The challenges facing HR executives today are huge.  You must be able to engage your employees, increase morale, gain trust in an untrustworthy economy, retain your top talent, optimize your workforce, and attract new talent in what is fast becoming a competitive job market.  And there’s more.

Another skill a successful manager requires is a way to create a sense of excitement with the employees so that deadlines are met and the team you are managing works together to accomplish the overall goals.  So how do you make them excited?

Going back to my mantra – COMMUNICATE!  If everyone is brought into the overall game plan of an organization you can then create excitement.  If you can lay out the long term goals of the company as a whole and generate excitement for the road the organization is on, you will see an increase in the excitement level of your employees.  This will help achieve all of the requirements I list in the first paragraph with an added bonus.  People who are excited are impatient.  Excitement creates a sense of urgency. 

Think about any situation where you really understand what you are trying to accomplish.  Let’s say you want to go on vacation.  When do you want to do that?  NOW!  As you backtrack through the process of what needs to take place to make that happen, how are you feeling?  Anxious to get started!  Well, I need the money so what am I going to do to get it?  Maybe I’ll clean out my house and have a garage sale, maybe I’ll sell a bunch of stuff on craigslist, maybe I’ll take side jobs, maybe I’ll redo my budget and cut some expenses so I can stash a few bucks a week.  I know though, that I will be excited to start, creative in thinking of ways to make it happen quicker, and highly motivated.

If you can relay to your team the passion and excitement of the future of the organization and they buy in, you will see all sorts of positive results.  Excitement is the key.  They will think outside the box to create solutions that will be more effective with quicker results.  They will be more motivated.  They will recognize their contribution and be anxious to display their value.  They will be engaged and will want to stick around to be there when the goals are met.  And they will want to do all this NOW!

All of these things lead to increased production and happier employees and this makes you a better manager.