Want to motivate your team? Build high performance? Don't skip one important detail.

Every time I read the latest statistics from Gallup and McKinsey or whomever on employee engagement my eyes glaze over. I used to write the information down for reference when doing talks or teaching. I don’t anymore because it’s the same old, same old. Lots of people in most organizations are not engaged. The further down the organization, the worse it gets. I always get an earful when working with front line employees (yes, I know, there is always another side to their stories). The beat goes on.

But, here and there, employees are inspired to do their best. Take the paramedics that attended to my husband this month when he had a dizzy spell, fell off a stool. In the moment, they did what they had to do and eventually took my husband to hospital emergency for further checking. In the end, it was a case of low blood pressure from his meds.

What I found most unusual was the extent to which the senior paramedic checked in with me between other ambulance trips on my husband’s status. It was then that we talked about his job. This was a motivated guy who had recently finished a year of advanced training. I still shake my head at his degree of interaction with our family. I’m not used to this caring customer service in general!

Annual surveys of the best organizations to work for show that there are many great companies young and old. Southwest Airlines is a perennial winner. Newer tech companies due to their start-up mentality often get the nod. Small is helpful as a rule because of the family-like atmosphere. The more complicated and big the tougher it is for leaders to keep the culture engaging and exciting.

If you are in a big, complex organization and want to motivate your team what can you do? Certainly “leading by values” is a good way. Herb Kelleher, Southwest’s founder, makes a point of mentioning values such as “leaning toward the customer” (his insistence) as a must. Founders do set the tone. But when the organization is older with thousands of employees and the newness of a company’s reason for existence has long receded in memory, how do you keep the founder’s spirit going?

One factor always pops up by various authors on the subject – purpose (why am I here to do what?). That’s the first one mentioned by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner in their new book “The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations”.  People are motivated by what is rewarding not what is rewarded. Knowing why they come to work every day – purpose – speaks to the rewarding part.

The best place to re-engage is at the team level. That’s where the real work gets done. The paramedics know they want to save lives whenever possible. Every leader/manager has more control over a team than the whole organization. Motivate a team and the infectiousness begins to rub off elsewhere as peers talk. Southwest’s fundamental success is due to teamwork.

Yes, there is much more to great teamwork than being pumped up by its purpose. Every day, every hour relating matters as the journey unfolds. Infrastructure to support team success matters. However, without a clear team purpose, the tasks at hand have no context for action.  

Don’t skip purpose – having the team openly determine the why of being together.

Want more engagement in your workplace? Try the water cooler.

Socializing and socialism are two words that don’t get enough respect. Managers who are under the gun to produce more efficiencies and revenues per worker have limited tolerance for too much informal socializing. Governments faced with too little revenue and huge deficits often see “red” with anything approaching so-called socialism as it brings up negative images of “the welfare state”, laziness, entitlement and most importantly --- high costs. The gyrating economic environment doesn’t help.


But can’t we have it both ways, at least in the work environment? Let’s call it “work hard” and “play hard”.

Evolutionary biologists are absolutely certain about one aspect of survival: we need each other to adapt and thrive in uncertain times. It means interacting in messy, informal ways to share tools, tips and re-energize. It means keeping an eye on the “needs” of individuals in order to generate group prosperity.

Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” is ultimately about group success although you wouldn’t know it from today’s reality TV shows. They prefer the entertainment value of pitting individuals against each other. But, such shows have limited application in today’s more complex and highly volatile environment. Bottom line: if we connect and share more, our chance of survival and economic success goes up not down. Talking helps.

So, back to the water cooler. It’s a simple social place. Yet powerful. It’s a smart managerial tool to achieve cost reductions and revenue ideas. Water coolers and the like keep the information flowing feeding into the creative and innovations streams. They help off-set health and productivity issues from the emotional toll when people don’t feel supported at work.

The leaders of Google, Apple, Zappos, Steelcase and other dynamic "go to" organizations know this.

Inside the mind of the motivated: Five factors re-visited

The upheaval in the Middle East (out with the dictators!) reminds people everywhere: we are no longer going to put up with being viewed as monkeys or dogs who are trained to respond to the “carrot or the stick”, a form of behavior modification. Social media and other sophisticated technologies have re-awakened the human spirit because they relieve us from the routine and bring us more equally into a rich, shared world of information. Now we can use our minds to the fullest, focusing on the interesting and complex. Or can we?

Much has been written of late about “drive”, engagement and humans’ inherent tendency to seek novelty and challenge. We like to explore and learn. We get excited about a cause or purpose beyond making money. In that we are social beings, group problem-solving generates energy, positive emotions and feelings of pride in having cracked the puzzle. But, we are still having difficulty in organizations understanding the subtleties of enabling people from the inside-out rather than outside-in.

Let’s look at the newer twist on five common “motivating” factors to cut through some of the fog:

Recognition

Praise for hard work, persistence and working through difficulty appeals to our inner motivations. Less so for what we have accomplished. Praise for results tends to short-circuit the decision-making process, potentially cutting off creativity. Hard (and smart) work is within our control and we like it that way. In that the intended results often have to change because of the journey toward them (unexpected shifts in the environment), how we adapt is a much better measure of “success”.

Incentives

Similarly, for non-routine jobs, pay-for-performance and other related rewards tend to narrow people’s focus on the results, which encourages short-term thinking. Fair wages are better. It seems that pay-for-performance works best for non-routine jobs to make the drudgery worthwhile. But, that approach can actually do more harm than good for more complex assignments, reducing the success of the desired outcomes.

Interpersonal Support

Feelings and compassion for and understanding the other, otherwise known as emotional intelligence or educating emotion, fuel this factor. Sure constructive feedback still works but it should be to help individuals find the right roles that build on their strengths first and foremost. If we are square pegs in round holes and those we report to only focus on our weaknesses, we retreat and defend. There is little energy left for innovation. For managers: be interested rather than interesting!

Clear Goals

Goal-setting is vital in any circumstance to frame issues and provide the impetus to work toward something beyond the present. Our brains respond well to images of a new horizon, an improvement on our current circumstances. However, particularly in non-routine jobs in which the problems are well-known but not the solutions, people are more successful in finding good solutions if they set and adjust the goals themselves. Goals imposed by others (read: managers and the top leadership) tend to yield dangerous side-effects such as unethical, short-term behavior. Better to share in the goal-setting (called “buy-in” in the old behavioural world).

Support in Making Progress

This is the most powerful motivator: being in an environment where managers provide the right resources, take down the roadblocks and creatively facilitate the journey. Any progress sparks emotions that are the most positive and a drive to succeed that is in high gear. In essence the manager’s responsibility is to create a coaching culture wherein people have the opportunity to reach for their best.

We are all “tinkerers” at heart, so those who study evolution contend. We get great joy out of inventing often from “spare parts”. We do our high fives when the seemingly unsolvable has been solved. We love to celebrate together. It’s the only way to go. Finally.

Replacing Advice with Curiousity One Room at a Time

Engagement is the means by which there can be a shift in caring for the well-being of the whole, and the task of leader as convener is to produce that engagement.

---Peter Block, Community: The Structure of Belonging, p. 87.

Engagement precedes problem-solving, persuasion, commitment, accountability and responsibility. It’s so powerful in its manifestation that the term “engaged” enjoys a permanent place in our hearts. If it’s alive, things are good. If not, we are just putting in time. Creativity and innovation either thrive or fail to grow. No wonder organizational and political leaders want to “engage” employees or the electorate.

Yet, most struggle with how to engage. Like a chameleon, it comes and goes but does not seem to stick around. Engagement can’t be hurried because it requires dialogue. Engagement doesn’t do well in the face of “I know best” by a leader or manager. Engagement doesn’t take root when it’s difficult to voice an opinion because of the structure of a meeting. Engagement doesn’t get to “first base” if respect isn’t in the air.

We have reached a time in our society and organizations where we crave engagement. Generation Y won’t have it any other way. Generation X and the Boomers have no trouble agreeing as they have wanted more engagement for decades. Long ago they recognized that the challenges are far too complex for formal leaders to tackle without a helping hand from all concerned. Fortunately there is an upside to the interesting times we are experiencing--- democracy of the “kitchen table”, “Main Street”, “street corner” and “water cooler” variety is back in fashion.

Although percolating in millions of places around the world, we’ve seen its renaissance most recently with Barack Obama. Besides his rapid rise from “nowhere”, he demonstrated through his grassroots approach to fundraising and organizing volunteers that he has a firm grasp on engaging others.

His ability to engage comes from who he is, how he relates and how he organizes structurally to enable dialogue. His curiosity and depth of caring for “Main Street” (who he is) underpin his solution-finding. Like Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile barrier, Obama has set a new high for civic engagement. The principles are equally valid to organizational life.

How that came about is well-described in Dreams from My Father. Framed by his quest to make sense of his identity within two stories---“white” and “black”---Obama’s self-reflections shape and evolve his values and beliefs, his way of being and relating and his acumen at bringing people together to achieve something worthwhile.

After a successful stint at corporate life, becoming a community organizer beckoned. The pull of his mother’s advocacy for the “oppressed”, his father’s Kenyan roots, and his largely Hawaiian upbringing where hierarchy is less dominant likely played roles in his desire to do something at the community level. Fortuitously, that experience set the stage for his know-how in organizing “room by room”.

Peter Block offers some concrete guidance to organizing “room by room” and “convening” engagement. Using the small group (often within a larger group) as the prime way to enable dialogue and create accountability and commitment, he suggests that leaders convene by:

--Coming from a context of possibility, generosity, gifts (of others) and the importance of relationships

--Asking powerful questions that invite people to co-create such as “What is the commitment you hold that brought you into this room?” “What is your contribution to the very thing you complain about?” “What are your gifts….?”

--Listening and being present (no ego).

Barack Obama discovered these guidelines as he literally went around interviewing people to find out what the community wanted to do. His mentors were a multitude of ordinary people trying to survive, raise their families, and exercise their freedom. One gave him a useful piece of advice—not to take himself so seriously. Good advice for all leaders.