You can’t motivate your employees, no matter how hard you try! I developed this mantra over my years of experience in business leadership positions from front line supervision to executive levels.
Motivation must come from within a person through personal choice, at least initially. As a leader, your advantage comes in consistently providing personal inspiration and an inspiring work environment that motivates employees to perform at their individual and collective potential. Therefore, the most powerful employee motivation comes from an internally motivated employee performing for an inspirational leader in an inspirational setting. An unmotivated employee working for an inspiring leader and in an inspiring environment neutralizes the environmental inspiration through the employee’s own lack of motivation from within. So, no matter how hard you try to inspire and motivate unmotivated employees, your efforts will go in vain until your employees are ready and will to be motivated.
The employee motivation matrix below provides contrasting behaviors resulting from any one of four distinct motivational situations:
o Low personal motivation and low environmental motivation
o Low personal motivation and high environmental motivation
o High personal motivation and low environmental motivation
o High personal motivation and high environmental motivation
The leader operating in a low environmental and low personal motivation situation has his\her work cut out for them. These situations are likely at a make-or-break point, and on the verge of total collapse. In this case, strong leadership is needed to turn the environment around and make critical decisions about the future of unmotivated personnel.
The leader operating in a low environmental motivation and high personal motivation situation has a better chance of success as long as the leader has the authority, influence, and support to change the environment. Changing the environment is usually ‘easier said than done’, but is doable. These situations are often characterized as ‘turnarounds’, and require a leader be decisive, single minded, tough, confident, fair, bold, motivating, inspiring, and patient.
The leader operating in a high environmental motivational and low personal motivation situation can usually spot this situation rather easily. Poor attendance, participation, low productivity, and missed deadlines all signal a problem that must be expeditiously addressed. If left unattended, low personal motivation employees working in a highly motivating environment can compromise the highly motivating environment by creating resentment, distractions, and counterproductive behaviors.
The leader operating in a high environmental motivation and high personal motivational situation has the most rewarding leadership situation imaginable. Whether created or inherited, this leadership situation can be the most exciting leadership experience of any leader’s career. These situations are found in new venture start-ups, successful turnarounds, and dramatic product or service innovation in a mature market.
As a leader, your ongoing action items include:
- Provide a highly motivational environment as defined by a majority of your employees. Don’t assume that as a leader, you know what motivates your employees. Further, don’t assume that whatever motivated your employees in the past will continue to motivate them into the future
- Acquire, train, and inspire motivated talent from the moment you take charge, and iteratively thereafter. This is not a once-and-done effort so you will have to take your time, be patient, and invest in making wise hiring decisions.
- Address employees exhibiting low motivational behaviors with express dispatch. The rest of your employees in a high motivation environment know who falls into this category and will support your efforts to address behaviors indicative of employees with low motivation, even if they don’t know the details.
Just because you have the mantle of leadership bestowed upon you, doesn’t mean that everyone who crosses your path will be awe inspired, committed, and stimulated. Motivation is a very personal issue driven by a very complex set of personal circumstances you cannot always directly control through motivational tactics. What you can control however, is the environment and addressing the behaviors of those within the environment you lead.