Evening everyone

(it certainly feels like evening now the clocks have gone back and it’s dark!)

Some of you know that the first ‘personal development’ book I ever read was Rhinoceros Success by Scott Alexander – well I reread it this weekend. It makes me laugh – it has funny little drawings and a great upbeat attitude. It works for me – it reminds me to concentrate on where I’m going. It helps me tap into my own motivation.

Do you ever think about motivating your team? Do you like to be motivated? How do you feel when someone tries to motivate you?

I don’t believe anyone can motivate another person. I believe motivation is personal and individual and that the best we can do is understand what motivates a person and help to provide a motivating environment. This isn’t as easy as it might first sound. A motivating environment for one person won’t be for another. Just think about your team for a minute. They probably have different reasons for being at work, prefer to work in different ways and in different environments.

So what can a manager do to ensure that people are motivated? I think we can use four steps:

1. Find out what motivates each person. What do they enjoy and hate about the job they do? What makes them get out of bed in the morning? What makes them ‘go the extra mile’? What tasks do they volunteer for?
2. Work out what needs to be done and what skills and aptitudes are needed to complete all the different tasks.
3. Match the people to the tasks based on what motivates and what each person enjoys doing.
4. Finally – and most importantly – don’t skip this step! You will be a better manager if you can help people to see how their personal performance ties into organisational goals and how completing specific tasks will help them achieve their own goals too.

When we’re motivated we’ll happily spend time lost in a world where we’re performing – it’s not hard work, we enjoy it, it’s effortless. As a manager your team will perform better if you translate work into tasks people can enjoy doing and if your team is performing then so are you.

Motivation is not fixed. People have different needs that must be met at different times in their lives and depending on the environment they find themselves in. For example, Maslow proposed a hierarchy of needs – where physical need such as food and warmth will take priority over intellectual needs (such as achievement). Try persuading people that you appreciate their efforts when they’re sat freezing in their coats because the heating has broken and the coffee machine has stopped working.

When you’re managing (whether it’s your own team of people who report in to you, a project manager matrix managing a dispersed team, or a small business owner juggling a number of suppliers) take some time to consider what’s motivating for the people you work with and then ask for their help in their language, tied in to their needs and you’ll find a more motivated team working for you.