Motivating Employees: Who Is In Charge?

Motivation is something that you cannot buy. That intangible thing that makes life and work better - much better. 

Is motivation part of the managers' role description? 
 
I was in a training few weeks ago and I heard something unexpected. A manager said that he is not in charge of his team motivation: “He has nothing to do with it”. “Lucky employees”, I thought very sarcastically.  I was disappointed and in fact, this comment left a very bad taste in my mouth. He was so convinced about this that I really decided to not join the conversation as well as to sleep over before publishing what I wrote about it. Now, I found this post again, and I have the same questions and thoughts than weeks before. 

Is the motivation something coming from employees or from the management? 

Who is in charge? 

Is asking too much from a manager to motivate his team? 
Is this a team task?

Are my expectations unrealistic?

Don’t misunderstand me. I do agreed that the employee needs to motivate him/herself or be already motivated for the job. Or better to say, there should be some passion for the work this person is doing. There should be some enthusiasm that only comes from within. If you are recruiting a new person, you will hire somebody with real motivation to do this particular job.

I also agreed that there are many factors affecting motivation that managers have little or no control over. However, a good manager will do their best to keep their team motivated and engaged – it is better for morale, for productivity and for the retention. Do you agree or disagree?

From my point of view this is perhaps one of the big differences between managers and leaders. Strong leaders set the tone of the business. They create a culture which is inspiring and motivating. I think is not correct to just seat and see how the employees are “motivating themselves”. The management plays an essential role motivating the company “troops”. unfortunately, the managers might have a real impact on demotivating them.

Six simple actions to motivate your employees:

1. Sell your company to your employees as if they were your investors or the members of the board. Convince them about what you company does, and why.

2. Encourage team work: not just because you need to have all the pieces together to get results but mostly, because an integrate team will bring some balance to the company and will absolutely build the atmosphere. If you have only disperse parts, nothing magical will happen.

3. Show appreciation often. It is easier to complain than to admire, so let’s make a deal for each time you say something negative, you say something positive. Keep the balance. Give constructive feedback. 
 

4. Use your employees’ talent to the right purpose. It is important that they work on things that they are passionate about. In that way there will be already some intrinsic motivation.  

5. Listen and take actions: the best boss I ever had was not the one who paid the highest salary, or even the one who gave the most interesting job. He was the one who actually was able to listen to me, and despite he was not able to solve all the issues, he always showed interest in my challenges and he considered important trying to help me. He never promised a thing he was not able to offer, but he took action right-away after our conversations and I thought that his intention was good.

6. Communicate often, openly and positively. The basic of communication is that there are too parts, a message and a feedback. Communication is not one direction things, you as a manger need to be open to talk and be told.

If you are a manager, pay attention to your team members, remember that although most employees have the same general desires, and needs from a workplace, each individual has different personality and therefore react differently to his role and to the company challenges. 

If you don’t want to be hiring new employees for your team often, you need to start focusing on and helping as much as you can your team members to get things in order,  and to get them even more motivated and engaged than now..