HOW TO MOTIVATE YOUR EMPLOYEES - by Jörg Lahmann

You've probably seen it before: someone at your company, on your team, let's call her Ana, who just isn't motivated. Every morning she arrives at the office in a bad mood, makes herself a coffee in the kitchen surrounded by that same cloud of negativity, and you can tell from a mile away that she's checked out. It's no surprise that conversations start up about how to motivate Ana, what can be done to get her engaged again...

Here's the difficult truth: in most cases, nothing. You can't chase people around trying to motivate them. Some say motivation is something you bring from home. But it's not quite either of those things, it's not black and white. What you need to do is create an environment that naturally attracts the right people, people who feel motivated within that environment you've built.

Written by Josep Conesa

Employment and insolvency lawyer

Learn more

The findings from a recent Gallup UK report on employee disengagement make for alarming reading:

• 57% of employees feel unmotivated
• only 17% of employees feel genuinely motivated
• and 26% are actively disengaged, meaning they are what we would typically call toxic employees

The economic impact on businesses is enormous. But looking at the data from the other side sheds light on just how much motivation matters. According to Gallup, companies with higher levels of employee satisfaction…

1. …experience 76% lower staff turnover
2. …achieve 37% more in sales (in the case of sales staff)

Changing the situation and building a motivated team

There are two fronts to address in order to turn things around:

1. Eliminate the factors that cause demotivation

The 7 factors with the greatest impact on demotivation are:

1. Micromanagement
2. Lack of recognition for achievements
3. Job insecurity
4. Weak leadership
5. Poor communication
6. Toxic colleagues
7. salary below market rate

The first step is to carry out an honest assessment of the situation within the company and to eliminate these factors wherever they exist. Without this groundwork, the disciplines outlined in the next section will deliver no real value. It would be like trying to fill a leaking bucket by turning up the tap instead of plugging the holes first.

Once the negative factors have been minimised, we can focus on creating a motivating environment, one that fosters genuine, lasting intrinsic motivation.

2. Create or nurture the factors that drive motivation

There are two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. Most companies have focused primarily on extrinsic motivation through…

• financial incentives (salaries, bonuses, share options, etc.)
• activities (team dinners, team-building events, etc.)
• recognition
  
  

These are all worthwhile, but they should not account for the lion's share of effort. Yet in many companies they do, for three simple reasons:

• We come from an era in which work was repetitive and routine, and in those environments extrinsic motivation is the most appropriate tool. But today we live in the knowledge economy, and it is intrinsic motivation that matters far more.
• We have been conditioned this way throughout our lives: the carrot and the stick. From childhood (if you don't do this…), through school (with grades), and later at university or in the workplace.
• It is easy.

But when a company's greatest asset is its people and their knowledge, extrinsic motivation quickly loses its effect, and the most talented individuals leave to work somewhere they feel genuinely motivated from within. In today's landscape, creating a motivating environment is not optional; it is a competitive necessity.

Intrinsic motivation rests on three pillars, as Daniel Pink illustrates in his acclaimed book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us:

• Purpose: there is a reason behind what we do.
• Autonomy: we have an intellectual space that allows us to carry out our work with an appropriate degree of freedom.
• Mastery: we are good at what we do.

So how do you build an environment grounded in these three pillars? I am going to introduce 8 disciplines for creating a solid foundation and developing an intrinsically motivated team:

1. Purpose: 3 disciplines
   • Reason for being. For people to connect emotionally with the company's purpose, that purpose must first be known, it needs to be discovered, defined, and communicated. Purpose can also be described as a cause or a passion, and it is the reason the company exists.

A well-known example is "making people happy." Can you guess which company that belongs to? It's Walt Disney. "Of course," you might say. And that emotional connection is enormously powerful, suddenly, everything Walt Disney does makes perfect sense. What is your company's purpose?

• The big goal. We all work day after day, yet most people have no idea what the company's overarching goal actually is.

Imagine getting in the car for a holiday, driving for hours and hours, but with no idea where you are headed. Would you enjoy it? Would you feel motivated? Would you feel like you truly belong? Probably not as much as you could. Having a long-term goal (5 to 30 years) and a clear sense of where the journey with the company is heading helps align the team and gives everyone visibility of the direction of travel.

• Say it out loud. Communication is one of the greatest challenges businesses face, and the larger the organisation, the harder it becomes. There is a golden rule that offers a useful shift in perspective: it is almost impossible to over-communicate, but very easy to under-communicate. Once a clear vision for the company has been defined, it must be communicated to the team consistently and repeatedly. Where we have come from, where we are now, where we are going.

2. Autonomy
   • To be able to give people genuine autonomy, everyone needs absolute clarity about who is responsible for what. This means formalising the structure through a Responsibility Organisational Chart, defining every role within the company and the four to six key responsibilities attached to each. This will create a great deal of clarity across the company, and if you have the right person in the right role, you have laid the groundwork for granting real autonomy. Now let go and trust the process.

3. Competence
   • GWC. Three letters that clarify whether a person has what it takes to do the job, and do it well: G – gets it. W – wants it. C – can do it. If you have already built the company's structure, roles, and corresponding responsibilities, you can assess whether someone is GWC. If they are not, it is unlikely they will be tomorrow, and intrinsic motivation requires it. That is why surrounding yourself with GWC people is essential.
   • Training. To ensure that people who are GWC today remain so tomorrow, you need to invest in them. By way of analogy: if your company has expensive machinery, you almost certainly allocate a maintenance budget for it each year. The same principle should apply to people. If you have not done so already, set aside somewhere between one and three per cent of each person's annual salary in the company's annual budget as a "maintenance cost", in this case, training. This will enable people to develop the skills they need to stay GWC tomorrow and remain genuinely motivated.

These are eight high-impact disciplines for building intrinsic motivation, each one strengthening the three core pillars: purpose, autonomy, and competence. As you can see, it is not straightforward, and you may be tempted to stick with extrinsic motivation: a bonus, an incentive scheme, or something similar. That may work in the short term, but the question is: for how long?

"Rome wasn't built in a day", and neither is an intrinsically motivated team. But every journey begins with a single step. So I encourage you to choose one of these eight disciplines and start working on it actively.

Post written by Jörg Lahmann – www.igostrategy.com – LinkedIn