement.
Blanchard's award-winning research has clarified how people ultimately come to be actively disengaged, disengaged, or engaged, or have employee work passion. Through a phenomenon called the appraisal process, people are constantly evaluating their experience in the workplace. These appraisals lead to conclusions that result in people's sense of well-being, intentions, behavior, and ultimately, their experience of employee work passion.
Fowler, together with Optimal Motivation coauthors Dr. David Facer and Dr. Drea Zigarmi, make the bold claim that motivation is a skill for managing those appraisal processes more effectively. Motivation is a skill that can be learned, developed, and sustained. Individuals can learn how to choose a high-quality motivation experience at any time.
Leaders discover that the quality of an individual's motivation is what matters most. The leader's role is to facilitate employees' shift to a more optimal motivational outlook and use cutting-edge best practices for creating workplaces where high-quality motivation—and people—flourish. As program coauthor Drea Zigarmi likes to remind people, "The most powerful moment in motivation is when you are able to use the skill of motivation and shift to an optimal Motivational Outlook. It can be done personally and—with some time, attention, and training—you can learn how to help others make that shift also."
Getting to the root source of engagement makes good business sense. Research shows that optimally motivated employees are three times more satisfied with their jobs, deliver 31 percent higher productivity, are ten times more engaged by their jobs, and demonstrate three times higher creativity.
Blanchard is hosting a free Leadership Livecast, "Motivating People Doesn't Work … What Does" on February 25, featuring Susan Fowler and Ken Blanchard, cofounder and Chief Spiritual Officer of The Ken Blanchard Companies and best-selling coauthor of The One Minute Manager and sixty other business titles. To register for this event, visit http://leadership.kenblanchard.com/optimal-motivation.
For more information about Optimal Motivation and its link to employee engagement, download our white paper or visit www.kenblanchard.com/optimalmotivation.
About The Ken Blanchard Companies
The Ken Blanchard Companies is a global leader in workplace learning, productivity, and leadership effectiveness that is best known for its Situational Leadership® II program—the most widely taught leadership model in the world. Because of its ability to help people excel as self-leaders and as leaders of others, SLII® is embraced by Fortune 500 companies as well as mid- to small-size businesses, governments, and educational and nonprofit organizations.
Many Blanchard programs for teams, customer loyalty, change management, and leadership development blend the use of assessments with elearning and instructor-led training. Self-paced elearning modules are available via Blanchard Online Learning, a cloud-based curriculum that is interactive and easy to use via mobile tablets.
Using best practices based on the company's continual research, Blanchard's world-class trainers and coaches support people in making the shift from learning to doing and drive organizational and behavioral change into all levels of organizations.
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