Motivating Factors

If you don't know what motivates you, do you know what motivates those around you? Your secretary, your co-workers, your boss or your staff? What about your wife/husband and children, what motivates them?

Here's an exercise for you to do: sit down with your partner (business or personal) and ask them what is important to them in their life. Keep asking until they have given you a substantial list (to do this simply ask 'What else?' after they have said everything that comes to mind. Keep asking to get to the deeper values and then stop when they start repeating themselves)), then get them to put into order or importance their top five, number one being the most important. Write your own list of what's important and number the top five accordingly. Are the two lists exactly the same?

Our true motivations come from deep inside our subconscious, from our inner values. Our values represent what is important to us. They dictate how we spend our time, how we live our life and give us a scale of how to judge what is right or wrong according to our experiences. We believe that our values are THE right ones and that others will have the same ones and act accordingly and if they don't then they are wrong.

Our values come from our family, society, school, the media, religion and the internet and as no two people will ever have had the same life there are no two sets of values the same. It is from our values that we get our motivation. Put it this way, if you place no real value on an aim or goal, you will have no motivation to achieve it.

What we tend to do is to manage people according to our own motivation. Culturally we are accustomed to being told what to do, starting with our parents, school and then our bosses until we are in a position where we are managing others. At each level the person telling us what to do is using what they feel is important. Our parents base their advice on their generation's values and history and our teachers are driven by exam results and test scores.

When we get into the work place quite often it is our first boss who then influences us about what is important in business and where to place our emphasis and energy. We in turn continue this cycle and create another generation of managers who dictate to staff, believing that what motivates them will motivate their staff and again miss that fact that we are all unique and will therefore have a unique way of being motivated.

There are two ways to be motivated; towards something or away from something. When managing others we use the carrot or the stick. Traditionally when we tell someone what to do there is either an implied, or a very real threat of the consequences should they not comply with what we have asked for and the other way of course is to promise financial rewards or a promotion.

If you think of the towards/away from motivation as two ends of a continuum, most peoples' management techniques are somewhere along that line using a combination of carrot and stick.

However , the result of this is limited as it is based on what we think is motivating for us and is ultimately ineffective in terms of getting the most out of your staff.

There is another way.... Inner motivation. If you can find out what it is that really motivates someone internally to perform to their full potential and communicate with them in their language ,what you will find is that there is little need to manage that person in the traditional meaning of the word. In traditional management the boss dictates, persuades, debates and cajoles his staff to get the results he wants.

It is quick and easy and provides the manager with a feeling of being in control. By motivating a person internally, what you are doing is going beyond the carrot and stick and providing for that person the basis for them to take full responsibility for their performance. When internally motivated a person will not need to be held by the hand every step of the way, problems will be addressed immediately and the person will take responsibility for their own development as they will want to do the best they can.

Responsibility is a word that is paid great lip service but is seldom understood. In today's 'blame' culture it is all too easy to point the finger at another when things go wrong or not according to plan. Taking responsibility means to truly understand how our choices affect our lives and what affect those choices have on others around us. Responsibility allows us to create greater self esteem. Greater self esteem will reduce stress and generate higher performance, meaning that a win/win situation is then achieved.

So how do you internally motivate someone? The first step is to really want to create new culture in the organisation going from secrecy, hierarchy and censorship to one of openness, support and honesty. Then you have to believe that everyone is different and will have a different set of motivating factors that are unique and should be respected.

After that it is vital to improve communication skills. This includes listening skills, non-verbal communication and questioning techniques that enable the manager to be more of a coach than dictator and develop an understanding of how to help your staff achieve their best. Although a change in culture takes time, a factor many people use in order to avoid change, the outcome means less management time will be required in the future but the result will show in greater performance.

The over all benefits inner motivated staff will be; improved performance and productivity, improved relationships, more time for the managers, better use of people, skills and resources and greater flexibility and adaptability to change. In the age where the only certainty is change this has got to be the best way to stay ahead of the game, and enjoy life at the same time!