Techniques to Motivate Employees

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Benefits of motivation

So why is it important to motivate employees? Motivating your team:

•      Reduces the risk of losing valued employees
•      Reduces costs of sickness absence and loss of productivity
•      Reduces disruption due to interpersonal conflict or value clashes
•      Increases cooperation and collaborative working
•      Builds energy, creativity, and engagement due to raised mutual understanding, respect, and mental wellbeing

Research has shown that where team members’ natural energy and healthy psychological functioning is reduced, so is company performance. It also shows that when workers feel acknowledged and respected, they are more highly committed, more creative, and are motivated through their inner work to go that extra mile to optimize performance and results.

Motivating your team

There are numerous techniques you can use to motivate employees such as recognizing great work, celebrating results, providing rewards, and so on. However, while these methods are popular and high-impact in the short to medium term, they tend to be low-impact in the long-term and less likely to lead to genuine buy-in. Two effective techniques for motivating employees are:

•      Setting goals that employees have an interest in
•      Delegating important tasks

Setting goals

Extrinsic motivation techniques address only the first stage of natural motivation, in that, they give the team goals. However, team members will learn to recognize the task the manager wishes them to work on as a way to win a prize, rather than an actual process worth completing or learning from. So, once the reward has been earned, team members no longer have the motivation to retain the skills or processes they have learned along the way. Their questions about the task are more likely to be: “What’s the least amount of effort I can put in to satisfy my manager and gain my reward?”

A better way to motivate team members is to give them the opportunity to achieve goals that satisfies two conditions: one – that team members have a real interest in this goal, and two – that low-motivating tasks or skills are intrinsically related to the goal.

This makes the task seem less trivial and allows team members to properly index the skills and learning necessary to achieve the goal. They then learn skills in a context in which they can later use.

Delegation

Delegation, while not commonly recognized as a motivation technique, is highly effective. Put simply, you delegate to motivate. If I were to approach you and state that there was a very important task that I wanted you to complete, that there was no one else with your skillset who could do it, and that most importantly I trust you to complete this task for me, then delegation becomes an extremely powerful motivator tool. The person who has been tasked with carrying out the instruction now strives to the best of their ability to achieve the desired result, to be rewarded with your thanks.  

You can take this one step further if you set the task to be delegated just slightly above the person’s ability level. Then they will strive to succeed and gain the resulting respect that comes from completing the task. 

Role of the manager

Whatever motivation technique you choose, it is important to remember that as a manager, you can only achieve your team goals through the actions of your team who need their own clear motivation to achieve results. 

Throughout all stages of the motivation process, managers should:

•      Gain trust through active listening and empathy. 
•      Set high expectations to inspire the team. 
•      Establish a clear strategy and plan, and communicate them often.
•      Practice MBWA (or Management By Walking Around) to question, listen, and ascertain if your communications about the task are being understood. 
•      Develop clear and measurable indicators of success and acknowledge such success. 
•      Use ‘why’, ‘how’ and ‘when’ questions with employees. For example, questions such as: ‘Where are we?’, ‘What do I need to know?’ and ‘How can I help you?’

And finally, ensure that every individual has clear responsibilities and performance expectations. If a manager does not set explicit expectations, then the members of the team will not be aware of what is expected of them. Assigned tasks will fail if the initial set of instructions have not been clearly defined at the outset.