Motivate Teams by Using Challenge, Progress and Achievement

Challenge, progress, and achievement are intrinsic motivators that, with just a bit of planning and follow-up, leaders at every level can tap into. If purpose is the noble cause that points team members in a general direction, then challenge enhances the significance they feel by outlining how hard the journey to our destination will be. Although the road is never fully known, setting a course that engages a good degree of your people’s endurance, navigational skills, and other talents will keep them engaged along the way and feeling that the destination is worthwhile when reached.

Signposts, mile markers, yardage markers, buoys, project milestones, and many other signs of human endeavor tell us how far we’ve come, how much of the journey is left, and what effort and resources we still will need to reach the destination. Expectations or goals are the destination itself. They provide context to purpose and operationalize it. Expectations, particularly measurable ones, help the team know when their efforts result in achievement in others’ eyes.

Setting individual and team goals to realize purpose is an important motivational tool. Setting expectations clarifies how and how much teams and individuals positively impact purpose. Doing this allows people to compare their efforts against expectations for impact, and in doing so draw a sense of pride and self-esteem from reaching objectives. Nothing helps validate people’s existence at work more than success, and expectations tell us when we have reached it.

No matter how noble we believe the team’s purpose is, without expectations it’s hard to tap into personal drivers to support it. Without set objectives efforts will lack focus, coordination, and proper intensity. Precious talents may also be wasted on activities that don’t truly impact purpose. Setting quantifiable expectations for your people allows them to know how well they are running the race and when it is over. That helps tap into internal drivers by letting staff assess the meaningfulness of the goal and their chances of attaining it.

If you’ve ever tried a triathlon you unlikely started by trying to complete a full Ironman; your effort was more likely aimed at a sprint or Olympic distance race. The reason for this is simple: You assessed your odds of achieving the goal based on your abilities and came up with a choice you felt was most appropriate for you - one that tested your limits but was not unrealistic in your view. Your people do the same in work settings, so the process of setting goals itself initiates this thought process in them that will, ultimately, motivate or demotivate.

Setting expectations is about instilling a sense of achievement in people, and the ability to achieve creates meaning and significance in individuals’ work lives. British mountaineer George Herbert Leigh Mallory, in 1924, said he was attempting to climb Mount Everest “because it was there.” That is what goals do - they create a proverbial mountain to climb so that we can experience a sense of achievement when we conquer the summit.

Time after time, human history has shown us that something deep inside people stirs them to blaze a trail to new accomplishments. Because we need to feel progress and achievement, we commonly create goals when none are given to us. Creating a route on which to use our time and talents just feels better than wandering without direction in the wilderness of our lives.

?When leaders set goals for their people, they must ensure that their people are committed too and the leader must follow up on this. When expectations shift before the job is completed and follow-through is lacking, the ability of goals to leverage intrinsic motivation is minimized.

The second and closely related concept to expectation-setting is challenge. When a task lies before us, the level of challenge often affects our motivation to complete it. We quickly dismiss challenges that seem far beyond our capabilities as we don’t believe they would satisfy our need for success and achievement. Likewise, we dismiss mundane tasks that are seemingly far beneath us because they aren’t a rewarding use of our time and we gain no genuine feeling of achievement from completing them.

A worthwhile endeavor that stretches our talents and yet seems achievable best satisfies the drive for challenge. The level of responsibility, influence, impact, challenge, and talent taken to complete the work are all factors we usually consider whether we are looking for the next initiative to complete or the next career opportunity.

The ultimate aim when we set goals and factor in challenge is to conquer them. It’s about achievement. Setting and achieving appropriately challenging goals enhances self-esteem and validates our existence to ourselves - and in the workplace, to others - making it a strong and universal internal driver. Each of us has likely dreamed of great achievement in some facet of our lives, and over time we calibrate our dreams with our abilities and true level of desire to make them a reality. Distinguishing ourselves is part of the driver for achievement, and that is one of life’s little ironies too - we probably spent our youth trying to fit in with the crowd and our adult life trying to stand out from it.

Achievement feels good, and progressing toward it steels our resolve to reach the finish line. The process of leaders working with their people to set challenging but achievable goals that support aligned collective and individual purposes, and provide updates on progress to reach them, are basic but crucial inputs that harness intrinsic motivation. These leadership activities give people worthwhile reasons to apply themselves fully to their work and help your team and the organization be successful. Leaders don’t have to have any special talents to complete these tasks. They only need to dedicate proper time and attention to them.

·????????Do you take creating an “appropriate” level of challenge into account in setting goals that motivate your people?

·????????How do you use milestones and progress updates to maintain motivation as people work to achieve goals today?

·????????To support motivation, do you regularly acknowledge your people’s progress and achievement?

* This article contains an except from the book "The Leadership Core: Competencies For Successfully Leading Others."