Inspire Their Fire

Everyone wants to win. Everyone wants to feel as though they are making a difference. Everyone loves to receive praise and recognition for a job well done. Yet, I believe most leaders do not take the time to uncover each person's motivator's in order to focus on using positive motivation to truly drive top notch behaviors leading to top notch results. There is plenty of data out there that proves what employee's are begging for and what returns you can get if you choose to motivate your people.

The Landscape we are in Today
I think with the way the economy is today and the scarcity of jobs it is really easy for the balance of power between employers and employees to get out of balance. When there are not many jobs out there the employer can foster the feeling of "take this job or leave it" and if you don't like my working conditions there is a line of people who will work here. While that is true in one sense with many more candidates for the amount of jobs out there, I believe it is very foolish to take that stance. First of all, you will have a very high turn over rate, which is very costly to any employer, and secondly the employee's who remain will clearly not be giving 100% due to your lack of respect, trust, and integrity. The smart employer will figure out the best way to hire the best candidates in a very large pool of people and then find a way to motivate those employees, who will in turn drive even better results.

What Motivates People
If you look at data produced in multiple studies around employee motivation (Dr Lindahl in 1940's, Ken Kovach 1980, and Bob Nelson 1991) you will see a vast difference between Managers and Employees. Managers believed their employees would rate: 1. Good Wages 2. Job Security 3. Promotions as their top three motivators when in actuality the employee's rated them very differently. The employee's rated their top three motivators as: 1. Full Appreciation for work done 2. Feeling "In" on things 3. Sympathetic to personal problems. If you also look at reasons why people are taking current jobs from the "National Study of the Changing Workforce" by the Families and Work Institute, you will see the top five reasons are as follows: 1. Open Communication 2. Effect on personal/family life 3. Nature of work 4. Management Quality 5. Supervisor. The interesting thing is that the manager is 4th/5th on the list of why you would take a job yet it consistently is the number 1 reason why people leave jobs.

Why Motivate People
The answer as to why to motivate employees is very clear for employers: Drive Better Results! When you have highly committed employee's your total return sky rockets and when your employee's are not committed your results plummet down ward. Once that employee commitment falls the turnover will begin to rise drastically, which is very costly. Experts estimate that it costs anywhere from 3-5 times the previous employee's salary to replace just one person. In the first year of a new hire the company will invest large sums of money around training, mentoring, supplies, etc that will all be lost every time you lose another person. While the number 1 reason employee's leave jobs is their manager, I would bet that if you peeled that answer back the real reason would be that the manager/company did not give positive recognition or praise.

How to Motivate People
The first thing to realize here is that motivating people is a very individual thing and it is the leader's job to uncover their specific motivators and then consistently recognize others when it is earned. The failure of most leaders is around one of three things: 1. They fail to uncover each person's individual motivators 2. They do not recognize/praise consistently over time 3. They don't care and believe motivation is something the employee should do for themselves. All three of these are traps that if done will not allow you to connect with your employee's or get anywhere near their full potential in behaviors and results. Dr. Gerald Graham, management professor from Wichita State University, found the following are the top five workplace incentives reported by employee's: 1. Personal Thanks from a Manager 2. Written Thanks from the Manager 3. Promotion for Performance 4. Public Praise 5. Morale-Building Meetings. He also uncovered that anywhere from 58%-92% of employee's seldom if ever receive any of these incentives, which is very worrisome. From all of this, he found the two most common motivating incentives to employee's today are ones that are manager initiated and based on performance. Lastly, I always try to focus on the specifics of why they earned a reward, make it easily measurable, focused on things I want them to replicate, specific to what they like best, and timely so that they don't forget why they are getting praised.

Examples of Motivation
There are probably hundreds if not thousands of ways to recognize people, however, the key is to understand what motivates each person to the highest degree. I believe most forms of recognition focus on things such as performance, length of service, creativity, new ideas, safety, attendance, teamwork, leadership, implementation or employee of month/year. Whatever it is you choose to recognize make sure it is consistent for all, easy to measure, easy to understand, and is something that you want to continue to see replicated over time. The other key to keep in mind is how you present the award as most employees will feel more appreciated with a simple award but an excellent presentation vs. a better award with a poor presentation. The best way to motivate is actually the most cost efficient that being 5 simple words most top performers love to hear: "Thank You" and "Job Well Done". I have found making these 2 phrases a big part of my recognition plan has helped me to deliver top sales results for over 18+ years. Next in line are also simple things such as listening, open communication, trust, respect, and allowing for mistakes all of which get people on your side very quickly.

After that, look for creative things that help you drive what you are looking for but allow people to have fun, earn bragging rights, is winnable by everyone, is easy to keep alive over time, and has flexibility of rewards. Most managers still believe it is cash that will drive the best results and what people want, however, while cash is always good winning that bonus usually goes towards paying the bills, gets spent on daily things, goes into savings, or they are not sure where it goes but it really does not drive the motivation we are looking for. Lastly, too many managers treat connecting with their employee's and recognition programs as a check the box exercise: "I just have to do this once and there I have connected or recognized them they should be good forever". That type of managing could not be further from the truth as connecting and motivating are consistent ongoing things that top performing managers do every day with every employee. I believe in order to get the best employee's, keep them in these tough economic times, and motivate them to be the best to drive top notch behaviors/results you must first connect with each person individually and then do even more motivating as we are all being asked to do more with less.

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