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.

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.

How to reduce government:scare away the young folks

It's walking the fine line of being a positive leader of the federal public service, but at the same time pushing them and not being captive to them.

---Stephen Harper, CBC Radio Interview

Watch what you wish for, as the saying goes. The fine leadership line has to be the right one and one of the styles clearly unworkable for Gen X and Y is not “my way or the highway” or something mushy called “positive leadership”. They want the right kind of leadership at the right time, often characterized by “What do you think?” or “What do you know?” or “How can we get to this exciting goal?”. Come to think of it, so do baby boomers. But, they are already captive and awaiting their pensions.

The latest skirmish between Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and federal civil servants on the Stats Canada long survey (now to be made voluntary which messes up the reliability of the data) illustrates to the younger generations that only the submissive should apply to the federal government for a job. It’s a brilliant strategy by a leader who wants to downsize without having to pay the costs of letting people go. Decide what you want in advance. Pretend that you have consulted. Pay no attention to any contrary evidence. Stare down the protesters, many of whom are experts in their fields about the matter in question. Do what you want anyway. The downsizing takes care of itself quite tidily. Speeds up the numbers who can retire but haven’t. Scares off any talented folks, especially the young, who want to make a difference.

Gen X and Gen Y want to be involved in decision-making, want to feel that their opinions count and most certainly to have fun. A dictatorial culture of fear is not on their checklist as a nice place to work. Further, as a highly educated bunch, they know a thing or two about “the truth”. The evidence from research does merit serious consideration in the decision making process. Debate, dissent and “brainstorming” help steer the path to solutions that have lasting value.

All generations and cultures value authoritative leadership: being visionary and passionate about a cause, valuing teamwork and getting the job done. Few like authoritarian leadership as it muffles wonderful talent and the potential for great innovation. Stephen Harper may only have meant that his opinion matters too and that he should be "authoritative" as a leader. But, in practice, his fine line seems to be bending toward "push" than "positive".

Candle Problems for Dummies: Not Apply Much Today

In his Ted.com presentation in July 2009 on motivation, Daniel Pink makes a significant point: there’s a gap between science (the evidence) and what business does. Nowhere is it more obvious than with the subject of rewards. His point: people don’t always perform better with bigger rewards. Because it depends on the problem. The more complex, the less effect an external reward. Yet, organizations, as a general rule, don’t differentiate their approaches.

The first decade of the 21st century has been bountiful in its non-routine problems, constantly surprising us and keeping us off balance. These “out of nowhere” occurrences don’t have easy solutions.

When we apply our known routines to them, the puzzles often remain. For example, the early warning system for tsunamis did little to help the people on the American Samoa Island because it was too close to the epicenter of the earthquake. Many economists saw the financial crisis coming but could not apply their collective pressure (their early warning signals) enough to influence key decision-makers. Life has definitely become more complicated. There is much more work to do to prevent and manage risk, to anticipate and to imagine.

Opening up our minds literally is the way forward. That means motivating people from within than without. Pink stresses three factors: “autonomy” (letting people direct their own work), “mastery” (having the opportunity to get better and better at what matters) and “purpose” (being involved in something beyond ourselves).

David Rock, author of Your Brain at Work, wraps up the challenge of motivation or engagement similarly in the acronym “SCARF”:

Status: praise and mastering a skill and being paid for it all boost an employee’s sense of status and by association—motivation. Threats to status like performance reviews do the opposite;

Certainty: uncertainty registers tension in the brain shutting down problem-solving ability. If leaders can create a perception of certainty, for example, by breaking down problems into small steps or by exuding the confidence that “We can do it!” the chains of uncertainty become less of a burden;

Autonomy: Many studies indicate that if people feel they are not being micro-managed, that they are able to direct their work decisions relatively freely, the more stress remains under control, the more inspired they are to do good work;

Relatedness: If individuals feel they belong (at work), they trust more and they are able to build the necessary relationships to innovate and to produce.

Fairness: Perceptions of unfairness activate hostility and undermine trust. Leaders that “do the right thing” help collaboration flourish.

As different from 20th century leadership and management, brain science in the 21st century is helping us better understand really what works. We know that threats to our well-being generate the fight or flight hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Chronic doses of these hormones do not open up our minds to novel solutions. On the other hand, serotonin and oxytocin flood our brains when we are happy and engaged. In turn, they help us focus and undertake higher problem-solving skills.

Like evidenced-based medicine, the science of the brain is illuminating the way for “people-management”, providing the hard evidence as to why soft power works. The candle-light of soft power multiplies not only in our minds but it also generates the energy for innovation.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

http://www.brainleadersandlearners.com/