When you think about what success would be for your business, what do you imagine?

When you’re able to imagine what the success looks like, go ahead and start to imagine what it feels like.

These are the first steps in achieving your goals. When you get a sense of what it looks and feels like, you can start to experience that success — even if it has not materialized yet.

What is the purpose of this?

It helps motivate you to do what you must do to achieve that image. When you have that image in your mind and you feel what it’s like, you don’t want to go back. You want to go towards it, and that’s what drives you.

How Positive Visualization Helps

Throughout your day, your brain is constantly creating pictures of “what if.” Those moments can be positive or negative — that depends on you. When you choose positive visualization, you are choosing to tell yourself that it is possible. You can make that “what if” a reality.

So how can you do it? Where do you begin? Start by writing it down. People who write down a goal are more likely to achieve that goal. It’s the stepping off point for your plan to success. Be specific. Put your dream on paper along with the steps you think you need to take to achieve it.

Once the plan is outlined, it is time to move forward. Another great way to help you increase the chances of achieving success is to talk to someone about your plan, someone who will hold you accountable. Accountability is important in most of the work we do — no matter if it’s within ourselves or in what we do as part of our business and relationships. You have to take action, and having someone who will encourage you, and who expects you to follow through, can help you keep going even in the tough times.

When you choose the person you are going to share your goal with, consider someone who has achieved their own success. Every person holds knowledge that others may not know, and sharing that knowledge is what helps the world grow. Reach out to someone who understands what it takes to be successful and who has, in fact, experienced success. When it comes to making your “what if” a reality, you want someone to mentor and coach you who has experienced the fruition of positive visualization.

It’s not easy trying to accommodate two vastly different groups of people, but when it comes to working parents and child-free employees, you might find their concerns and desires more similar than you might expect. While child-free employees sometimes feel cheated by a system that seems to accommodate parents’ concerns (e.g., leaving work early to pick up children from school), it is possible to address both groups of employees without hindering your team’s productivity or your workplace’s family-friendliness. Here are some useful strategies for managing both working parents and childless employees:

Equalize the Flexibility Factor

This is important for working parents and child-free employees alike. For working parents, flexibility is crucial because life happens. Sometimes, kids get sick or injured, schools have emergencies, and a screaming toddler who doesn’t want to get dressed for preschool one day prevents even the most patient, dedicated parents from getting to work the minute they’re supposed to be there. Child care is also expensive, and many childcare facilities have rules about dropping off kids too early or picking up kids too late (some centers charge a fee for parents who arrive late!), so harping on employees for infrequent incidents or leaving on time instead of staying late to complete a project isn’t a wise move for any manager who wants to maintain employees’ job satisfaction and team morale.

On the other hand, employees without children might have outside concerns that warrant similar levels of flexibility, such as care for an aging parent, emergency trips to the veterinarian for an old or sick pet, unexpected housing repairs, car break-downs and other issues. To improve relations between working parents and child-free parents on your team, it’s important to offer the same level of flexibility to all employees when it comes to mishaps, unexpected incidents, and general desires to spend more time with their loved ones.

Develop Family-Friendly Policies for Your Workplace

To make your workplace more family-friendly, consider possible telecommuting options (even if it’s just working from home one morning or one day each week). As a manager, this might be more of an HR issue or company policy matter beyond your control, but you can still advocate for change on behalf of your employees. You can also try planning more family-friendly events so that employees who are parents can participate with everyone else.

The Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) approach was initially developed by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson in 2001 as a way of attracting top talent through non-traditional management methods. ROWE is based on a simple premise: Work output matters more than making appearances and sticking to the clock on the same schedule as everyone else. It heavily emphasizes task delegation, employee independence, and work flexibility (both time and location), which could be ideal for introverts, working parents, students, and employees with difficult commutes.

ROWE isn’t perfect, of course, but adopting even a partial ROWE strategy could be enormously beneficial for your employees’ satisfaction and productivity. Here are a few considerations to make before incorporating it into your management approach:

Does Location Really Matter?

If many of your employees spend the majority of their days on computers, then why does it matter that they complete assignments in the office? Many employees could be more productive on their own time and in their own location (not having to commute to the office, for instance).

Does your team need face-to-face collaboration?

ROWE isn’t for everyone. Even the CEO of Best Buy tried ROWE, only to later switch back to traditional approaches to work. Some people don’t work as well on their own isolated from the rest of the office or at home. Some employees need the structure of the office environment and face-to-face collaboration with other team members. Some projects and tasks are best handled by a team in the same location.

Surprisingly, a recent university study found that the Millennial Generation actually prefers face-to-face communication, which indicates that allowing employees to work anywhere they want could hinder your team’s communication. It can be tough to communicate only by e-mail and phone. Face-to-face communication can rapidly solve problems and put out fires, while a ROWE strategy that allows employees to respond to emails and calls whenever they’re available can be detrimental in urgent situations.

What are your priorities for your team?

Ultimately, you need to ask yourself: What are my top priorities for my team? Do I value having them all in one place with me and seeing the visual proof of progress towards task completion? How does each team member work best? ROWE could certainly be useful for reliable employees with challenging work/life conflicts (e.g., living far away from the office, erratic schedules for their children or college classes, etc.) and employees who simply prefer working as independently as possible. But ROWE is not a one-size-fits-all strategy. The key is to use ROWE when it makes sense — to an employee and to the company.

As your employees continue to fulfill their responsibilities, you may wonder if they are really happy with their jobs. Some employees voice their frustration, but more often than not, employees really don’t let their employers, managers or supervisors know exactly how unhappy they are until it is too late and they walk out the door for the last time.

How then can employers make sure they have employees who aren’t just completing their tasks but are also happy? Here are some tips:

Ask! When was the last time you asked your employees if they were happy? We aren’t talking about a show of hands in a big employee meeting. Instead we are talking about those one-on-one conversations that should be ongoing. It also comes in the form of ways employees can anonymously make their thoughts known through suggestion boxes or online forums.

Listen! We may not always agree with what employees are providing in feedback, but it is their reality at that moment. When you provide opportunities for their feedback, listen to them fully. Don’t even let your mind start to create a defensive response to their concerns.

Respond! Make sure you are responding appropriately. It could be an individual response is enough; however, if one person is voicing a concern, it is likely more are thinking the same thing. Some responses should include more of a department or company response.

Through it all, it is important to realize that employee happiness doesn’t always come down to the dollar sign in front of their paycheck. Sure, we would all like an occasional or even annual raise, but keeping employees happy goes beyond that.

They want a voice. It’s important to find areas within your business and department where employees have a voice in how or when things are done.

They want flexibility. Not all positions allow for flexibility, but if it is available, be willing to work with employees. Also consider this when you think scheduling a late Friday afternoon or early Monday morning meeting is a good idea, and don’t be afraid to end a meeting early if everything is covered.

They want recognition. Employees want to know they are appreciated. This can come into play by providing food during an early morning or lunch meeting. This can come into play by recognizing verbally or in email employees who are doing outstanding in their work, traits and interactions. Don’t forget that a simple and genuine “Thank You!” goes a long way too.

They want to know the next step. Many employees leave because they are given a chance to expand their career pathway. When you provide a clear pathway within your organization, you are working with your current employees who already know your processes, procedures and expectations as you allow them to also grow.