"In thinking about motivation from a management perspective, It's very important to appreciate this point: You can't motivate people, you can only influence what they are motivated to do."
While motivation is intrinsic to an individual, motivation levels can be increased or enhanced by managers / leaders. It is an advantage to have a motivated team however this advantage can be translated to higher productivity and higher level of performance only if managers / leaders are consciously and continuously making efforts to keep the motivation levels high for their team members.
It is also important to recognize that motivation triggers for every employee may be different and as managers it is extremely important to have the pulse of every employee and his/her motivation trigger. The one size fits all technique of motivating employees does not work in organizations anymore. Having said that, some of the motivation techniques often work with most number and kind of people if the managers take adequate measures to practice these in daily workplace.
Various motivation theories have been deliberated upon, researched upon and also sampled in many organizations to crack the right set of motivation steps to be followed by an organization to motivate employees. Across the world, managers have tried to discover and honed their skills to draw out the best qualities in each of their employees build and maintain high employee morale. Some of their efforts work some don't work, even if the ones that work, they are not sustainable in the long run. Managers across geographies and industries in various companies struggle to discover the 'magic mantra' to keep employees motivated and get the best performance out of them. Intelligent and efficient managers understand that it is imperative to have a motivated work force to attain success in business performance and achieve targets. Their individual success lies in getting work done from people and people will only give their best shot for any assignment if they are motivated to their jobs.
The most influencing leaders/managers recognize the fact that their performance depend on the performance of their employees and hence they attempt to create a synergized and comfortable work environment and they are often rewarded with superior employee commitment and performance. As a manager, it is imperative to infuse employees with passion for work and motivation to achieve. This will not only ensure success for the manager but also benefit the organization immensely. As an outcome of this, it will ensure the success of the manager.
If you are a manager and you want to motivate your employees to get their best performance out and help benefit your success and organization success, you may want to follow the 8 easy steps of motivating employees and see your workplace transform from just motivated employees to highly motivated employees who are willing to turn every assignment into a success.
The following 8 tips may help you, as a manager to understand your role better and get your employees to give their best and help you succeed in achieving your targets.
1. Build a Motivated Work Place
As a Manager it is important to know why your employees would want to be motivated by you. If you have the answer to this question, you will find yourself better equipped to engage your employees and influence their behaviors that in turn will make them more enthusiastic to do their job at hand well. Secondly, to recognize that motivation is intrinsic. Each employee draws his/her motivation from within and external factors like work environment, recognition, pay checks, bonuses etc only affect/ influence that intrinsic motivation. Thirdly, it is imperative for every manager to inspire employees to be their best, to take risks and unleash the limitless potential each one of the have.
2. What Drives People
Managers need to primarily know what drives the employees. It is important to put people in jobs that help them meet their individual needs while doing their work/job and that will reward you with a bunch of motivated employees who will perform their best and that will benefit the organisation. As a manager it is imperative to appreciate every employee is unique that their uniqueness should be recognized and each employee should be treated accordingly. Because each one is unique his/her drive/ motivation is unique too. It is hence necessary to shift gears and manage them uniquely too. Once you know as a manager what drives each employee, you can use that to make their work more fulfilling and merging their individual needs to those of the organisation by providing them work that meets their individual needs.
3. Employees Do It For Themselves
As a manager, if you aim to influence the employees' motivation, you have to first understand their reason for doing things. Employees are not truly energized or motivated by your reasons. They need to know what is in it for them. If you can help them connect their personal goals to those of the organizations, it will affect each employees' performance on the job that they do. It will benefit immensely if you are successful in setting up an approach that promotes personal and purpose for every employee. As a Manager when you emphasize personal growth and development as a tool to influence employees' motivation, you help them maximize their productivity and help them impact organisation achievement in a positive manner.
4. Encourage Intelligent Risk Taking
It is important to remind the employees the benefits of intelligent risk taking, it is critical to encourage risk taking behavior as a learned behavior. The more risk they learn to take over time the greater those risks become and if they are coached well to take intelligent risks it becomes easier over a period of time and the pay offs are sure to benefit the organisation and you as a manager.
5. Show the people the Larger Business Environment
As an Influential Manager, it is your responsibility to help employees understand the organization, its finances, operation mechanisms, competition environment, innovative thinking to name a few of the facets. It is important to share with the employees about the organizations, the strategic perspectives rather than just about how to do their jobs or complete their assignments. As an effective manager, you will stand to gain immensely if you aim to develop smarter, more skilled and highly motivated employees who shoulder stretched targets and impact the organisation overall performance. To achieve this, sharing the larger business context and its nuances is mandatory. This will also foster more ownership behavior among the employees. So, share the financial dashboards, operational efficiency indices etc with your employees.
6. Make Employees Feel Like Partners
The Best Managers make their employees feel like Partners in the organisation rather than mere team members. Why do they do so? because when employees feel the ownership of something, they care for it more and work for its betterment, often to achieve the best. It is a defining quality of a good manager to encourage entrepreneurial thinking among the employees, explain how the business is run and help employees feel as if they own the business. The transformation in your thinking as a manager increases the employees' movement from an employee to a partner in the business.
7. Know Your Competition
Competitive environment energizes employees and when they who and what they are competing against, their motivation levels automatically rises. It is great tool to bring people together and make them perform at higher levels than its competitors that in turn help the organisation grow. As a Manager you will stand to gain if you help employees to compete in the market by showing them how to compete by teaching them to learn more about the industry and stay abreast with the current developments in the market place. You may nominate employees to track competition data, circulate competition analysis reports, creating a learning repository of competition success factors etc. Being an effective manager, you may want to induce the culture of knowing the competition and constantly striving to measure up against them and better the organisation dashboards.
8. Nurture creative and innovative thinking
The big leap in any group performance happens as a result of a breakthrough in the collective thought process. The Big idea gives rise to novel actions that impact organisation results and growth and that takes them to a different dimension. It is a key responsibility of the manager to nurture innovative and creative thinking in each employee by using tools like brainstorming, ideation sessions, investigation of innovative and creative ideas, experiment creative and innovation solutions at work etc. Continuously emphasizing the positive aspects of creative solution finding and advantages of innovation approach to work will help foster the culture of innovative and creative thinking among the employees.
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