The famous film director Alfred Hitchcock was known for his disdain of actors. Early in his career, he became known for saying that “actors are cattle.” Later in Hitchcock's life, he claimed that he had been misquoted. “I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.”¹

From Hitchcock's perspective, actors should be putty to be molded precisely as the director envisioned. Any attempts on their part to “act” just got in the way. He had a command-and-control style of leading. As Hitchcock explained,

In my opinion, the chief requisite for an actor is the ability to do nothing well, which is by no means as easy as it sounds. He should be willing to be utilized and wholly integrated into the picture by the director and the camera. He must allow the camera to determine the proper emphasis and the most effective dramatic highlights.²

Hitchcock didn't want his actors thinking too much, and he most certainly didn't want their input. There's a story about Hitchcock working with Paul Newman in late 1965 on the movie Torn Curtain. At the time of filming, Newman was a bona fide Hollywood star and had already been nominated twice for a Best Actor Academy Award.

Newman came to Hitchcock and wanted to discuss the character he was playing. Hitchcock dismissed him, saying, “It's in the script.” Newman persisted, asking, “But what's my motivation?” Hitchcock replied, “Your motivation, Mr. Newman, is your salary.”³

Authoritarian leadership (the likes of which we've explored in Chapters 2 and 3) was about mandating. Collaborative leadership is about mobilizing. Eisenhower's quote that opens this chapter,“Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it,” highlights the inherent challenge in motivation. It's that “because they want to do it” part that's tricky.

How do you get someone else to want to work toward your objectives? Want to isn't a request to someone's head. It's an appeal to their heart.

This chapter will explore the different dimensions of motivation. You'll see what makes motivating others so complex—and you'll learn that contrary to Hitchcock's opinion, salary and extra money isn't enough. You'll recognize some of the common traps that leaders fall into in their attempts to be inspiring. Finally, you'll learn a whole new approach to successfully motivate others.

Motivation, simply put, is the desire to do things. It's why some people will get up at the crack of dawn to run 10 miles. It's why others spend hours a day practicing a musical instrument. It's the spark that lights your engine and the gas that fuels your performance.

Effective leaders today know they can't impose their will on those they lead. For example, I remember discussing this very issue with Debra, the CEO of the U.S. division of a major international bank. I was just starting what would turn out to be a four-year engagement with the company, helping them to transform the culture of their 13,000 U.S.-based employees. The bank had been through some serious regulatory challenges, and it wanted to create a culture in which every employee took responsibility for how the bank did business with customers.

Debra joked with me about how her life would be so much easier if she could just impose her will on the organization and everyone would do her bidding. Debra knew exactly what she wanted to be different. She had a crystal-clear vision of how a transformed cultured would look, feel, and act. If it would have worked, she would happily have clicked “send” on an email that looked like this:

Of course, Debra never sent such an email. It would have accomplished nothing. Debra knew that leading people on a journey from where they are to where they need to be was a process, not an event. She also knew this undertaking would not be easy; with a 13,000-person company, it would take years to turn the organizational ship around and head in the right direction. She'd have to find a different—and better—way to motivate.

UNDERSTANDING THE DRIVERS OF MOTIVATION

Motivating ourselves is hard. Anyone who has ever set (and tried to keep) New Year's resolutions knows exactly how hard. Trying to motivate others is exponentially more complex. For starters, where do you begin? What do you say? What do you do? What works? What doesn't work? How do you discover what makes them tick? Will what works today be as effective tomorrow?

Imagine you're leading four different groups of employees who all work assembling chips in a semiconductor factory. You're trying to motivate them to produce a certain number of chips per day. Which motivator do you think would work the best?

• A $30 cash bonus
• A voucher for free pizza
• A text message from the boss reading “Well done!”
• Nothing

It turns out this isn't a hypothetical situation. This was a week-long experiment run at an Israeli semiconductor factory by the psychologist Dan Ariely. At the start of the week, employees received an email promising a cash bonus, free pizza, or a “Well done!” text message from the boss if they got all their work done that day. A quarter of the factory employees received no email and no reward, thus serving as the control group.

Ariely found that after day one, the lure of free pizza was the top motivator, increasing productivity by 6.7% (over the control group who received nothing). The email offering words of praise from the boss incited 6.6% more productivity, and the email offering the cash bonus garnered 4.9% more productivity.

As the week progressed, things got more interesting. On day two, the productivity of the cash bonus group plunged. They performed 13.2% worse than those in the control group. By the time the week-long experiment ended, the cash bonus group not only cost the company money but also their results were 6.5% worse than the control group.

To sum up, the cash incentive was worse than offering no incentive at all. As for the other two motivators? Over the course of the whole week, it turned out that the appreciation text message from the boss was the strongest motivator of the bunch. Pizza was a close second.⁴

Many leaders I've worked with are surprised by these results. They expected that the cash would be the best incentive. Ultimately, here's the core reason why motivation is so complicated:

Although that statement may seem obvious, it's worth exploring in greater detail.

The people you lead are not you.

If you've been raised with basic social skills, you've internalized certain norms about how to interact with other people in society. One of the biggest of these norms is what's widely known as the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's a guiding principle of human behavior.

Now, I have no quibble with the Golden Rule. As rules go, it's about as good as they get.

However, applying the Golden Rule in a leadership-motivational context raises a red flag. Taken literally, it translates as, “Motivate others as you would have them motivate you.” And this is where things get dicey. Because, if you were to strictly apply this rule, then you're starting off with a faulty premise. You're assuming that what motivates you will motivate others. And that's not how motivation works.

Kelly, an IT manager, shared a story with me that illustrates this point. Early in his career, Kelly was the manager of 18 people for a corporate help desk. Looking for ways to motivate his team, he started a secret contest. He tracked key performance indicators (resolution rate, call-handle time, etc.) and ranked the team accordingly.

At the end of the month, Kelly called the team together to tell them about his contest and announce the first winner. After milking the suspense for as long as he could, Kelly announced the winner was Gina, a young woman who had been with the company for 10 months. In his excitement, Kelly didn't notice that Gina, still in her chair, had started to sweat, and her face had gone bright pink. Finally noticing that she hadn't come up yet, Kelly urged her, “Gina, come on up! Speech from the winner!”

Gina struggled to stand up, swaying as she did so, and then, as soon as she was stable, bolted from the room. What Kelly didn't know (and found out later) was that Gina suffered from social anxiety disorder. Though Gina could manage her symptoms in her job, Kelly's contest pushed her over the edge.

Everyone sees “reality” through his or her own set of eyes. They've had different life experiences, which shape different values, beliefs, and behaviors. As such, they interpret and respond to events differently than you do.

To motivate others, leaders need a stronger guiding principle than the Golden Rule. Dale Carnegie, in his classic How to Win Friends and Influence People, shares a story that suggests a better option:

Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn't think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn't bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish and said: “Wouldn't you like to have that?”⁵

Carnegie's story illustrates what has come to be known as the Platinum Rule:

As good as this sounds, this isn't so easy. People are a lot less straightforward than fish. To motivate others, leaders need to unearth what others would like done unto them. This brings up more questions than answers. For starters:

• Who is the “they” you're hoping to motivate?
• Is it an individual or a group?
• If it's a group, what do you do if different people like different things?
• What if some of these things stand in direct opposition to other things?
• Is it possible to pick one thing that everyone would like?
• If not, whom do you start with?
• What do you do first?

In order to lead collaboration, you need to take a page from Sherlock Holmes's playbook and become a motivation detective.

THE SECRET ABOUT MOTIVATION

Here's the dirty little secret about motivation you need to know: you can't really motivate anyone else. Think about it: if you want to “make” someone be motivated, you've regressed back to Old-School leadership, trying to use force to impose your will.

There's only one person you can truly motivate: yourself. In the same way, there's only one person who can motivate any other person: that person alone. Your job isn't to motivate that person.

Now, just because that's not your job doesn't mean you get a total pass. You don't get to bail on all things motivational, using the excuse, “Well, I can't really motivate anyone else anyway.” If you're going to be effective as a leader, you need a motivated workforce. People do better work when they're inspired to do so. High performance springs from motivated performance.

So, on the one hand, you can't motivate people. On the other hand, you need them to be motivated to do great work. How are you supposed to solve this puzzle?

Thankfully, there is a solution. As Sherlock Holmes says, it's obvious, but not easily observed. That's because the answer is a paradox.

Although you can't motivate anyone else, there is something you can do. You can create the conditions in which motivation is most likely to happen. This means creating an environment loaded with specific cues that will nudge people toward being motivated.

If “loaded with cues that nudge people,” sounds confusing, you're in good company. “Environment creation” is not a skill listed on a new leader's job description. Very few new leaders have any practice in doing this. You'll learn how to do this important work in the next chapter.