How to Motivate Employees

I once had a boss tell me that I should spend my time telling my employees what to do, rather than bother to lead and learn how to motivate my employees. Needless to say, I didn’t buy into that philosophy and it probably explains why he was a deeply unpopular manager.

His problem, and a common one for managers old and new, was that he didn’t get to know his team as individuals. In his case, he didn’t want to – he believed being ‘touchy feely’ hampered productivity – but all too often, managers are either too busy to spend time with their team or their own empathy skills are sadly lacking.

Why does it matter? Well, let me just say this: until you know your team as people with their own personalities and motivations, you are never going to be a truly effective boss. Ignoring an employee’s ‘human side’ is one of the quickest ways to undermine their efficiency, commitment and creativity.

Yes I know, you’ll hear people saying time and time again that personal emotions and an employee’s private life should never enter the workplace. In some ways, that’s true; you’re not going to welcome hangovers, tears or histrionics in the office day after day, are you?

But, and here’s the key, we humans are emotional creatures; we can’t help it. Inevitably we bring a little bit of ourselves into the office, factory, shop or company. We bring our humanity, our enthusiasm, happiness, disappointment, stress, sadness, anger, laughter and more… in short, we can’t always switch off.

Good managers are in tune with their employees’ emotions, recognize them and can prevent and handle them when needed. They can also use them to get the most out of their employees as well, especially when it comes to commitment and motivation.

When it comes to motivating employees, not all people are created equally. What motivates one person will not inspire another; it could in fact leave them cold, and this is why you need to know your team well.

Offering more responsibility and hours to the ambitious team member who wants to move up in the company, for instance, will suit them down to the ground, but asking the same of an older worker who is keen to attain a more relaxed work-life balance will only serve to frustrate. They would probably be more motivated by the opportunity for flexible working or a chance to telecommute once or twice a week.

This is why knowing your team as individuals is so important…

How to Motivate Employees 

There is no exact formula to motivating employees; it is as individual as the employees working for you. The trigger that motivates people is different for everyone, so how can you then fulfil your leadership role and engage the team?

They key is to tailor everything so that it fits an employee’s unique emotional, psychological and intellectual needs. To do this, you’ll need to understand the different emotional and motivational triggers that inspire each and every member of your team.

You’ll therefore need to appreciate the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Some experts will tell you that employees are either intrinsically motivated – driven by the work itself and the attendant challenges it brings – or extrinsically motivated, inspired by pay packets, promotions and public recognition.

I think the reality is that we are all on a scale; we all sit somewhere on the curve between intrinsic and extrinsic, some of us more towards one than the other but that doesn’t mean we can’t move along that curve now and again.

Today’s working life tends to focus more on the extrinsic – assuming the carrot (pay and perks) and stick (threat) approach works best. For some people it may. Let’s face it, even those employees who would describe themselves as intrinsically motivated – the satisfaction of a job well done, increased responsibility and new and interesting work challenges – don’t want to be taken for granted either.

Managers, however, tend to overestimate the power of external factors in employee motivation. Research from the George Mason University in the U.S., for instance, shows that managers often cite job security, pay and promotion as the key motivators for employees. When those same employees are asked about their own motivation, however, they are more likely to list the work itself, being appreciated and being involved in decisions.

Either way, we don’t always have pay and perks to offer employees, especially not in this economic climate, so it’s worth devoting time to boosting an employee’s intrinsic motivation no matter where they are on the motivation curve.

Take the example of Caroline, one of my direct reports. Caroline was one of my most trusted and effective workers, generally inspired by knowing she was doing a good job which was appreciated. However even she, after a while, started to want more. She felt she deserved a pay rise, way overdue, and perhaps even a promotion: in essence, she wanted to know she had a future within the company.

As her manager, I agreed that she deserved all the above, but unfortunately I had neither the money nor the promotion to give her. If we’d left it at that, I doubt Caroline would have continued working at the company for much longer.

Determined to avoid that fate, however, we sat down and talked honestly to one another, as fellow human beings. It turned out that the promotion was more important to Caroline than the money, namely because it was a commitment from the company to her future development. It was also recognition in front of her peers.

I explained that I couldn’t offer this at the moment but wanted to find a way to give her some of the recognition that a promotion would bring. We talked about the parts of her job that she liked and wanted to expand on, and came up with a plan.

From that day forward, Caroline would formally mentor all new starters and the junior members of the team, providing much-needed hands-on guidance to them and a visible seniority to Caroline. It also placed her in a valuable position for all future pay rises and allowed her to spend more time doing what she loved, offering guidance. A win, win all round and I’m pleased to say that Caroline stayed in her new role for several more years after that.

The power of treating someone as a person, and not just a number…

Of course, it helped that Caroline was a great hire in the first place. As you’ll learn in your career, hiring the right people to begin with is one of the most important things that a manager can do.

I will give you a secret to motivating employees: If you hire the best people right out of the gate – the ones who are already motivated, interested in doing a good job, prepared to turn up to work on time, who take pride in their roles, do what they promise and finish what they start – you’re more than halfway there already.

Not all people are like this, of course, and it is these people that you’ll need to weed out in the interview process. If you hire people that lack motivation, can’t be bothered or who just want the money and nothing else, you’re going to have a hell of a job trying to make them like the motivated employee above. In fact, it probably can’t be done. Professional leaders don’t even try.

As the famous saying goes, ‘pre-selection buys you more than training.’ Choose the right employee with the right attitude and you can do anything. After all, it’s easier to teach someone the job than it is to teach them motivation.

So give yourself a head start, find the right people and maybe you won’t need to concentrate on motivation quite so much…

Some Practical Ways to Motivate Employees:

• As in the example above, create a ‘safe space’ for your employees to tell you about their lives and the parts of their job they like and don’t like in one-to-one meetings.
• Be creative with new opportunities for employees; make sure they succeed at each new chance before adding more challenges. Tailor these opportunities to the employee’s interests. Demonstrate that you are committed to their long-term development.
• Work to become attuned to your employee’s feelings, ask questions to ascertain their emotions and be sensitive to triggers that frustrate and anger them or make them sad.
• Get to know what is happening in your employee’s lives. This doesn’t mean being their divorce therapist, but being able to wish them well when their child has his or her first solo or football match will demonstrate that you care about their well-being.
• Sometimes rules are there to be broken. If an employee asks for additional days off over their quota, for instance, find out why. It may be the result of a loss in the family or because they want to help someone else. Consider the detrimental impact to morale (theirs and everyone around them) if you say no because that’s what the rules state.
• Shield your staff from others in the company who complain about them; showing the team that you have their back in front of others will do wonders for morale. If necessary, deal with any issues arising from complaints by other departments in private.

I hope you have found this article on how to motivate employees useful. Please let me know in the comments below.