My Employee Lacks Motivation ... What Can I Do?
My employee lacks motivation. What do you do when an employee lacks motivation for it seems like they're going through the motions when doing his or her job? Managers often are left without answers or solutions; whereas, if they were skilled and coaching to challenges such as a lack of motivation the employee and team would have a better opportunity to perform better. On one hand a manager should be equipped to deal with the issue of motivation as well as the employee should realize they are responsible for their motivation. All too often we tend to put an employee's lack of motivation on the shoulders of the manager when in fact the manager only has so much control.
A lack of motivation could come from a variety of perspectives and quite frankly not all bad perspectives. One of the best things that you can do when coaching to motivation is to literally ask one of the dumbest and most simplistic questions you could: What motivates you? If you had a lot of free time where would you like to spend it? This provides great insight to the employee and their belief systems.
If we took the time as leaders to find out what motivates each and every employee we would be in a better position to understand them so we could provide them choices to be motivated. Motivation often is treated as this rhetorical entity. How often have we heard a manager say "come on you got to be motivated?" In fact, this type of message can even be counterproductive as many employees will simply shut down because it's a demand while they're actually feeling a challenge or not motivated.
Motivation is a very tenuous thing. The number one thing according to a study at Harvard Business school by Teresa Amabile was Progress. If an employee feels like they're progressing or getting better and their job they seem to be the most motivated. In her study 76% of respondents stated they felt most motivated when they felt like they were getting better at their job. On the other hand, when I do public speaking or even a webcast and I ask the question "when a manager brings an employee into his or her office what's the employees first response?" They typically have a unanimous response that they did something wrong. If managers only bring employees into their office to reprimand or try to fix something that's wrong how motivated will that group of people be?
Here are three steps to motivating employees:
- Ask what actually motivates them and use it as a leverage point. For example, we have a client whose manager just found out one of his employee's dreams was to take his whole family to Ireland. The employee worked in a call center where there is a lot of stress and challenge. Over an eight week period of time the manager simply put brochures and books on the employee's desk. The manager even put a screensaver about the country of Ireland on the employees PC. In eight weeks this employees productivity went up almost 32% in terms of their volume of effort as it relates to the number of calls they needed to make.The manager did NO formal coaching. He simply focused on what motivated the employee.
- A manager should find out what the employees want to specifically get better at as it relates to the job and then provide the resources and coaching as well as peer-based coaching to do so. This addresses the concept of progress.
- Every manager should schedule 10 to 15 minutes in the morning and 10 to 15 minutes in the afternoon to go look for the good things employees are doing. This conditions the managers mind only to find and react to the good things. This builds the motivation and drives the culture!
Motivation is brittle and all it takes sometimes is for someone to ask questions, learn, and take action on what was learned. Everyone wants to feel motivated but is difficult for some people. This is a challenge a manager should not ignore.
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Supply Chain Custodian
9 年I have utilized daily graph, in which shows our employees their performance, well as show them their importance to our organization... These graphs help establish purpose, and the importance not only to us, but also to them.. They know they are not just part time or temporary employee..But they also play major role, that with out their hard work..Our company well as our clients needs could not be met....
Consulente ERP| IT Project Manager | Specialista settore Fashion | System Integrator
9 年Motivation is also a bidirectional process. No steps are good if the employes is not interested. It 'a concept very obvious but frequently
Business Professional and coach |35years learnings|
9 年Motivation I feel is related to the leaders How he treat them, guide and devlop. We often find self motivated and most deliverable employee's also get demotivated. The only reason again is activity based guidance or liberty to take decisions. In other words we can say adopting leadership style.
Executive Vice President at Triumph Development Corporation
9 年When I was starting my career, a senior colleague always scolded me for putting a carrot ahead of me. He asked what if it does not happen, would I not be setting myself up for a big disappointment. My answer, even if not, it is free. Besides and more importantly, I got to do and complete my assignment to my superior's satisfaction and mine too.