Episode #450: How Leaders Can Motivate Their Teams

We have seen the Hollywood version of leaders who are master blaster motivators. These charismatic leaders gather the team together and give a rousing call to arms to slay the problem. They persuade the team to go beyond their personal limitations and get the job done. In real life, usually the leader isn’t necessarily charismatic, nor a spirited orator. If you are leading in Japan, there is a strong chance that there are two languages in play and you are more likely to be better in one than the other. Despite my now 37 years in Japan, my vocabulary in Japanese cannot hold a candle to my vocabulary in my native English. That means I can be more subtle, powerful, convincing in English than I can in Japanese. Native Japanese speakers have the same issue trying to persuade others in English.

The days of the rousing locker room call to action are pretty much done for in sports teams, often the model for business leadership. The modern sports leader is more likely a skilled expert in understanding human nature and are speaking to each player individually, rather than as a frothy mass all the time. In business, we need to see each person as an individual and find out what motivates them and then help them get to where they want to be.

Leaders are more and more challenged by technology speeding everything up and stealing our time. My laptop, my mobile phone, my apps are amazing but somehow all of this incredible advance in tech hasn’t given me any sense of “oh good, now I have more than before”. It is the exact opposite. I feel I am struggling even more every year to keep up with everything. Busy bosses can miss important signals as a result, especially when it comes to dealing with our people as individuals rather than a half time locker room mass.

Sometimes we mistake the reason for non-performance as being a lack of motivation.

We need to make sure we know what we are really facing. Let’s look at five common issues and drill down for what we really need to be concentrating on, rather than keeping ourselves busy making puff speeches.

1. Problem: I don’t know what to do?

Solution: Educate the person so they gain the missing knowledge. Often the onboarding process for staff is perfunctory and then they are left to their own devices and have to rely on OJT, On The Job Training. If your boss is busy, this can be a thin gruel to survive on. We need to do an audit to understand where the gaps are to retrain them properly this time. The boss also has to make the time for them in a consistent manner which produces results.

2. Problem: I don’t know how to do it

Solution: Train them so they can learn the steps enabling them to do it on their own unassisted. We hire or promote people on the assumption they have the experience needed for the tasks. Every organization has their systems and these can take some time to master. At the start we need to invest the time required so that the staff member is across the key aspects of the job and they know the steps they need to follow.

3. Problem: I don’t believe I can

Solution: Coach them to see that they can in fact do it. Often we are hired for one thing but the organisation changes or mergers and we are now out of our depth. Maybe the market changes and we are not succeeding, as well as we were before. Did I mention Covid? Here is a prime example which has changed the game on so many industries and those who were succeeding before are now floundering. As a consequence their self belief and their self confidence starts to drop off. We need to help them build their confidence that they can in fact get the results.

4. Problem: I don’t know why

Solution: We create the why by working with them to come up with a clear vision of why this task is important and needs to be done. So often the WHY is clear to those in the executive suite but it never percolates past middle management down to those below. We have to keep reminding everyone about why we do what we do and why it is so important.

5. Problem: I don’t want to

Solution: We need to help then find the motivation within themselves to want to do it.

We might think that everyone is motivated by money. Herzberg’s research on motivation showed that money was a given, expected and what he called a “hygiene factor”.

Another common assumption is that everyone wants to be the boss and get promoted. This may not be the case at all and we are just pushing our thinking on to the team members.

We need to spend the time to talk with our team and find out what they really want. We need to ask them what they find motivating about the work or the company. The best advice is to assume nothing and ask a lot of questions, until you really know what is going on with the members of the team. Once we know what they want, then our job is to see where we can arrange the work to deliver what they want.

As leaders, the best work we can do is create the culture and the work environment where the team members can motivate themselves to succeed. If we see each person as an individual and deal with them one by one, we can produce the results we need. The key is boss time. If we don’t allocate it for this purpose what are we focusing on? Our people do make the difference, so this is where we need to be concentrating.