How to Motivate ‘Em
Without understanding your employee’s needs, you’ll never see them truly succeed
Without understanding your employee’s needs, you’ll never see them truly succeed
Not all employees are created equal. Some employees are self-sufficient and have an intrinsic desire to do the best they can regardless of any other motivational help. Others rely heavily upon bonuses, paid-time-off, free lunches among other modern day workplace perks to keep them motivated.
The key to understanding what type of employee you have, and what their motivational factors are, is driven heavily by how you interact with your employee.
Employees, even the best of them, lose their motivation for work at times. A manager’s job is to figure out why and then manage accordingly to get the job done.
Discover their interests
In order for a company to succeed and for your department to succeed, a manager needs to make sure their staff cares about what it is that they are doing.
What does this mean?
This means that one must find a way to motivate their employees through the task which is being performed. If the task is not registering with the employee, they will be unmotivated to perform it.
Explaining how their task fits into the larger picture of the department and organization is crucial in finding buy-in from staff. To do this, discover what the employee is interested in. What motivates them? By being able to answer these questions, one is better able to align the employee and their own desires and goals with that of the organization’s.
That being said, the task at hand may not be interesting, and that’s unfortunately just life sometimes. But by having a candid conversation with your employee about their short and long term goals, and how those goals can, and do, relate to your organization as a whole, helps you leverage their abilities in the task at hand and provides the employee with a better understanding of their role. It also opens the door for your employee to feel they can come to you and discuss their goals and future which is critical to keeping high performing employees.
Try This
When having the discussion with the employee, try asking the following questions to better understand them:
Is the work you are performing intellectually stimulating for you?
What would you like to see our department doing more of?
Are there any tools I can provide you to help you better connect with the task at hand?
You might be surprised at how a few small changes make a big difference in your employee’s satisfaction and performance.
Understand how they see themselves
How you see an employee and how they see themselves are sometimes two very different things. It is important to be able to talk to the employee candidly to get a better sense of how that employee sees themselves.
Do they see themselves as a hard worker but you see them as a slacker? Do they seem themselves as a leader but you don’t?
By being able to determine this difference in perspectives, you will be better able to start training the employee and bringing them, as well as yourself, eye to eye with your departmental or organizational goals.
As Daniel H. Pink, author of best-selling works such as Drive and To Sell is Human says:
“Empathy is about standing in someone else’s shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place.”
Show them their role within the larger picture
No one wants to feel like a cog in a wheel, however, at the same time, do want to know how their efforts fit into the larger picture. By showing an employee how and why their efforts are important to the company, you are aligning that employee with the company’s goals.
Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates and author of Principles: Life & Work, states:
“Learning to be radically transparent is like learning to speak in public: While it’s initially awkward, the more you do it, the more comfortable you will be with it.”
By including employees in the larger structure of an organization, you are reminding them of their value. From this, you can demonstrate how they will grow within the company and how their roles within the company are helping to move it in the right direction.
Understanding an employee, their needs as an individual, and how they fit into the larger whole of the organization is crucial to keeping a team motivated and inspired to continue to perform work.
Sometimes, a simple five minute conversation over coffee can tell you more about your staff than working with them for five years has.
Remember, it is not always about the work, a lot of the time it is about the employee doing the work. Keeping this in mind will keep the business thriving with employees who are motivated to be better and build the company.
“…people must be viewed as your colleagues and as one of your prime resources. It is only through such respect of the workers that true productivity is achieved…”
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