Motivating your team based on their intrinsic needs and drivers

Some managers think of motivation in terms of a carrot to be dangled in front of their employees, and sadly some managers also probably still resort the metaphorical stick to “encourage” them into action. Motivating the employees in your team is an essential lever available to the manager-coach to help them to grow, and I advocate a positive, carrot-based, look on motivation as a key to unlocking development potential.

The sweet spot of motivation and skill for developing talent

Often when we talk about developing talent we focus on the acquisition of new competencies or skills. Developing technical or behaviour skills is the more obvious aspect of many managers’ focus on talent development : helping employees to gain know how and competency in their job or how they do their job. In our technical industrial business we have a very detailed referential with 800 skills each with 4 different levels of expertise organised throughout 20 different professional job families. That’s well over 3000 different definitions of expertise to help the manager objectively determine the skill level at which the employee sits currently, and identify any gap between their current skill and the job requirements. Whilst still needing to assess and discuss competencies the manager has tools at hand to help them structure their discussion. 

However, skill is only one aspect of the factors at play in talent development.  As we have seen in my earlier articles, in order to be able to effectively adopt a delegating or supporting management style, and moving employees outside of their comfort zone and into development territory of arousal or their “flow”, the manager must understand how to maximise their employee’s motivation and provide a safe learning environment to develop new skills. 

A quick google search on “how to motivate your employees” will come up with dozens of articles telling you how you can ensure employee motivation in 4, 5, 7 or 10 management practices.  These checklists of supposedly motivating management practices include making the team’s workspace a good place to be, being a respectful and honest manager, offering rewards, having a trustful and transparent working relationship, giving positive feedback, offering flexible work schedules, celebrating successes... All these things are of course good management practice, and do contribute to how we feel about our worklife, our overall level of engagement and motivation. I can’t help but feel however that this oversimplifies what is actually a complicated question of motivation.

Rather than focusing on your actions as manager-coach, what carrot you dangle, let’s not forget that we are talking about motivating humans here, and that no two of us are the same. Offering rewards or celebrating success might greatly motivate some people, but conversely make others cringe at the spotlight it puts on them. Flexible working is a wonderful opportunity for some, and an unwelcome upheaval to decades worth of workplace stability and daily rituals for others. What works for one might not work for the other. 

Motivation is a tricky thing. Here’s the crux of the issue: relying on carrots of rewards and external actions and even monetary incentives will only work in the short term. Managers shouldn’t be mistaken in thinking that their external application of incentives makes any lasting difference to how people operate, and how they perform in the medium term. Many organizations have focused on employee engagement and default to reward programs, performance related pay, or lifestyle benefits in an effort to apply a “one size fits all” approach to motivating their staff. These are expensive and miss the mark. Employees can’t be forced to be motivated.

By enabling an emotionally intelligent work environment by listening to the needs of the individuals in the team and leveraging your employee’s intrinsic drivers you can boost their motivation at work, and therefore help them to perform better. 

What are intrinsic motivational drivers? 

Regardless of their job, your employees all have motivational drivers that get them out of bed in the morning and push them to achieve our goals. What motivates them is influenced by biological, intellectual, social and emotional factors: motivation is therefore a set of deeply ingrained and intrinsic driving forces that can be harnessed by external influences. Thinking about what drives your team members will help you know how to work with them and to get the best out of them. 

MONEY : Let’s face it, many employees are going to tell you that they are driven by money, and earning financial success. This needn’t just be limited however to their own finances, or questions of remuneration, you can harness these motivations asking them to generate revenue streams or focus on cost savings and financial efficiencies. Similarly those (rarer) individuals who aren’t so focused on financial success may feel frustrated being asked to focus on money when their motivation comes from other factors, helping people for instance. Allocate tasks wisely playing to people’s natural hunger, and don’t assume everyone’s primary concern is commercial or financial outcomes. 

APPEARANCE : Placing focus on how things look, how they are presented, their style and appearance is going to be a key driver to some people. They will want to have nice looking work, spend time on the presentation of their work product to make it look professional and polished. On the other hand, some employees will find this an utter waste of their time. Harnessing the innovative and expressive skills in the team to portray the team’s work in the best light can be a source of motivation for the more creative team members.

SPEED : The pace of work can also be a source of motivation. Employees that enjoy a fast paced, intuitive approach, making things happen, taking quick decisions and moving swiftly from one task to the next can be frustrated when asked to spend time on analytical work that requires a slower more considered pace. And of course vice versa is just as true : the more rational thinker who prefers to research and objectify their decisions can be unsettled and demotivated being asked to go about their work too quickly. Knowing what drives the employee’s thought process and decision making can help you understand their preferred working pattern, and be conscious of their preferred working style. 

FUN : We spend a considerable portion of our lives at work, and some employees will seek to inject fun and enjoyment into their professional life, driven by variety and lightheartedness, with some joking around and good humour and a “work hard, play hard” philosophy. On the contrary, others fervently separate their professional and personal lives, and view work as a place to be formal, have set working structure, and a restrained, serious or self-disciplined approach. Injecting too much fun may frustrate the latter employee who sees your well-intended motivational gesture as a distraction for getting their job done and getting out of there. Others meanwhile will feel stifled and suffocated if you aren’t able to provide regular informal down-time to have a laugh with the team. 

HELP : Some employees are driven by caring for others, wanting to help out, supporting people in need. These employees make great learning buddies for those that need support in their development or skill acquisition. You can leverage them as allies to mentor and integrate new members in the team, and they will love that you enroll them in these tasks. On the other hand, some employees are motivated by the belief that we are all self-reliant, and that people don’t need to be helped out. Clearly these individuals aren’t going to be thanking you if you ask them support their team members, so you’ll need to find other means to motivate them if you need them to share their skills. 

SOCIAL : Not everyone will share the need to build social networks in the team and collaborate with others. Some employees like to work alone, and will not be motivated by your suggestions that they work together with others when they perceive they would be better off left to get on with things independently. On the other hand, a socially driven team member allocated tasks that require significant individual contributions and limited interaction with others can be demotivated. Try to balance the need for team cohesion and social interactions with each individual’s own social needs.

CHANGE : In today’s business world, constant change is increasingly part of the everyday challenges your team will be dealing with. Some employees will be driven by the flow of new projects, the challenge to the status quo, the ability to try new things. You will inevitably also have employees who are change resistant, who like things just as they are and how they’ve always been, and who respect the structure, processes, and rules that govern their work and will find periods of change unsettling and will experience a drop in motivation when faced with change, reacting with an “oh no, here we go again”… 

RISK : Even in organisations such as my own with strong values based on safety of our people and industrial assets, our workforce is nevertheless comprised of people who are either risk tolerant or risk averse. The risk averse individuals are happiest with stability, certainty, order, predictability. For some however, there is a need to shake things up, to experiment, and they get their energy from not knowing the outcome, on the element of surprise. Perhaps a research assignment or some prospective project work can satisfy this need for experimentation, albeit in a limited and controlled remit.

AUTHORITY : some employees will be competitive in nature, wanting to be perceived as the strongest, the best, leading the way and having responsibilities. These results orientated individuals will find it hard to work in a team that doesn’t reward individual achievement, or on the contrary that tolerates unproductive members of the team. Working with authority and power-driven individuals you can delegate tasks that allow them a position of influence and accountability, perhaps leading project work in the team for instance. Clearly however, if the employee is not motivated by authority, the very same activity could be seen as very daunting and unsettling to them, they may not want to be given any sort of leadership responsibility and will be happy just to follow. Let’s not overlook the importance of recognizing that not everyone wants authority, and that if everyone was seeking it then the workplace would soon degenerate to chaos. 

APPRECIATION : Some employees will have a strong need for acknowledgement and recognition, having a sense of appreciation for their work. These employees will seek out the spotlight, and want to be visible and noticed for their work, and be praised for their contributions. Celebrating success with these employees is a must as they will want to be in the centre of the action. On the contrary, there are many employees who are much happier in the shadows, are not comfortable with standing out, and will not take kindly to being praised in front of others or having their accomplishments publicly recognized. Celebrating their successes needs to be handled more collectively, taking the light off the individual efforts and thanking the whole team, to avoid unease.

What is key, as a manager coach, is recognizing that each member of your team will be driven by a combination of different motivational values, and have different individual needs. Rather than using a one size fits all carrot approach to try and incentivize people in your team, play to their individual strengths by harnessing their intrinsic drivers and allocate work to them accordingly. This way, you spend less of your time and energy trying to convince them. Leveraging their motivation, coupled with their skill, will improve their performance, and enable you to take a more delegatory management style, taking a step back from the operational activities and focusing on helping the team to develop new skills and improve. Get it wrong though at your peril, as demotivating an employee, however skilled they are, will guarantee you need to take a more hands on approach to management, requiring more effort from you, and leaving you with less time and ability to support those in their learning zone from acquiring new skills.

Motivation isn’t about the size of your carrot, it’s about ensuring you use the right one, at the right time, with the right individuals. The manager-coach should take a truly individualised approach based on the individuals' motivational drivers and needs, knowing each team member's "why", allocating them the right "what" and playing to their strengths on the "how".  

Alan Lambert is an International HR leader currently working at the Corporate HR Strategy division of a global energy major