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On May 26, 2009 I posted about the 8 Characteristics of a Highly Effective Workplace. The list is the result of a quarter century of in-class exercises asking people to define a great working environment based on their own experience.

The first item on the list is Productivity. That often surprises people. Over the years, I've found that many see productivity as something that matters to the boss, but not to members of the team.

It does matter to the boss. But it also matters to team members. Over and over they describe a great workplace as including high productivity.

They talk about the work they were doing and how they produced great results. Their great workplace experience was a time when their team outperformed other teams. It was a time when the team was the best.

Some people have trouble believing this. I know that Theory X has been driven from the heads and certainly from the conversations of most managers. But I know that many of them still have it in their gut.

And I know that Theory X is alive and well in the policy manuals. We write our policy manuals for the small percentage of people we can't trust. The message we send when we do that is that we can't trust anyone.

That's why some people expect other people (never themselves) to crave a workplace where they can take it easy. My experience and my group exercises say they're wrong. Not once in over a quarter century has the description of a great workplace included "taking it easy" or described a place where team members could just kick back and not work.

If we know that people would prefer to work in a productive workplace or team, the next question is: "What do supervisors do to create a productive workplace?"

Part of the answer is that supervisors create a productive workplace when they do the other things listed in my 8 Characteristics. They set clear and reasonable expectations. They give frequent and usable feedback. They're fair. They're consistent. They give people the freedom they've earned.

Beyond that, I've seen supervisors do several things that seem to boost productivity without turning the team into a slave ship and without expensive bonuses. Here are some.

They find ways to track productivity and help their team members compare performance. Sometimes they compare with other teams. Sometimes they compete with themselves at another time.

Some of those supervisors created special awards for good performance. The awards were creative and presenting them was usually a laugh-filled drama.

One office supervisor created the "Michael Jordan Award." He said that Jordan was the greatest player on his team. The award, by vote of the team members, went to the greatest player on their team that week. A signed publicity photo of Jordan was symbolically presented to the winner.

There were lots of "golden" awards. One call center supervisor handed out a "Golden Hand," literally a gold-painted mannequin hand, to "the person who helped us all the most this week." One of my favorites was the "Golden Toolbit," given by a shop foreman to the person on his team who "did the best job of cutting through the cr*p this week."

The supervisors that gave out the awards almost never chose the recipient themselves. Most of the time the group made the choice or some kind of unambiguous measure of performance was used.

Those ceremonies were one way that effective supervisors showed support for good performance. But most of the time that support was quieter. They understood the power of thanks.

Thank people for superior performance. Thank them for their effort. Many managers think that will cause people to slack off. "After all," they reason, "good performance is what we expect." But praise and recognition for good performance encourage more of the same.

Boss's Bottom Line

You can create a great working environment no matter where you work. Do the basic things that all good supervisors do, and make sure you spotlight and praise productivity.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.