Employee motivation has been a subject that has intrigued managers and scholars for many years.
What is the best way to motivate employees? Mainly, how do you make the generation of millennials motivated in day-to-day activities that are considered repetitive and demotivating?
One thing is certain: the carrot and stick model does not work anymore. This is perhaps why Peter Drucker famously lamented:
We know nothing about motivation – all we can do is write books about it.
The most important thing when trying to motivate your team is to determine the personal motivation for each person. What makes them come to work every day? Many people are working to learn something and develop their skills, others because they believe in the company’s purpose and believe that they can help that purpose in some way.
Identifying what moves people and assigning tasks that align with their motivation is essential. Also, it is important to show employees the intention of daily work and how that integrates into the overall goals of the company.
However, even when following these steps, leaders often fail to motivate their employees because they themselves do not demonstrate their motivation. In business, people are often prepared and conditioned not to show their feelings, to be as cold as possible in front of the decision-making of an organization. This coldness can generate the appearance of a lack of motivation. In this context, two things are very important to solve this issue: trust and authenticity.
Relying on your employees is essential in a work environment, you have to delegate challenging tasks and try to anticipate the challenges they will face, to help them overcome. But trust is also important in sharing your feelings and ambitions with your co-workers. At this point, it is necessary to show authenticity, false motivations are easily perceived by employees. Just demonstrating your true motivations is what really motivates employees.
A great practice we suggest for you to apply these two steps to employee motivation: understanding their motivation and clearly demonstrating their motivation are 360-degree feedback meetings and one-on-one meetings. In fact, we have a great article on one-on-one feedback. Want to check it out?
References:
https://hbr.org/2017/06/new-managers-shouldnt-be-afraid-to-express-their-emotions
https://hbr.org/2017/06/motivating-employees-is-not-about-carrots-or-sticks
