More Evidence That "Everything Matters"

One of THE most important mantras for managers to remember is:

"Everything Matters"

I've written about this principle - and the story it comes from - in a number of articles, including:

If You Want to Be The Employer of Choice for Healthcare Workers: EVERYTHING MATTERS

Successful Onboarding: Starting Your New Employees Off Right

I always try to make sure I mention this principle in my management seminars, because the more you understand the truth of this when dealing with employees, the greater your ability to manage important moments of truth.

While there are a lot of applications to this principle, here's an important one if you want to:

- increase employee motivation

- improve employee morale

- reduce employee turnover

... and that is... if you focus simply on doing a lot of the best practices for motivating employees or becoming an employer of choice BUT.... you don't consciously and methodically remove the negative things you are doing... it's not going to work.

Why?

Because, the human brain is hard-wired to notice and remember the negative more than the positive. You've probably experienced this if you're a manager.

You can do 20 great things for your team and make one clueless, unthinking mistake, and that overshadows the 20 good things. That's how the brain works. That's part of human nature.

Here's some new research that once again shows how negative memories are coded and remembered more strongly than good ones:

Remembering The Bad Times Better Than The Good

Here's an excerpt:

"Negative events are remembered in greater detail than positive ones.

Kensinger reviews evidence that negative emotion enhances not only the subjective vividness of a memory but also the likelihood of remembering some (but not all) event details. For example, after seeing a man on a street holding a gun, people remember the gun vividly, but they forget the details of the street."

So... find out what you're doing that drives your employees crazy and you'll be far along the path to having a highly engaged workforce