Summary: Motivating a team is more an art than it is an exact science. Managers can inspire employees to go the extra mile by respecting them as unique individuals- getting to know what motivates each individually- then tailoring their management style to suit the motivational needs of each person, rather than attempting to apply a single reward/motivation method over every employee within the team.
Thesis: This post will address a strategy for effectively motivating employees based on personal experience, expound on the strategy with practical examples, then touch on other influencing factors.
Read time: about 6 minutes
Inspiring the Extra Mile
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If you’re like me then you’ve also noticed that some managers know how to manage, while others do not. Management can be extremely challenging for some- having to answer for employee performance to higher while mitigating team conflict can be a lot to juggle.
To accomplish all this, some strategies work better than others; it’s all about figuring out what works for you. The issue I’ve encountered, and what has inspired me to write this post, is that sometimes managers figure out something that works, then try to replicate the same strategy in later situations.
The problem is that, especially in personnel management, two situations are rarely the same. This leads to results that are called stochastic (basically meaning that you can analyze what seems to be a consistent pattern in the past, but can’t precisely predict the future outcome- used to describe the stock market, for example).
This isn’t to say that management is hopeless! The key to being a good manager is to be in charge of productive employees. After all, they’re the real workers for the organization. The question then becomes how to make a team productive.
In this post I will outline how to inspire a productive team: spoiler alert, it’s a lot of work! If you’re interested in learning how to sharpen your managerial skills, and make a generally better work environment for your team, then this is the post for you!
Know Your Team
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In my personal experience, the most important thing to get right when spurring employee motivation seems obvious, but is actually overlooked more often than not. I believe the managerial workforce of America desires to discover some secret answer from Harvard Business Review or through a TED Talk (although these are both tremendous resources!), but the answer is right there in front of them- not cooked up in a social science laboratory.
The secret to motivating your team is, quite literally, to take the time to get to know them; then, to tailor your motivation strategy so that it is just as unique as the employee or team it is aimed at motivating.
I trace my logic in this strategy to Gary Chapman’s (2015) book, The Five Love Languages, which is certainly not about managing a team (although I believe there is a version of the book out there which is written more for a managerial/work environment). The referenced book is written about building intimacy between couples by recognizing that everybody expresses love differently- based on their unique upbringing and life experiences.
This idea struck me, and I realized the same is true of employees within a work environment. After all, love takes many forms. In the same way that people show and recognize love differently; similarly, employees show and recognize appreciation differently.
A skilled manager will identify how each employee responds to various forms of feedback, then begin to build an understanding about how that employee ‘ticks’.
For example, by understanding that Employee A (we’ll call her Emma) responds very well to verbal praise in front of the team, a manager can very easily spur motivation by pulling in the team to recognize Emma’s hard work publicly. The key is to know how Emma will respond before doing the action.
I believe this method is not explored very often because it requires a lot of work from managers, who would rather pull a magical answer out of a hat and use one blanket method for everybody forever. Indeed, it is much easier to conclude that paying employees more does not work, Mikkelsen et al. (2017), and that granting days off does work, Johnson (2022). However, I would submit that every person operates differently and that, if the goal is to get results, then the person who needs to really put in the extra effort to get those results is the manager.
From Theory to Results
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Although the example above (Emma) is crafted as a hypothetical, I believe every person can honestly reflect inwardly and appreciate the fact that they probably have different goals, motivators, and preferences than the person to their left or right. It is only natural that each person is inspired to perform for their team based on different motivators- each person is different, after all.
According to the conclusion of a peer-reviewed journal entry submitted to Total Quality Management & Business Excellence on gaining employee participation in continual improvement (CI) processes, which is strikingly similar to gaining employee participation in general:
CI is still a very difficult process to handle inside organi(z)ations, especially when it comes to getting employees engaged in participating in the CI system. Therefore, employees’ intention to participate should be treated as an objective itself and managed accordingly. To achieve this, the main elements motivating employees to participate in the CI system should be discovered. (Jurburg et al., 2017).
Clearly, based on the passage above, gaining employee intention to participate in CI depends on the manager’s ability to discover the elements behind the employee’s decision to participate or not, then managing them accordingly. This is a specific, research-backed example supporting my stance that each employee must be addressed as unique individuals, when the aim is to motivate participation.
Other Relevant Factors
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I hope I have made it abundantly clear by this point that the incentives for motivating employees should not be assumed to be universally applicable for all employees: each motivator should be carefully selected to suit the employee for whom the motivator has been selected. Each employee is a unique person, each deserving their manager’s whole attention and effort in getting to know them, and what motivates them to perform for the team.
One challenge that even the most attentive and caring manager could encounter is the possibility of trying to connect with an employee who is reserved at work, and thus, hard to gauge. If an employee is reserved at work, it could be that they do not trust their manager or their trust has been violated by a manager in the past. I believe the best practice in this situation is to pull the employee to the side and express sincere desire to earn their trust.
In the case that I am the manager who has lost the employee’s trust, I will put myself in their shoes and try to empathize with them. Getting defensive or counter-attacking will only make the problem worse.
It could be an honest miscommunication between me and the employee- possibly a gesture, statement, or action I did that rubbed them the wrong way, or possibly they just don’t see me as being qualified to hold the position of management over them. Whatever the cause may be, it is important to me that we explore possible solutions, as well as to take the time and show the employee that I sincerely care about mending the damage of the past.
In some cases, some employees just simply have a bad attitude or actively resist any type of authority-figure in their life.
I have seen both and have found that sometimes the gap in communication is simply irreparable: more often then not, the employee’s poor performance has more to do with their response to things outside of their control, which are impacting them on a personal level.
I am fortunate to be employed in the military, which does intrude into the personal lives of employees somewhat more than civilian entities do- I say that I am fortunate in this because it has proven to be a benefit in my personal life on more occasion than one. However, I also respect that a person’s personal life is just that: personal.
Some barriers simply cannot be broken down at the managerial level, and some people are better referred to counseling from a professional.
Summary and Conclusion
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In this post I explored the dangerous effects of attempting to apply one motivational method to all employees: although it may work for some, chances are good that it will not work for all. I went on to propose a solution to this issue: managers need to get to know each of their employees on a personal level in order to understand what motivates them to perform well (sometimes literally just ask that question). Finally, I touched on cases that are beyond a manager’s wheelhouse to mend: some employees nurse personal vendettas against the world that a manger simply cannot break.
I hope that there are some valuable takeaways from this discussion post (and that people will read the whole thing), and look forward to the discussion in the comments! Note: I will reply to comments.. please, let’s discuss!
References
Chapman, G. (2015). The 5 love languages: The secret to love that lasts. Northfield Publishing.
Johnson, S. (2022, October 1). 12 Secrets to Keeping Employees Happy Without a Raise. Business News Daily. Retrieved November 11, 2022, from https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6084-employee-happiness-without-raise.html
Jurburg, D., Viles, E., Tanco, M., & Mateo, R. (2017). What motivates employees to participate in continuous improvement activities? Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 28(13-14), 1469–1488. https://doi.org/10.1080/14783363.2016.1150170
Mikkelsen, M. F., Jacobsen, C. B., & Andersen, L. B. (2017). Managing Employee Motivation: Exploring the Connections Between Managers’ Enforcement Actions, Employee Perceptions, and Employee Intrinsic Motivation. International Public Management Journal, 20(2), 183–205. https://doi.org/10.1080/10967494.2015.1043166
Your points make a lot of sense. Each person is a unique individual, and not everyone will be motivated by the same carrot at the end of the stick. Thanks for sharing!
You’re exactly right about this and I hope more managers will read it.