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On the job: Motivation, or de-motivation ?
August 12th, 2008
One of the most common questions in any supervisor’s job interview is How would you motivate staff?
It’s a bit like asking a cook how they would get the fish enthusiastic about being fried.
Strangely enough, there is a method of motivating people. It’s got very little to do with the cutesy version of office life where everyone apparently swallows slogans like corn flakes, and perfectly groomed suits dance to the sound of muzak.
Apparently unrecognized, after all these decades, is the fact that people who know someone’s trying to motivate them will make a point of not being motivated. Poke someone with a stick, and the person getting poked isn’t going to appreciate it.
The fact is that motivation, without substance, is considered pure undiluted bull, and nothing but bull. It usually is, too, which doesn’t help motivators much. Inflicting people with mindless slogans, and some strange product of the brains of people who may never have left the cheese packet, hardly helps.
It’s insulting to tell people they’re not doing their jobs to the extent they need motivational assistance. It’s infuriating to most people to get treated like a six year old, when you’re an adult executive.
The interview question generally runs on rails. You’re expected to answer with a more or less standard reply about encouraging inputs, consulting with employees, and sharing knowledge experience and ideas to achieve your objectives.
All of which, ironically, is perfectly true. People do get encouraged if someone’s listening to them, their opinions are being asked, and someone’s bothered to point out what’s supposed to be being achieved. If, by some miracle, some form of objectivity should ever occur, it’s a pleasant surprise.
Experienced managers are usually experienced enough to know that they don’t know it all. They have a sense of who are the right people to ask, on their team. They don’t just mindlessly make pointless speeches to people they know won’t believe them. Everything they do is in context with the people they know and work with.
Nor do they make a habit of suddenly producing statements out of thin air, things like We have to push the envelope here, or Let’s think outside the box, or Let’s remember to be proactive. People who are working their tails off don’t need to hear things like that.
So why is it so hard to get that message through to management, on any level? Nobody able to read and write is likely to believe parroted statements about good outcomes, win-win situations, synergies, and the rest of the phone book of wrong calls employees get on a daily basis.
The baseline here is that people need to be treated like people. There’s no mileage, at all, in the circus clown approach to motivation. Employees soon learn which managers know what they’re doing, and which are so wet behind the ears that they should really be in day care.
The lack of experience really shows, and it does nothing for credibility when people are more or less convinced the minute a manager opens his mouth that nothing worth listening to is likely to be coming out. Rather sadly, most of the time they’ll be quite right about that.
Credibility is the key. A kid with an idea and some recognizable competence will get a hearing where an fossil with a script won’t. Talking baby talk to professionals is a fatal mistake. They’ll never forgive it.
A lot of this is basic communication. You have to talk to people on their own level and in a meaningful way, or they have every reason to feel offended. How would you like it if your manager came in and asked you if you’d ever considered changing your nappies? Because that’s roughly the level of human contact management all over the world has achieved.
This has never been rocket science. If you want to motivate people, tell them something that is relevant, contains useful information, and doesn’t waste their time with things they know are neither relevant or useful.
Is that so hard?
The other key to motivation is knowing your own job.
If the people you’re speaking to are aware of your own abilities, and you can show them that you’re not just a collection of empty statements, you can motivate them.
The bottom line: Treat your staff like human beings, not cattle.
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