Motivating Those You Lead
Karen Otazo
Great sports coaches know that you can push athletes hard if you do it to take them to the next level. People can do amazing things when you really need them to stretch to get work done quickly or to cover for others. Setting “stretch goals” can be exciting and inspirational. Ask people who worked in Silicon Valley start-ups in the early days. They loved every minute of not sleeping, along with the ecstasy of being part of something exciting and new.
But there’s a dark side to “stretch goals.” People can get burned out or worn out and can feel as if they’re always being criticized for not doing the near-impossible. Criticism is part of working life. We all have to get it and give it, whether officially through appraisals or informally from bosses on a daily basis. However, we welcome it to varying degrees. If you think about your own experiences of receiving criticism, the times when you took it best were probably occasions when someone appeared to have your best interests at heart. You emerged from the discussion with a positive sense of what you needed to do next. This type of criticism is exemplified by the feedback that’s part of good coaching.
You can help someone improve by encouraging him or her to see a situation objectively, rather than through the filter of a psychological assessment such as “You don’t care about your colleagues’ needs,” which implies “good” and “bad.” You achieve this by assuming a position of impartiality yourself, behaving not as a critic but as a neutral observer. Describing current behavior in words that are free of anger and judgment allows you to steer people toward other ways of thinking or working without causing offense or resentment.
The first stage in delivering feedback is careful observation. Before saying anything, devote some time to thinking about how to describe a subordinate’s behavior in a neutral way. It can be helpful to think of your eyes and ears as a television camera, objectively recording words and actions. Next, describe what you see to the person, offering a second picture of what might work better so that the gap between the current and improved behavior is evident. It’s often helpful to give an example of a time when the person displayed the desired behavior. It brings a positive aspect to the criticism and shows that the person can change if he or she knows the way forward.
The final stage is to discuss together how to close that gap by creating a new picture. When talking to someone who tends to do things in a last-minute way, you might give an example like this one: “When you e-mail your presentation slides after everyone else, the meeting participants are annoyed and may complain to me and to each other.” Then you can suggest ways to make sure that things are not done in a last-minute way by saying: “I’ve noticed that when your travel schedule forces you to finish a draft a week in advance, you let people you trust review it, which means that your work is beautifully done and on time.” As the supervisor, you can encourage your employee to create an ongoing way to replicate his success strategy even when he’s not forced to do so by circumstances.
The key to moving feedback into action is to find a way to duplicate or create successes. Although knowing what’s wrong is a start, if you just tell people in the workplace to stop doing something, their instinctive reaction is either to defend what they’re doing and continue as before or to focus so hard on not doing it that their behavior may appear uncomfortable or contrived. It’s essential to find ways to encourage and reinforce positive change.
So, judiciously negotiate those stretch goals for each team member individually. Regularly give them the feedback they need to self-correct and keep going. When they succeed, celebrate with them from time to time. When they celebrate, it should feel like winning in Las Vegas so that they want to come back for more stretch goal challenges.
You Have More Than the Carrot and the Stick
When the National Governors Association polled 10,000 high school students about their studies, it expected them to say they didn’t want more work since school was pretty tough already. To their surprise, they found that students were disappointed that they weren’t challenged enough! But, on reflection, is that so surprising? Although we may assume that most people would rather have an easy life than a difficult one, it goes without saying that we all also want our lives to have meaning. Activities at school and work are where many of us find that meaning as we discover, and play to, our strengths.
It’s important as a leader that you find appropriate ways to challenge and stretch your staff on that journey of self-definition. That’s not an easy task. Indeed, for many leaders, motivation is a bit of a mystery. Too often employees are seen as organizational mules, motivated only by offers of “carrots”—money or other perks—or threats of “sticks”—criticism or punishment. Although carrots and sticks work for all of us some of the time, motivation is actually far more complex than that.
As a leader, you are way ahead when you gain an understanding of what really drives people to do their best work. There’s no quick-fix answer; what motivates one person does not always motivate another. But understanding the range of motivators helps you try different approaches on different people until you find those that work for you and your organization.
Carrots and sticks are both forms of extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivators are factors that come from outside of us, pushing us in a certain direction. Money, perks, and status symbols—the corner office, for example—are all obvious extrinsic motivators of the carrot variety. Praise is perhaps a less obvious one, along with its “stick” counterparts, criticism and humiliation.
These extrinsic tools are more prevalent in some professions than others—sales, for instance, with its bonus-linked salaries—and can work very well when used sparingly, as a mini-boost. They are easy motivators to offer because, although they can cost money, they require little real time and energy.
However, in most professions, extrinsic motivators work less well in the long term. Although occasional carrots keep people hooked—something that the casinos of Las Vegas know well—if they occur too regularly the impact soon fades. People start to take the carrots for granted, and they become meaningless. Worse, overuse of extrinsic motivators can actually demotivate people by setting up an unhealthy expectation. If an employee is used to getting a regular bonus or compliment, and then you end the habit, he may feel let down or abandoned and lose the will to keep pushing on.
If you really want to motivate people, you need to think about intrinsic motivators too. These are motivators that reflect people’s internal beliefs and values about their place in the world and the way the world works. An employee who believes in order and systems, for example, may be turned off by being thrown into a challenge with no clear parameters, but he will do his best work when offered a role with repetition, structure, and planning. Someone who loves innovation and creativity, in contrast, often enjoys being given a challenge that allows him to think inventively and to explore and showcase his creative talents. Someone who wants to do the right thing in the world may be drawn to nonprofit work.
Many of the world’s major businesses have realized that some of the best young employees they recruit are attracted to altruistic opportunities as well as intellectual challenges and money. They offer opportunities such as volunteering in the community as a way for their employees to stay motivated as part of their regular duties.
Pay attention to how your team members react to their work and to the rewards and recognition they are offered. What perks them up? What brings them down? Explore these questions with them at review meetings. Keep both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators in mind, and use them judiciously. You can then motivate individual team members in the way that suits each one best.
Quick Coaching Keeps Your Team on Course
In prizefights, the trainers rush to their boxers’ corners after each round. Besides words of encouragement and a refreshing drink, they give some just-in-time coaching and useful guidance. The trainer’s job in those one-minute rest periods is to prime his boxer to keep moving and stay focused while avoiding jabs and direct hits. That’s what you want to do for your team members.
Translate those 60-second intervals into “coaching-in-action” minutes. These are brief coaching sessions with team members when they’re in the midst of their work. Great timing gives them the sound bites they need to keep moving and stay out of harm’s way. You can energize them with your confidence and conviction just when they need it. This is not only the time for quick kudos to buck people up. You can also provide constructive course corrections. Anything with a long-term trajectory needs guidance and feedback to stay on course and avoid obstacles, whether it’s a guided missile or a strategy.
Before major presentations about long-term projects, the leader of one organization used to say, “This presentation could make or break your career. Don’t screw it up.” That was not very helpful, because his team members would freeze up. So he changed his coaching to give his team pointers such as, “This executive really cares about cost projections. Be sure to go through that part of your presentation carefully.” Or “Focus on the people resources.” Or “Stay away from Project X in your presentation; it’s a hot button.”
The executive learned the following:
1. Give team members rehearsal time with you before presentations to give them some quick coaching.
2. Don’t correct unless it’s vital for your team member’s success.
3. Focus on the one or two things that will make a difference immediately.
4. Stay positive as you focus your team member on moving forward successfully.
It takes only a minute to rev up someone with a coaching moment. Just a few seconds of your time helps them stay in shape for what they need to do. As their coach, you need to do just that to develop winning players.