Employee Motivation – What Motivates Them?
Employee Motivation
Since I am a student of psychology and communications I try to learn from the best and here’s a regulation that I come to that may teach you to manage employees with a critical mind.
“Try to give direct praise when it’s expected!”
Imagine you have a job that you need to accomplish this month and you must accomplish it by Friday. You work great all week and on Friday, the boss asks you to do an exercise. Here’s how it goes:
“Look in the mirror and say two things you love about yourself”
Here’s some possible answers.
“I love my height” and “I love my eyes”
Notice how you started worrying about the question immediately, but don’t. It’s kind of funny.
What was the average age of the people who responded like your above? No wonder they find it difficult to work!
So, if I could communicate with them in a way that made them happy enough to notice my “lousier skills,” and that I still managed to look for new and different things to appreciate to make them as productive as they should be, then there is cases when you would expect to find that they will become dissatisfied with your approach and you’d need to be able to find another approach to motivate people.
Here’s why.
Some things that you can do to motivate a so-so- performer are really no-brainers.
My last year in dental marketing, a friend of mine, had a new CEO who was promoted because his former protégés moved on and they were better than him, leaving the company in his wake. He’d taken a presentation style management seminar and he didn’t want to bad luck so, when the bad news came that his boss was retiring, he let out a little groveling and then he promised the family he would be a step forward to take on the leadership.
We ended up dealing with that situation really bad, but it’s what it is. He didn’t do anything wrong or bad so he ended up being passed over for the right job and impressive departmental functions came his way as a result.
Another friend of mine started working for a group of women whose spouse was on a postal strike. Mine was one of them.
That brings me to the point of this article.
If you are going to motivate people to get results, two things might be in order.
1) Money2)atisfaction of a job (or task)
Here’s the trick:
Find out what they need, and fill it. The better you know your employees, the more you know what makes them tick. You know what they are thinking.
You’re thinking too, right?
Right. So let’s look at what I mean about filling people up with the things they need to be satisfied.
A high performer in a sales position needs the status the position will provide. Buyers will be more willing to give the money to a veteran who has that status on their resume.
A user of your products will be willing to go out of their way to use your new version for the cost of bells and whistles.
What it boils down to is that the environment in which you have found them to be high performers, you create the need for the status and recognition they need. Other things, which rarely have anything to do with the career people might be content with, won’t be needed. This might not be that bad to them.
Let me give you one result in example: When I walked into skyrocket training, they had one room and 400 people so my first three days were all I did before meeting with the rest of the group. If I wanted to experience working with superstars, I needed to have a natural high performer.
So:
Vince Lombardi stood for customer service. Joe Girard stood for product knowledge. newsletters are a fine example of combining the need for recognition with the need to get your name out in front of as many people as possible. If they succeed at it they do a good job of getting your name out there; your website name or your p Bliss website name will keep ending up on their signs, your business card, etc.
Consider these things and think about what they are in relation to your specific environment.
Get to know them. Find out what makes them tick. Don’t see them as just potential customers or as the right people to sell to. If you have a need to sell to them, however, it could help you tailor your marketing message to get them there. Don’t be afraid to get back at them. If you take care of them, internally they will take care of you, if you take care of them, they will take care of you.
Be aware of what they need and fill it.
Smile. A smile is contagious.
