Episode #4: Motivational Leadership (Part Two)

Sales guru Zig Ziglar had a great saying, “If you can help enough people get what they want in this life, you can get what you want”. Pretty simple idea isn’t it. It is the same idea when we are the boss. Don’t focus on what we want, focus on what our people want. If we do that then we will have great results being created by highly motivated people.

In the last episode, we have covered what we should not be doing if we want to motivate our people. If you haven’t listened to that episode, go back and learn about the 7 things we should stop doing.

In today’s episode we are going to take a positive slant, and focus on what what we should be doing instead.

Abraham Maslow’s 1954 book “Motivation and Personality” introduced the now famous “Hierarchy of Needs”. He theorized that each individual is motivated by a progression of needs, represented in a pyramid, with the most basic needs at the bottom and the highest order of needs at the top. He believed motivation is driven by the individual satisfying each level of need, in a progressive sequence from bottom to top. He asserted that people are generally motivated to move to the next level when the more basic order of need is satisfied.

We start our careers focusing on getting some money together to live independently, make the credit card payments, etc. As we progress in our careers we gradually get more focused on security, being a contributing member of the team and earning the respect of others. Eventually, we focus on aspects of work that are personally fulfilling, that make a significant contribution and that maximize our potential.

In Maslow’s theory, the boss must create a motivational environment that meets the needs of team members at each level of the hierarchy, in order to inspire them to strive to the next level. To do this the boss has to know their people, to be sensitive to where they are in their current career stage and aspirations. The boss needs to communicate hope and the way forward together, so the employee can get through to the next stage. Are you actually doing this?

As leaders, how well do we know the hopes, fears, dreams and situations of our team? In the old model, the personal lives of the team members was thought to be an off limits area for bosses. Not today. The team want to know the boss is in their corner, actively working to help them further their careers. The younger the generation the more vivid this idea becomes. Of course, the boss can’t do it for us, but the boss can create the environment where we can do it ourselves. To get people motivated, get busy building that supportive environment. Understand where your individual team members are in that hierarchy of needs.

In 1959 Fredrick Herzberg published “The Motivation to Work” where he theorized that workers face two basic sets of factors in their jobs: maintenance factors and motivating factors. He related the level of job satisfaction to the presence or absence of motivating factors.

Maintenance factors included things like relationships with team members, work conditions, salary, status and security. This is an interesting viewpoint, because many of us today may believe that salary is a highly motivating, rather than maintaining factor for our team.

Perhaps for the one percent on huge salaries, this is probably quite true, but for the majority of employees this is not the case. Unless we want to start paying everyone huge numbers, we need to look for other areas to engage them.

One of my clients returned to the same company after being posted overseas. Now as the boss, he noticed that motivation levels were lower than previously. He instituted an incentive scheme to boost individual motivation but to his amazement it had no impact at all.

Herzberg found that motivational factors referred to achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, advancement and personal growth. Every one of these rely on the communication skills of the boss to create that environment where people feel appreciated, relevant, appreciated and inspired to try even harder. How good are your communication skills in this regard?

Working in big organizations it is hard to feel that your role has any meaning. This is where the boss connects the dot for you and demonstrates how important you are to the company. Your ideas are sought, your input valued, your work noted, recognized and praised.

Praise is one of the nascent arts of leadership today. There is plenty of praise in stock because so few bosses draw down on it. It is a bit like not telling your partner that you love them. You assume they know that, so why do you have to state it? Recognizing employees gets the same treatment – somehow they know you appreciate them, even though you never bring it up. Maybe not!

We have to re-examine some of our basic assumptions. There was a global research on engagement which was duplicated in Japan. The results were shocking. Of those employees who stated they were “very satisfied” with their boss, less than half said they felt “engaged”.

Most bosses would be relieved to have staff say they were “very satisfied” with them and would therefore expect that they would also be highly engaged.

Until I saw this research, I would have been pretty happy to read my staff were very satisfied with my leadership. The research results showed that we cannot be so optimistic! This underlines the need for the leaders to look for the points of motivation in their team, work hard on those and to clearly isolate out and understand what are purely maintenance factors. Can you discriminate which are maintenance factors and which are motivators for each of your direct reports?

In the 1960 book “The Human Side of Enterprise” Douglas McGregor introduced Theory X and Theory Y management. Theory X is top down management, authoritative in nature and McGregor found it produced poor results.

Theory Y leaders see their people as shirking work, lazy, untrustworthy, avoiding responsibility, etc. They must be threatened with punishment to meet objectives, given directions and told what to do and how to do it. This is the boss ignoring the nine things done well and zeroing in on the one thing done incorrectly. The micro-manager, the “bad finder”, the “have to watch em like a hawk” boss. By the way, do you recognize anyone here – is this you?

Theory X management by contrast creates a participative, team oriented environment where management frees individuals to produce better performance, while allowing them to grow and develop their skills. Leaders believe workers are capable of controlling and directing themselves, are more motivated by rewards than punishment, enjoy responsibility and have capacity for creativity and ingenuity. This type of boss is open to ideas from the team, prepared to delegate responsibility and someone trying to both build people and manage processes. They are a “good finder”. If we surveyed your team about you, would the results show up Ys or Xs?

Predating Herzberg and McGregor, Dale Carnegie introduced his famous 30 Principles of successful human relations, published in his global best seller “How To Win Friends and Influence People” in 1936. Carnegie was not an academic but he was a very practical man. His findings were based on 24 years of observation and experiment in his “real world” laboratory.

His conclusion was that the best way to influence the behavior or motivation of others, is by adjusting your own behavior. The leader takes 100% of the responsibility for making the relationship as productive as possible by fostering a truly motivational environment. He did not say the leader was responsible for the followers’ actions, but was responsible for the work environment and the controlling their own attitude.

Dale Carnegie’s 30 principles focused on providing practical advice on achieving better people skills, including common sense but not common practice advice such as:

1. Give honest, sincere appreciation
2. Arouse in the other person an eager want
3. Become genuinely interested in other people
4. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests
5. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view
6. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person
7. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders

This selection from the 30 Principles underlines the leader’s role in focusing not on what they want, but understanding what their team members want.

Sales guru Zig Ziglar had a great saying, “If you can help enough people get what they want in this life, you can get what you want”. It is the same idea for the boss. Don’t focus on what you want, focus on what your people want. Maslow, Herzberg, McGregor and Carnegie have been telling us this for a long time - this is how to get motivation going in the team.

We may be slow learners but now is the time for us to finally get it! Forget Hollywood! Go with the research and build the environment most favorable to creating high levels of motivation in your team.