When it comes to motivating people, my view is that all people who come to work want to do a good job, and what we need to do is find a way for them to be able to do that.
And if we can, then they will be highly motivated, as we all like to be successful.
When I say this, people often question me, challenging that assumption, often saying it’s not true, some people who come to work are just not interested in doing a good job.
To me that is just a cop out, that’s leaders blaming poor leadership on the people they are trying to lead, rather than accepting their responsibility as a leader.
Not only is does this belief come from my experience, but also if you study Abraham Maslow, an American Psychologist, and especially his work on Motivation, which is best depicted, in my opinion, by his Hierarchy of Needs, as shown in the chart below.
From this chart we can see that we all have a need for Self Esteem and that this is achieved through Achievement, Recognition and Respect, and so supports the view that everyone who comes to work wants to do a good job, as this will allow them to fulfil that need, providing we put them in a position to be successful and recognise that success.
This is the job of the leader. Our role is to put our team and staff into a position where they can be successful, and then we need to reward and recognise that achievement. We can also improve the fulfilment of this need by showing respect to our teams.
I was giving a presentation last week and one of the topics covered was operational performance improvement, and at the end in the Q&A session one of the questions I was asked was how often do you have to make personnel changes in order to improve the performance.
My answer seemed to come as a surprise when I told them that very rarely did I have to make staffing changes. More often than not what I needed to do was to change the teams focus, provide them with clearer direction, the right tools and support to do the job, and then once I had done that, then the team were successful.
Too often leaders, bad leaders that is, look to blame the quality of their staff for the poor performance, rather than the circumstances that they find themselves in. No one comes to work wanting to do a bad job. It’s soul destroying to work 8hrs a day, 5 days a week in a job where there is little or no success. Everyone wants to have a taste of success now and then, as according to Maslow, it helps fulfil one of our most basic needs.
So the next time you have a team that are under performing, before you look to blame them for the poor performance check to see whether or not they have clear direction and the right tools to do the job. I am confident, based on my experience, that this is where you will find the issue, rather than with the team itself.
Once you fix these issues, not only will this motivate the team as you will have improved their probability of success, but you will have also increased their respect for you as a leader as you clearly understand what your role is.
Gordon Tredgold
Gordon, here is my take on Maslow’s theory as it applies to the workplace. First, we have to remember this is just theory. It doesn’t apply to every situation and, in fact, many who study motivation have disproved the theory Maslow presented that to advance up the hierarchy, you must satisfy the lower needs. The clear example of this is Ghandi who self-actualized while living in poverty and constant anxiety over his safety. Over the years, Maslow also expanded the pyramid to include a total of eight levels (he identified and included cognitive and aesthetic needs in the 60’s and the transcendence need in 1970). For our discussion, however, lets just use the five original needs. Another element of this discussion includes my belief that one person CANNOT motivate another. I cannot motivate you. Motivation is internal and is derived from our needs for achievement, affiliation and power. You can most definitely create conditions in the workplace where employees will motivate themselves but to say that one person can motivate another is inaccurate. If we use your scenario of working with a team to accomplish a task, my job as the leader is to identify what motivates each particular team member; not the team as a whole. It would be nice if everyone responded to the same stimuli to find motivation; however, we know that everyone is different and brings to the table their own assets and liabilities. The trick for us is to know our people in terms of their strengths, weaknesses, what turns them on and what turns them off. The leader must monitor performance and address those behaviors that do not meet the level of expectation. Often, performance issues are problematic of lower needs not being met for that person so our action as a leader may include finding ways to make sure a persons lower needs are met on the hierarchy if its a personal problem or a training issue. I think you hit the nail squarely on the head when you say that under performance is most often the leaders fault. Included in those “right tools to do the job” need to be ways to meet the lower level needs on the hierarchy and all too often, we as managers stand in the way of progress and success without even knowing it.
Good response and very educative.
Jim, great comments, really like the time you took to respond. In answer to your comment i would say that i don’t tend to promote that you need to go through all levels, i too believe that you can be successful whilst not having some of the basic needs met. My point was more that Achievement and Respect are human needs and that we can motivate people by use of these.
I actually think that we can motive people, or at least give them encouragement to continue and try just a little harder. If recognition motivates, then surely giving recognition must be motivating.
I can say that in my experience, i have used the same approach to motive many team, and that the majority, not all, but a clear majority responded to being put into a position where they could be successful and then helping them to succeed. But that is only my experience and rather than clear scientific proof 🙂
I am glad to have connected to people with wealth of experience such as yours.I am have not yet assumed leadership position per say but I thing there is a lot to gain from you.
Gordon, I like to add to your points and present an additional point of view. Before concentrating on learning how to motivate people I feel that as leaders we should learn how not to demotivate them. After all, in my view when anyone starts in a new job I find that they are highly motivated and ready to take on the world, so if some time after that they have become demotivated we should look at ourselves and question what we did to make them that way? I think some of the answers are contained in the things that you written but we as leaders should be encouraged to accept the responsibility for their state.
Andy fully agree more often than not when I see a team it’s usually not the lack of motivation that’s the problem it the de motivation that’s the issue. We need to stop de motivating people by given the impossible goals or feedback in Amon constructive way