I attended a conference on Leadership in Morocco recently and one of the talks was around Leadership and the impact of Culture, and whilst the talk had excellent content I think a lot of the power and benefit of that talk was lost.
Why was that?
Well it’s because of how the material was presented. Whilst the information was valuable and should have led to an insightful and informative debate, what actually happened was that it alienated some of the audience.
The topic related to Power Distance, which is the extent to which power is distributed unequally between the highest and the lowest in the hierarchy. In this area Morocco scored the highest and it is something that needs to be addressed.
But when you are looking to motivate people, you have to create an inspiring vision, we have to motivate towards something.
It’s much more difficult to motivate people when we to try to motivate people away from a situation.
For example, I could tell you that you are fat and that with a little bit of exercise you could have the body of an athlete.
When I tell you that, I am telling you how bad you are, and that we need to move you away from that position. By telling you things are bad I am hoping to motivate you.
But when you take this approach people become defensive, and often start to defend their position, giving excuses or maybe explaining that they are not that bad and that in fact there is someone much fatter than them.
Now we have lost focus on the thing we were hoping to address.
This is pretty much what happened in the presentation, people began to challenge the study, and any fruitful discussion was lost because people were disillusioned and demotivated by their alleged current position regarding Power Distance.
A better approach would have been to say that we have an opportunity to significantly improve Power Distance in Morocco, and with a bit of work we could look to become one of the top countries in this area.
By saying that, and not mentioning the current position although it’s implied it’s not great, will actually motivate people significantly more.
This is because you are motivating people towards a goal, towards a vision and people respond much better when we look to motive them towards something rather than away from it.
Remember the first example where the comment was your fat, imagine if that had been said differently.
For example, how do you think you would feel if I’d said, you look like you have lost a some weight and you know with a little bit of extra effort I think you could look like an athlete.
The messages are similar but the impact on the recipient is significantly different. If we want to motivate people then we need to focus on motion towards a goal.
If we look to focus on motivation away then we will demotivate them and make them defensive.
How you ever had someone look to motivate you by telling you how bad you were at something?
Gordon Tredgold
While I understand the general theme of this article, my argument is that you and I do not have the ability to “motivate” anyone rather we, as effective leaders, create situations and dynamics where people motivate themselves. Motivation is internal to all of us and directly drives our thoughts and behaviors. You can tell me all day long that “it looks like I have lost some weight and with a bit more effort, I could have the body of an athlete” but unless I desire to have a body like an athlete, it just isn’t going to happen! That isn’t a motivator for me! Now if you tell me that continuing to lose weight will more than likely save me $$$ on doctor bills and extend my lifespan, well now you have created a situation where I will motivate myself to lose the weight. That payoff has more value to me. As effective leaders, it is our job to get to know our folks and find out what turns them on and what turns them off, what drives their motives and what doesn’t. People are different and, with a common goal in mind, we have the challenging task of getting everyone headed in the same direction toward task accomplishment. If some of my people tend to be more achievement oriented, I might assign tasks and create a climate where they can motivate themselves toward task accomplishment in a way that will help them better themselves. If they are more power oriented, I may create a leadership or managing role for them to help motivate themselves and contribute effectively to the job. If yet another has a tendency toward the affiliation motives, then I may create an environment where they can work along side others in a team situation to spur them on to both get the job done and feed the social need. Whatever the situation, my job is to influence the various dimensions of the organization’s climate to allow people the ability to motivate themselves toward task accomplishment. That’s my take, Gordon! Just another view to consider. Thanks for your articles!
Jim, fully understand your point and maybe the example was a little trite, but the point was more that we need to use positive images rather than negative images to get people to think about change.
We have to make sure that we align with peoples aspirations, as you say if they are more interested in saving money or living longer that will be a better point of attack. That i understand.
Whilst we might not be able to motivate people we can definitely demotivate them
Thanks for the comment, as always much appreciated.
This issue on motivation is fascinating. Thank you. Creating an exciting vision must be the key, along with consistent messages and behaviours. Without those and energy, the organisation will inevitably revert to traditional midsets, led by similarly retrospective, reactive leaders. :(. But how do we make sure our vision gets them excited?
If our vision doesn’t inspire us it won’t inspire people, the vision needs to be bold and you need to show them how to make it achievable or with a degree of effort that they can achieve it, and when you do that people become inspired.