Don't Motivate, It Won't Work

There’s a lot of talk out there about employee motivation. There are articles, books, white papers, speakers and thousands of sites online devoted to teaching managers and supervisors how to motivate their employees.

I’m all for motivation, it increases productivity, helps with teamwork and improves employee engagement. However, resources that say you can motivate your employees are wrong, wrong, wrong.

The only type of motivation that exists is self-motivation. It is not possible to motivate someone else to do something, they have to find the drive to do it themselves, whether from within or through an external source.

There are five steps to the motivational movement: Awareness, Interest, Action, Completion and Celebration.

While you can’t push your employees through these steps, you can smooth the road.

1. Awareness – Be the external force that brings about awareness. Involve employees in discussions on what the company’s goals and values are, how it’s growing and how their work contributes to this.

2. Interest – Increase the involvement and control employees have in projects. Many employees don't connect small tasks they do with a larger project that has an impact and thus don’t see their need and importance. Plus, additional control and larger responsibilities provide employees with a chance to shine individually.

3. Action – Ensure that your employees have the right tools and resources to succeed. If these aren’t available to them, they will stall or flounder.

4. Completion – Make sure to prioritize, set deadlines, follow-up and ask for updates on projects. You don’t need to micro-manage or hound, but often projects end up lost in the shuffle. If you hand out projects, but never follow-up, employees won’t feel they are important and they’ll end up in a pile on a desk.

5. Celebrate – At our company, every Monday we tell about the successes we had the previous week. This is a good time to showcase the small things we do that make a difference. For larger successes, you could do donuts, lunches out, etc.

Also, be specific in your celebrations. Be sure to note in detail why you are celebrating, i.e. who had a success, what project they worked on, what tasks they completed and how it connects with the company goals.