I revised this article a year ago…and now it’s time once again to add some additional insigts to what motivates people.  At the end of this article, I will add some additional thoughts that you will find useful as a leader in terms of how to motivate others…

Most people will chime in and say cash. But it isn’t that simple. Cash can be a feeble bond if working conditions are unhealthy or the work itself is unsavory. For skilled workers there must usually be something besides cash on the barrelhead – security, the feeling of being appreciated, being left alone, pleasant working conditions, time off to recoup.

For some people the best reward of all is the work itself – the challenge of an engaging job. For some it is the interaction with other skilled team members. For some it is the intellectual gratification of addressing and solving a knotty problem. Still, for many people, and many occasions, the best reward in a commercial enterprise is good old money.

Management gurus insist that teams should not define their own reward systems – “that’s putting the monkeys in charge of the chicken coop”. But I think it’s an approach worth considering anyway. Team members shouldn’t set their pay levels, I agree – but they may make valuable contributions to defining benefit choices and designing recognition programs.

You may be a distinguished mind reader, and you may have picked the perfect reward last time. Next time, however, why don’t you ask workers what they would like as an incentive or reward? You can’t predict what will light a fire for them.

Consider team-proposed rewards as a kind of compensation laboratory. Yes, there will be some bad ideas, but there will be some that you would not have thought of in a million years by yourself, and the best will carry over to other teams as well.

Who Decides Who’s Rewarded?
The greater likelihood that the person you report to controls rewards, the greater the likelihood they will influence your behavior. In bureaucratic organizations, this logical rule of thumb doesn’t apply – simply come to work and keep breathing and you get everything that’s good. Reward systems cannot be automatic or remote – to be effective they must be managed from close range. Are rewards stipulated by the same entity that measures individual and team performance? They should be.

Should team leaders and team members be part of the individual evaluation process? That’s a tough call. People on the team have the best knowledge of the value of one another’s work. But team members must not be put in the position of politicking one another for promotions and raises. It’s best to have the evaluation occur outside the team, with some evaluation information supplied from within.

Are workers rewarded just for showing up every day? For individual performance? Group performance? Organizational performance? Only a company with a narrow array of functions should be using a single reward approach. It is natural to use incentives to compensate sales people. But if it is good to encourage people in sales, why leave out support functions? The entire bandwidth of a company’s workforce must be looked at to find rewards that push people together toward organizational success.

Rewards must be for achievements that matter, not non contributing, non value-added activities. People must feel their work is important. People who cannot make the crossing to be more accountable even with training must be winnowed out and replaced.

Most organizations spend an inordinate amount of time trying to use their merit budget appropriately. One of W. Edward Deming’s Fourteen Points, however, is that merit raises be abolished. Not only are they destructive to team spirit – each member’s raise coming at the expense of every other member’s raises – but they just don’t work. Splitting 4 percent into x number of shares evenly at the end of the year is not an incentive. By definition, you offer incentives before the fact, not after.

This is such a simple idea – aligning your team’s reward and performance with its business objectives. All it takes is clear thinking, some careful study, and the honesty to see what your organization is really saying to teams.

Some new ideas for leaders to think about when trying to figure out how to motivate others:  First of all, you cannot motivate others.  I know this sounds crazy because you’ve been told that it’s one of the most important aspects of your role as a leader…to motivate others.  But, motivation comes from inside, not outside.  At best, you can create an environment that helps people motivate themselves.  So, lets look at what motivates human beings…from a psychological point of view. 

Motivation comes from the successful completion of defined outcomes.  It’s a basic reason for existance.  For example, I’m sure most of you have received “honey do” lists or “to-do” lists from your spouses or significant others.  And mostly you do the things on the list.  Some of you may even dilude yourself to thinking that you are accomplishing the things on the list to make the other person feel better.  Or you may do the things on the list because the consequences of not doing them are too dangerous.  But, let’s be honest.  The reason you are doing the things on the list is that the physical act of crossing something off the list feels really good…inside.

So, as a leader you can create this “feeling” of accomplishment (and motivation) in others by setting up “to-do” lists of items.  To-do lists that are prioritized and for each item have a definition of success so you know when you’ve accomplished the task.  Once the outcome is achieved, you “catch the person doing something right” and you reward them using the suggestions listed above.

Simple, right?

When you can’t be perfect on any of these scores (and who can?), acknowledge it. Explain it. Ask for forgiveness. And promise to work to keep it from every happening again.

As a prerequisite for building trust, team leaders and team members must:

1) Have clear, consistent goals. I’ve said this before — that a clear, acknowledged sense of where the team is going is essential not only in giving a clear sense of direction, but as a foundation for trust. If you don’t know where you’re going, that’s probably exactly where you’ll end up.

2) Be open, fair, and willing to listen. The more open, fair, and willing to listen individuals are, the more they are likely to receive the trust of others (both on and off the team). Fairness must be built into the conversation. People need to hear the word “fair” come out of your mouth.

3) Be decisive. Nothing sucks the air out of a team faster than having outcomes that need to be achieved when no one is making any decisions to draw nearer to those outcomes. Particularly the person or persons “supposed” to be making those decisions. Are you a fan of frightening truisms? Try this on for size: when it comes to building trust, even a bad decision is better than no decision.

4) Support all other team members. Loyalty is the linchpin of building team trust. You back each other up, especially in a fight. Internal fighting sometimes happens. When it does, you don’t broadcast your dirty laundry to others. You protect team members from becoming victims of nonteam-member abuse. You stick together.

5) Take responsibility for team actions. This is a hard one for some team members to get. If something goes wrong, you don’t point fingers; you take personal responsibility for the actions of the team as a whole. Blamestorming (finger pointing) destroys the very fiber of the team.

6) Give credit to other team members. Albert Einstein offered this choice piece of wisdom: “Nothing is yours until you give it away.” This means that if it’s acknowledgment you want, be generous with what you have done.

7) Be sensitive to the needs of other team members. Work is hard. It can be tiring, frustrating, often painful. So we appreciate it when teammates indicate that they understand the pressures, and sympathize. This also means eliminating the cute little barbs that we like to throw at one another in jest. It isn’t all that funny when you’re under pressure.

8) Respect the opinions of others. Not everyone sees the world the same way; in fact, no one does. Other team members may come up with ideas that you think are the craziest things you’ve ever heard uttered by another human being. That doesn’t make them crazy or deserving of disrespect because their opinion differs from yours. The best teams are made up of people with the biggest diversity of perceptions, who first learn to understand and value the opinions and views of others.

9) Empower team members to act. Team members cannot be empowered to act; they must empower themselves. As a team member, however, you can help create an atmosphere in which other team members feel free to take risks, and to take action toward the completion of tasks. Have more to add to the list? Go ahead – good idea, add your own strategies. We need to keep thinking about this building of trust.

In recent years a third option, weighted towards Push, has appeared. It involves laying out negative scenarios and options: adapt or you’re fired. It feeds into peoples’ naturally negative perspective. The best-known spokesperson for Push in recent years has been Morris Schechtman, once a psychotherapist and now a management consultant. His book Working Without a Net, advocates the abandonment of touchie-feelie programs that shield workers from the realities of competition.

The traditional view is that it is not management’s job to get inside employees’ heads and worry about their anxieties. To anticipate workers’ negative feelings amounts to caretaking, one of the more insidious forms of Pamper. And whether you get inside employees’ heads or not, what happens there does affect performance. Reading workers the riot act may quell the riotous. It does not swell the ranks of the ready, willing, and able.

Removing the safety net sends a scary message to people who are trying to help the organization change, but who are not quite there yet. There are lots of people with good change potential here, and a company that declares war against employee hand-holding during times of change is going to lose these people.

The logical next step is to graft a Pull dimension onto the Push position. Make it plain to workers that those who are unwilling to change don’t have a future with your organization. They have frying pan written all over them. But provide every possible pathway to allow worthwhile in-betweeners a chance to escape the burning platform.

Change means adding stress on people. It drains us of our energy reserves. The more you ask people to change, the more resources you must supply to help balance the stress load. If their change space has shrunk to the dot of an “i,” you need to expand that space again, so that the person can do what needs doing.

It is important to explain to people that you understand that change is difficult for them. I suggest companies adopt a stress-watch program to outline the ways which change-induced distress can swamp a worker and programs to alleviate the most common kinds of distress.

Some Japanese companies, for example, practice rage management. One factory provides workers with a room where you can beat up a human-shaped dummy with a mask of your manager on it. If employees at your company are nursing a grievance, managers should get it out in the fresh air. Focus group discussions, for example, are a common way for people to get their feelings out, which even Schechtman agrees is essential.

 Satisfaction is never guaranteed – that would be Pamper – but at least there is the relief of getting a problem out of the cramped confines of the worker’s stomach lining.

While the desired outcome may be similar, the road traveled will be different depending on if it is, in fact, a merger or an acquisition. Many leaders try to hide an acquisition under the term “merger” because they do not want to be seen as consuming another group. Too harsh, bad image, loads of potential negative feelings; especially from the acquired party. Little do they realize that it really doesn’t matter what you call it because everyone will feel the pain of change. Honesty and clarity, however, are always the best policies here. In an acquisition, the acquirer is in charge. It is their policies that count, their people placed in key leadership positions. People in the acquired company feel somewhat resentful of the invasion/takeover. In a merger, best practices rule. The best of each company is used to make the entire enterprise grow and succeed. Positions of authority are divided up pretty much evenly.

Once you have come clean on the merger/acquisition, you need to get everyone moving in the same direction; under the same culture. Here’s where the fun begins because it is a rarity that you will find two identical cultures; either between two merging companies or even between two departments within the same company.

There are generally four different cultures that you will find within your organization; Pummel, Push, Pull, and Pamper. A Pummel culture is one that is terribly threatening. There is high stress and people are constantly looking over their shoulders. It is usually created by a boss who is heard shouting, “My way, or the highway” with blood-curdling regularity. A Push culture is one that is also threatening, but the threat is perceived as situation-based, not boss-based. The threat comes from outside the company; the competition taking food off your plate. A Pull culture is one driven by a vision of the future; accompanied by a pathway of activities designed to get you there. A Pamper culture is one in which people are not held accountable for outcomes; very laissez-faire.

The ideal situation created by effective leaders is a combination Push-Pull. Sort of one-two punch. People are threatened by the stark reality of a somber situation (e.g., constant reminding of the gaining competition – a 2X4 to the side of the head – gets people’s attention) combined with a way out of their stress via a pathway towards future success. A light at the end of the tunnel sort of thing. This only works, though, if you, as leader, are consistent across your activities. You cannot be considered a good leader, for example, if you are Pummel in handing out assignments but Pamper when it comes to giving feedback.

• Check out your behaviors

• Get feedback from others

• Take a long look at yourself in the mirror

• Make a checklist of the things you need to do to be more consistent

• Partner with other leaders to talk about creating a common set of leadership behaviors that will create a common culture across the entire organization

• Look at the performance feedback dimensions to make sure you are measuring the things consistent with your culture

Partnering is a big part of an effective culture. If the expectations are set up front that one of the values you hold near and dear is the concept of coordination and collaboration within and between departments (and levels), and if you bolster this belief through the use of effective performance feedback systems, then partnering will become engrained and your organization will grow and prosper.

If you have found yourself a member of this next generation of leaders, you’re probably scrambling. Because you have the title, or seem to know what you’re doing, or you’ve been there 30 days longer than the next person, people are looking to you for leadership. Asking you questions. Asking you for directions. Whether by choice or circumstance, you’ve been given the ball, you’re a leader, and people are looking to you for the next play.

What do you do? You look for partnering opportunities. You don’t have the time or inclination to worry about learning all the theories on leadership. You may have had a few classes on leadership in the past but can’t remember much of what they talked about. Let’s face it, once that class binder hits the shelf, it might as well have been crazy glued in place. It looks impressive, but it’s not very useful. What you really need is a quick guide to help you through the next few months. Here are two partnering opportunities you can use to ease the pressure of your leadership position.

Get a Grip (Don’t Panic, Plan)
The anxiety you are experiencing as a new leader is normal and natural. The fear comes from not knowing what you don’t know. It is driven by a concept known as “closure.” This idea says that if there is something that you don’t know, you tend to fill in the blanks with negatives; worst case scenarios. Ghosts of past failures come back to haunt and taunt you into believing that you will most likely fail again. These thoughts tend to prevent you from moving forward, to protect with inaction. Not only are these fears irrational, but they will most likely lead you to self-destruct as a leader. The best advice is to plan your actions as a leader. Find someone you trust already in a leadership position and glom onto them. Ask them to be you mentor for a period of time; be someone you can turn to for advice and counsel. Choose more than one if you’re really shaky. Then you can begin by measuring what you’ve got to work with; both your capital (budget) and human resources. Chose a direction that you will be heading, prioritize your goals, divide up your roles, and move forward. When in doubt, check with your partner; your mentor. They will provide the business advice and morale building you will need.

Set the Direction (Vision, Mission, Values)
Once you have a handle on your capital and human resources you will need to set the direction for your group. You may hear the terms “vision, mission, values” bantered about frequently. You may even feel the need to get these quickly or lose the right to lead. Well, don’t be in such a rush. Yes, vision is important in that it sets the direction for the entire company; what it would like to be known for in the future. Many companies fail, however, when they don’t align the “little visions” of the separate departments with the vision of the bigger organization. Can you imagine what it’s like working in an organization where the separate visions of the different departments all go in different directions; some in alignment with the overall corporate vision, others askew because of some burning mission of a maniacal team leader. All bumping into each other in total chaos.

You can develop a little vision of your own (just for your department), but only after you have coordinated it with the little visions of the other departments with whom you interact. You can’t have your department’s vision stepping on the toes (or stealing resources) of another department with whom you must partner.

Like a vision, a department mission must also be created in coordination with your partners. A mission tells your department why it exists and how it plans on accomplishing the vision. If you don’t have a clear idea of how and with whom you and your team plan on partnering, you will be missing the boat.

Value statements tend to measure the correctness of your vision. It is a set of behavioral guidelines; expectations on how people plan to interact with each other while accomplishing the mission and vision. Most value statements include some recognition of the need to partner with others within the organization; both in terms of sharing information and coordination of activities. These become markers that can later be used for both personal evaluation/feedback and measurement of progress towards outcomes.

Setting Expectations

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Motivation

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The point of this old saw is that team talent, efficiency, intelligence, and clout are pretty useless unless the team has some clue where it is going and how it is to contribute to the organization’s overall strategy for success.

We’re talking about vision here, one of the most misunderstood and misapplied ideas making the rounds now. Vision is not a “vision statement”.  It is not something created in hindsight, with an eye toward external consumption. It is not something you pay consultants $450 an hour to create for you at a weekend retreat by a warm fireplace and cash bar. It is not printed in bronze ink on a report to shareholders or in a guarantee to customers. It is not really words at all.  It is a burning thought, and it exists solely in the heads (and hearts) of the team.

The vision is the thing the team exists to do; defined in ambitious form.  It is the thing that leadership makes happen. Without team vision, there is no point to a team.

Vision begins at the highest level, setting the course for the enterprise as a whole. With the help of leadership it trickles down, uniting the subunits of the enterprise, helping them figure out their role in the bigger picture.

The commonest vision problem teams have is one that is fundamentally beyond their control:  the team has a vision, but the enterprise doesn’t. It is a sad thing, but no amount of ambition, intelligence, and hard work at the trench level can succeed if the vision of the organization as a whole is a drag. “Returning the greatest possible return on investment to our shareholders” is the best-known offender.

Vision is the offspring of hunger. Companies that have succeeded in the past and had a vision in the past may think the old vision is still in effect. But in many cases it is gone, rubbed clean by the passage of time, complacency in high places, and the high-gloss buffing of corporate communication types.

It is not until a company hits hard times (like now), some rude awakening in the marketplace, that it learns it must have a clue why it is in business. This is a perilous moment. Companies in peril, sensing that they need to stand for something, have a tendency to try to stand for a lot of different things in rapid succession.  The resulting wheel-spinning, drum-beating, and horn-blowing can be devastating to that organization’s teams. They are like fish in a blender, doing their best against woeful odds.

Having a clearly communicated vision, on the other hand, allows employees and team members to measure their values and behaviors against a company standard. If there is a value clash, people are free to modify their values or leave. Teams may be better off if some people leave – not that they are deadwood, but because their resistance to the vision of the team had a dragging effect on productivity and morale.

1. Teams require a single individual to lead them. It isn’t so. There are many models of team leadership, ranging from traditional iron-hand rule through various degrees of self-direction to apparent leaderlessness. Leadership can rotate by the clock, or by the task at hand.

2. Strong leadership ensures success. Again, it isn’t so. Strong leadership is useless if the people following the leader are incompetent or uninterested in the team task. A fundamentally bad team cannot be “led” – except perhaps to a place of execution.

3. How a leader is selected is not important. Wrong. Leaders must be selected in a way that is consonant with the task a team is assigned, and the kind of team he or she is assigned to. A free-wheeling, autonomous team will not welcome a leader assigned from outside the group. A new leader may have trouble adjusting to an established team. A team never previously allowed to make decisions for itself may be unable to choose its own leaders.

4. Team success is all that matters. In a narrow sense, sure, team success matters to the team. But team success, whether driven by a strong leader or not, is meaningless if the task was wrong or duplicative or wasteful or pointless.

5. Team structure is a secondary consideration. It isn’t. Every team structure and configuration we are aware of – functionally aligned, cross-functionally aligned, matrix, network, single-leader, multiple-leader, leaderless – is valid, when applied to the appropriate team task. Perfect leadership and perfect followership combined will still come to nothing unless the team is the right type of team for the task at hand.

6. A good leader and a good team can solve any task. Sorry – not every task is appropriate for team action. If a task shouldn’t be done by a team at all, it hardly matters who or how skilled its leader is. It’s easy to get carried away with team fervor, but it’s like the old saying, “When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”.