4. A Better Approach to Motivating Employees

A reading from a blog post published on 7/7/20.

Leaders rely on their teams not just to get the job done but to get it done with excellence. This means having motivated, driven employees who don’t need micromanaging for great results. Unfortunately, no one gets high-performing employees handed to them. They’re built and cultivated over time. This is easier said than done and many leaders are left asking a simple question: what’s the best way to motivate unmotivated teams?

“We should simply inspire them!” would be the Disney-movie answer. But let’s be honest, there’s no easy-button for motivation. Anyone that’s worked entry-level management can speak to the levels of exhaustion and resentment from trying to inspire unmotivated employees.

Too many leaders still use extrinsic motivation for employees, poking and prodding them with carrots and sticks. This fossil of early management theory (popularized in the early 1900s) puts a wedge between management and labor, with leaders lording over the lowly employees. Conversely, 21st century thinking has led to an uptick in intrinsic motivational styles – characterized by making work more meaningful and purposeful to your employees.

Intrinsic motivation is a perpetual-motion machine. Empowered employees motivate themselves and need less oversight. In turn, they’re more likely to produce outstanding results. By embracing intrinsic motivation and encouraging initiative in your employees – a balance of responsibility and flexibility – you’ll teach them to light their own fire and create a positive feedback loop that breeds success.

Responsibility

Our first instinct as managers is to shield our employees from important decisions and the larger responsibilities of the job. Sometimes it’s a selfish desire to preserve our sense of importance and authority. Other times, it’s a sincere reflection of having context and skills unavailable to frontline employees. Regardless of the reason, it’s wise to be conscious of when you’re being paternalistic with your employees and perpetuating their ignorance of everything that goes into running the department. As often as you can, enroll your employees in the decisions that impact them. By giving your employees a stake in the decisions that matter to them, you naturally increase buy-in and their sense of ownership of their environment.

Depending on their tenure, expertise, and maturity, experiment with letting a group of employees get more involved in making larger decisions. This has the dual benefit of giving you a sounding board and helping your team to feel like they have the full context for why/how decisions are made. Rolling out a new software system in the department? Put an employee committee together to make recommendations on specific processes to focus on. Your department setting goals for the year? Use this same group to come up with new ideas and keep them informed on departmental milestones.

Give your employees as much say as you can. Stretch yourself to the edge of your comfort-level. Their voice should have weight and their decisions should stick, even (and especially) when you disagree. It’s important that they see that you’re serious about letting them make decisions about how the department is run. This has the subtle impact of shifting the burden of responsibility from you to them. Instead of blaming you for everything, they’ll have to wrestle with their own role in departmental problems. The more empowered someone is, the more they have to take ownership of the outcomes.

Flexibility

Rules and structure are like clothing. If you force ill-fitting clothes on your employees, they’re likely to complain and unlikely to tolerate wearing them for long. But by allowing employees to tailor the clothes to their liking (while ensuring they remain fully dressed) everyone ends up happy.

Your employees will do their best work when working the way that best suits them. By giving them flexibility in their work environment, you show trust and confidence that they’re capable of some self-management. Give your employees room to tackle their work according to their skills, interests, and comfort. You’ll spend less time pushing your employees and more time nudging and redirecting, which will be far more rewarding for everyone.

Your employees want to take longer lunches? Fine. Your employees want to work from home occasionally? Fine. As long as the output of their work remains A+, you should give as much flexibility as you can. Your job isn’t to manage how the work gets done, it’s just to make sure that it does get done.

In order for you to continue to grow and evolve as a leader, you need to have the mental and emotional energy to work at the top of your abilities. By unlearning the command and control styles of management that perpetuated the 20th century, you’ll find that you’re preserving the best parts of your job while delegating the most frustrating. The best leaders I know hate micromanaging or acting paternalistic with their employees because it takes them away from the work they’re best suited for. 

If we refuse to trust and empower our employees, they’ll repay us with equal levels of mistrust and wariness, slowly eroding departmental culture. Instead, by showing that we believe in their ability to self-govern and work within broader boundaries, we not only build their self-confidence and motivation, but foster increasing levels of loyalty and respect.

Good luck out there.