Meaning
Tap into your people's intrinsic motivation.
Motivation can be a tricky subject for leaders of teams. There are many factors that can demotivate our people like fatigue, personal issues, and a dislike for some of the tasks that have to be done (or the people they need to be done with). For a leader, this is tough situation. We have our own motivation to drive while constantly trying to somehow keep our people 'up'. Carrots and sticks of all descriptions may be used to cajole and even coheres individuals to buy-in and do what needs to be done.
This can seem like an endless pursuit much like a trek up a hill that turns into a mountain with no summit in site. Under stress and strain it can become difficult to empathise, listen, and care in a way that supports and protects our players to avoid stagnating or possibly even resigning. In my experience it is best to take a breather and find perspective. To do this, there are a few key questions one can ask:
Why do I care?
The other day a IT Project Manager from an insurance company told me how his developers were not sharing the details of their workflows with him. We discussed it for a few minutes when I asked why it mattered. He thought for a while and found it difficult to answer. After a brief discussion he realised it was an expectation with little merit (i.e. it didn't really matter). He realised it was a waste of his energy. Alternatively, he decided to start focusing on supporting his developers to share their workflows with each other more effectively. This would mean the interdependencies and sequencing of their tasks would flow faster and with less input from himself as the Project Manager. This was now something worth caring about from a productivity and resources point of view.
Why should they care?
Expecting other people to care because you do can create real friction. The quicker we come to peace with the fact that leaders will always have more 'skin in the game' than their subordinates the quicker we can think about the best course of action. Adam Grant led a team of researchers to understand employee motivations in a study performed on Facebook employees (HBR, 2018). They found that employees cared about three main things:
Career - how is this work helping me progress my career?
Community - how is this work helping me to feel respected, connected and a part of something worth while?
Cause - how is this work meaningful to me or the wider community?
All of these point to the need to show our people their WIIFM (Whats In It For Me) that goes beyond cash or short term incentives. When people see the connection between the work and their intrinsic WIIFM a cascade of motivation appears.
Why does it matter?
This is rarely asked in day-today meetings. We talk through agendas and questions and try and make decisions. But, how often are these things related to back to the overarching mission of the work? The answer is, almost never.
I know this because you tell me in the hundreds of workshops and sessions I have had with you all over the years. Everyone seems to be too busy and rushed to run discussions through this critical filter. If we cannot anchor our actions back to the mission or meaning of why they matter then it is difficult to mount a business case for the action in question. It is no wonder why people act aimlessly!
If we are able to deliberately ask these questions of ourselves, and then of our team we can gain power. This power comes from the position of being the person that can facilitate such discussion as well as being the one that has done the thinking and has the most accurate and relevant answers to them too!
Those leaders able to articulate the reason why we must work through the toughest of challenges is the leader that will tap into the intrinsic motivators of the humans in their team (and stakeholders of all kinds). According to Daniel Coyle (Author of The Culture Code) consistent and ongoing team performance is the expected outcome of this as people feel safe to do the work, have a sense of belonging to the team/organisation, and have a clear purpose to do the work.
