Motivating Your Admissions Staff Resources

Right People = Morale Boost

Right People On The Proverbial Bus: We know this principle by now, but are we applying it? This principle not only requires we keep the top-performing enrollment professionals but also to work with HR to reassign poor-performing ones.

You know who the poor-performing team members are and how they drag the team down. The chances are high that your team does too. Avoiding the reassignment of the poor-performing team members signals to the rest of the team—especially top-performers—that something other than performance is more valuable to the team.

Remember: The best people leave first. Others will see it and may leave shortly thereafter. This can quickly affect the overall morale of the team.

Top-Performers = Morale Boost

Emphasize The Value Of The Team: Hold on to your top-performers.

Enrollment team leaders can make top-performers feel valued by:

- Providing a clear career path
- Developing special roles as mentors
- Trusting top-performers with challenges
- Making room “at the table”

Additionally, schedule reviews in the appropriate season at the appropriate time (immediately) to provide timely feedback rather than waiting for stodgy annual reviews. Top-performers like to know where they stand at all times—don't avoid the tough conversations. Lastly, share “wins” publicly with the team and up the chain. Do this early and often.

Remember: People rarely leave a team or place where they feel confident they are valued.

Know Thyself = Morale Boost

Discover Your Team: Know who you have on your team—and help them know themselves and each other better.

It is important to understand the personalities and strengths/weaknesses of those on your team—and how they interact with others on the team. To develop EQ, teams need to know how their strengths and weaknesses intersect with other's, how people prefer to receive communication, motivation, care, etc.

Make sure the team not only takes applicable assessments to learn their own personalities and strengths/weaknesses but to learn and develop strategies to adapt to others on the team as well.

Remember: The Golden Rule is almost better stated "Do unto others as they would like done unto them."

Good Culture = Morale Boost

Eliminate Culture-Undermining Behavior:

Work to eliminate negative and foster positive behaviors of the team that affect the culture of your department and team:

- Mitigate Gossip - This one almost never goes away completely but can be mitigated by the leader. Give fair warning and be consistent. Let the team know: "I'll take it to the person and mention where it came from" anytime another person is discussed.
- Eliminate rudeness and prevent offense by improving empathy and EQ.
- Foster the development of humility (honoring others above ourselves) and service without undermining leadership position and role.
- Model, model, model.

Remember: What we permit, we promote. What we allow, we encourage. What we condone, we own. What we tolerate, we deserve.

Celebration = Morale Boost

Celebrate Wins! And celebrate often:

- In team settings
- To “higher-ups” (who can be coached to reinforce)
- Via swag: coins, digital badges, and stuff
- In fun
- Verbalize appreciation

According to a Gallop Poll, positive praise made employees seven times more likely to stay and eleven times more committed. Make authentic compliments count—tailor them to the team member's temperament. Make compliments regular, studies show they should be weekly.

Remember: A compliment highlighting strengths to one team member often results in highlighting those strengths to the entire team.

Coaching = Morale Boost

Coach For Confidence: Create, calculate, compare, and coach counselors to a point of mastery of best practices.

In the commercial sector, research says that 54% of sales professionals from multiple sectors feel they need coaching while 60% of their leaders say they don’t have the bandwidth or a system to provide it. In our experience, working with over 35 schools, this figure is the same or more dire for enrollment professionals.

Additionally, a dynamic or formal enrollment process is the single-most impactful factor in success for professionals (CSO Insights). Yet, so many team members go off-script or become free-stylers! To coach to proficiency, one must have a set curriculum to which to coach.

Remember: As enrollment professionals improve and see themselves improve, they become more confident.

Certification = Morale Boost

Certify To Proficiency: Improving the team's enrollment cycle proficiencies increase individual and team morale.

Add to coaching and curriculum a certification process and you have the "secret sauce" our clients have applied for sustained enrollment success. Curriculum + coaching + certification.

Certification provides enrollment teams and the universities for which they work a form of validation and accountability. Accountability is a word that has a scary connotation at times. However, when applied properly, the results ALWAYS motivate a team to success.

Remember: Certifying the proficiency of counselors will almost always increase their yield year over year.

Success = Morale Boost

Build A Culture Of Success

Build a culture of success that allows the entire team to succeed by modeling and encouraging individual best-practice/process improvement.

Move enrollment professionals on the team from "knowing" to "doing." We call this growing in a "Can-do competency." Research says 60% of private Higher Ed schools did not meet their enrollment goals. Success breeds success, so team leaders should empower team members to succeed.

Remember: A commitment to continuous proficiency improvement will usually motivate individual counselors and increase enrollment for the school.