How can we motivate others to do what we want them to do?
I have two young manager clients with similar issues. They are challenged by motivating their teams.
Joan is in her twenties. As a third child, the family could not support her university studies, therefore, she worked all the time next to studying and she took all the student’s loan available. She acknowledges that her main motivator is unquestionably money.
When meeting engagement issues in her team, Joan immediately granted access to the team to projects that pay higher and give great earning opportunities. To her dismay, her colleagues did not react the way she expected them to.
Frances motivates her team with the promise of success and recognition if they do the extra mile. She believes that team members will enthusiastically do more when they see the glory that inhibits a successfully completed extra task. Because this is what triggers her to achieve more and more.
Both managers face seemingly unmountable walls: their teams are not motivated neither by money nor by the great feeling of extra achievement.
What could go wrong? Is it true that millennials cannot be motivated, and they will leave the company anyway as soon as possible?
The situation is not that bad.
We all work by natural law. If I want to get you to do what I want, I have to prove that doing so will benefit you in some way, immediately or mid / long term. This is natural law. We make every choice, big or small, by a risk-reward decision where our thinking is,
“What’s in it for me?”
You can’t force people to work together. You can’t mandate harmony should it be between two people or among several team members. You can’t order people to change their thinking or behavior.
Neither should we believe that whatever motivates us, will motivate others too.
The only law that applies is natural law. People will do something only if doing so is in their own best interests as defined by their own values.
Everyone has a hot button that can be pushed—and that button is self-interest. All we have to do is find it. It’s different for every people.
To give you a hint, which areas to tap for drivers, the majority of people identify their motives in the areas of money, power, status, popularity, recognition, meaning and freedom.
From the above examples, it is clear that Joan is motivated by money and Frances is motivated by accomplishing more and more complex tasks. They tried to motivate their teams with their own motivators, and they have been pushed back.
If you want to align your team behind your goals, you need to find the specific drivers for every team member.
To make things more complicated, there is a good chance that not even your team members are consciously aware what their strongest drive is.
This is what you need to identify. With constant communication, discussions, above all, by listening carefully to the team. If you listen well, you will also hear what’s unsaid.
The hot button is different for each person. And it changes over time, but it’s still guided by self-interest.
Take a look around you at work. Why are you there? What keeps you coming back day after day? Is it any of the big four—money, power, status, popularity—or is it something deeper and more subtle that has developed over time?
If you know what matters to you, it’s easier to commit to change. If you can’t identify what is important to you, you won’t know when it’s being threatened.
And people only change their ways when what they truly value is threatened. It’s in our nature. It’s the law.
(Source: Marshall Goldsmith)