Anyone charged with managing people– and this applies to parents, teachers, and coaches, as well as business managers and supervisors– will tell agree that the biggest task they face is motivating their people to apply themselves and strive for higher and better results. Very often, I hear people exclaim in disgust that, “This guy just has no motivation!”
Well, that is not exactly true. Have you ever stood out in the parking lot and watched people headed home on a Friday afternoon? Usually, there is a spring in their step and a smile on their face as they race off in miserable rush hour traffic towards whatever weekend rewards await them. Oh, they are motivated all right. So don’t say, “This guy has no motivation.” Instead, say, “I still haven’t figured out what this guy’s motivation IS.” That is the real problem.
The biggest mistake managers make when it comes to motivation is to assume that everyone is motivated by the same thing. Usually, we assume that it is money. We believe that all we have to do is dangle bonuses, incentives, rewards and raises out there and people will jump higher and run faster for the sheer joy of making more money. Surprisingly, this is not always true. As a matter of fact, a large number of employees will list something other than money as the thing that supplies motivation for them in their job.
Now, before you go whacking the payroll in half, let me hasten to point out that employees prefer to be paid more rather than less, and if you consistently underpay good employees, you will eventually lose them. Still, money is a condition for getting employees to come to work; it is not always a condition for inspiring them to work hard once they arrive.
From a manager's perspective, it is important to understand what energizes people, what influences them, what they are passionate about and why they persist in particular actions. These four underlying principles are important to understanding motivation:
Instead of trying to motivate employees in ways that make sense to you, it is better to go straight to the source and find out what your employees value and are willing to pursue with enthusiasm. You can accomplish this in a couple of ways. First of all, get to know your team members as people. Do you know what their basic behavioral or personality style is? Do you know anything at all about their interests or activities outside the job? If you don’t know these simple things, you don’t know your people well enough to motivate them to work for you.
Another step you can take is to simply ask your employees what they care about, both in life and on the job. It could be as simple as asking them to rank a series of motivating factors from 1– 10, based on what things interest them the most. It shouldn’t be hard to generate a list of 10 factors. Just start listing things that are a part of the work environment – money, promotion, recognition, time off, helping others, benefits; you get the idea. You will be astonished at how the rankings on this list will vary from employee to employee.
When it comes to motivation, one size definitely does not fit everyone. Once you discover what the interests, needs, aptitudes and abilities of your team members really are, you can begin to structure their work so that it provides opportunities to take them where they really want to be. At that point, your job changes from slave driver to cheer leader, which ought to make it more fun for you, too.
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January Management Quick Tip of the Month -- Two-way Feedback
Managers generally understand that part of their responsibility involves delivering corrective or instructive feedback to their team members. Sometimes this is done as a part of scheduled evaluations, and sometimes it must be done spontaneously to meet the need of the moment. However, this is not the only important role that feedback should play in the process of management. A good manager should always be open to – indeed a good manager should solicit – regular input and information from their team members, too. After all, in many cases they are the ones who are actually doing the work and delivering the services, not you. The insights and information they collect every day can be valuable to you and to the mission of your department. Take advantage of every opportunity you can to encourage your people to come to you and talk to you about the needs and ideas they have regarding the way things are done. There are some things people just won’t tell you unless you ask, and you may really need to hear them.
