Money is "what helps people get to sleep at night, not what gets them up in the morning. Success and accomplishment are what really motivates people," according to Linda Honold.
You can't unilaterally motivate others. While many firms look to incentive pay or bonus plans to motivate their staff, such plans provide short term, superficial incentives but fail to provide true motivation. External or extrinsic motivators, such as rewards or punishment, produce only short-term results, and as soon as the reward becomes expected or the punishment disappears, so does the motivation. The motivation for some of the most motivated people, such as Mother Teresa and her volunteers, is clearly not linked to an external reward. True motivation comes internally:
Motivation = A Heartfelt Mission Based on Values
Strongly motivated professionals follow their inclination toward a mission that has strong personal meaning to them. Motivation reaches a peak when your personal goals and mission align with the specific demands of your work and the objectives of your organization. You like what you're doing. You are committed. You feel yourself growing. You see concrete results. You feel a strong sense of inner purpose. This is what true motivation feels like and it can come only from within.
Frederick Herzberg's classic studies to determine what motivated workers (1) found that distinctly separate factors lead to job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction. That is, the opposite of job satisfaction is not dissatisfaction, because the factors involved are different. Rather, the opposite of job satisfaction is simply no job satisfaction. He separated this into "motivator" and "hygiene" factors. The hygiene factors that can cause dissatisfaction (but not satisfaction) includecompany policies and administration, supervision, relationship with supervisor, interpersonal relationships, working conditions, salary, status and security. Herzberg found that the motivators that can cause job satisfaction are achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, advancement, and growth.
In other words, adequate salaries, incentive pay and bonus plans can avoid dissatisfaction but do not lead to satisfaction. Examples abound of individuals who leave high paying, relatively secure jobs for a less certain but more fulfilling venture. The fulfillment and related motivation come from a new venture that more closely aligns with the individual's internal values.
You can't motivate others but you can create an environment which encourages and allows people's motivations to align with your organization's goals and values. When this alignment occurs, there is a tremendous release of energy. One study found that 50 percent of U.S. managers surveyed said their careers gave them the most satisfaction in life. Family was close second at 40 percent. This information shows that there is a tremendous source of psychological energy available if you can tap this desire to be fulfilled.
To appreciate the relationship between individual values and motivation, management expert Tom Peters suggests you talk to a dozen or so of your staff to find out what they do when they're notat work. He predicts that you may find a staff member that has never sold any work for your firm to be a deacon of a church raising thousands of dollars for their church. Others are leaders of civic organizations or demonstrate amazing creativity as artists. They have amazing creativity and drive—except for those hours spent in your organization! Everyone has internal values and goals that will truly motivate them. If they can't align these internal values and goals on the job, they find off-the-job activities that do. Your challenge is to find out what each person's values and goals are and where they overlap with your organization's. If there is no overlap, both the individual and the organization will be better off to separate.
| ACTION | MOTIVATORS |
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1. Remove controls while retaining accountability 2. Increase accountability of individuals for their own work 3. Give person complete natural unit of work (module, division, area) 4. Grant additional authority to staff in their activity, job freedom 5. Make financial reports available to all staff 6. Show appreciation to all team members 7. Provide unlimited training opportunities 8. Introduce new and more difficult tasks than previously handled 9. Assign specific tasks enabling increased skills and knowledge |
Responsibility, personal achievement |
Above are some specific steps you can take to create an environment that fosters opportunities for individual motivation:
Items 1-5 are self-explanatory, but the other items deserve more discussion. Item 6 refers to appreciation for a job done well. The tendency is to jump immediately to the next project or task without truly coming to completion and acknowledgment of the team members. It has been said that appreciation is like an insurance policy; you have to keep renewing it. Effective praise is genuine, specific, and offered at the time the good work is done. Such praise can elevate the energy level and encourage motivation. As Mark Twain said, "I can live for two months on a good compliment."
In regard to item 7, consider making any training costs (whether directly related to the job or not) for any staff member reimbursable so long as the training is satisfactorily completed. The only qualification on the blanket offer of training is if time away from work is involved, case-by-case approvals are needed. Firms that have tried this approach have found an improvement in morale and energy among those that seek these training opportunities; generally the individuals in an organization with the most intellectual curiosity, drive and creativity. Even if it is not apparent that the training is related to the job, there is still a benefit to the organization. In addition to the stimulation of the individual, there may be indirect benefits from networking with others in the training that may turn out to be clients or that have information that may lead to new work. The individual may see new opportunities for the organization that never would have surfaced if the employee stayed focused only on the normal day-to-day work tasks.
An "Individual Learning Plan" is a practical approach to items 8 and 9. At the start of each year, each employee identifies what they want to learn in the next 12 months and defines a plan to do it. Much is learned about values and goals in discussions about learning goals. Elements may include seminars, training courses, college or continuing education courses, coaching by a senior staff member, teaching a class or seminar, and project assignments that will contribute to the desired learning.
"Project Learning Plans" are useful approaches to items 8 and 9. In such a plan, each team member identifies what they want to learn or improve as a result of their project assignments at the start of each project. To the maximum extent consistent with effective project work, project assignments are aligned with individual developmental goals. Include your clients in the process because they often want to learn from each project too. Periodic checks are made during the project to monitor the progress toward these goals. Some examples of project learning goals: