Why It's Not a Leader's Job to Guarantee Motivation, and What They Should Do Instead!

Often, I find myself amidst a sea of unrealistic expectations between leaders and their team members. On one hand, leaders articulate frustrations about employees shying away from responsibility; on the other, I hear employees voicing concerns about leaders lack in providing motivation.

Through my experiences,?I've observed that misaligned expectations often hamper personal growth, breed demotivation, and cause stress for both parties. Event though there is a plethora of articles on defining employee roles there is little on why and how to bring clarity in responsibilities of leaders and their employees.

This article will introduce a third tool: Clarity in Responsibilities. The intention is that the tool will assists you in establishing a good relationships with open expectations while maturing individuals self-leadership skills.

Background

During my tenure as a leader for designers, leaders, and creatives, I've devoted time to studying, researching, and exploring the concept of self-leadership and growth. It's evident that individuals are motivated, the performance increase, productivity get better and they a?have a sense of purpose* when they have autonomy over their growth. To support individuals in a way that makes them more self-lead I use what I call a Goal-Focused 1-on-1 Method.?

In a previous article titled "From Unhappy Employees to Motivated Self-Leaders: The Power of Iterative Growth,"?and “Creating a purposeful path, linking company vision to personal goals”,?I wrote about the two other tools to the Goal-Focused 1-on-1 Method.?

Clarity in Responsibilities

Your Responsibility as a Leader

As a leader, you play a pivotal role in making employees feel that their work is meaningful. Multiple studies shows the correlation between meaningful work and employee retention*. Many leaders end up spending way too much time on supporting employees, which often result in the employee becoming more dependent on the leader rather than making them more self-lead. I have done this mistake myself because I believed it was my responsibility to motivate them and I ended up with way too many one-on-ones /employee.

It's not a leader's responsibility to guarantee employee motivation and learning.

Instead, a leader's job is to create an environment conducive to these outcomes. There are four things that you as a leader should do to set employees up for success.

1. Provide structure. Leaders should set a structural framework that cultivate a growth environment for employees. For instance, use Tool 1 the iterative growth process and establish a schedule for your 1-on-1s.

1. Set Direction. Leaders are in the position of making company goals and strategies tangible for individuals. This will be what inform and enable them to define their goals and actions. Tool nr 2 will help you to create directions.?

1. Enable Autonomy. The Goal-Focused 1-on-1 Method aims to foster self-leadership. Hence, leaders should strive to provide autonomy and refrain from micromanaging. A common pitfall is that goals or activities that are formed aren’t achievable due to the persons position or role. It’s your responsibility as a leader to ensure that the employee can be in control of their growth and be autonoms in achieving their goals.?

1. Open Dialogue. Be transparent about the respective responsibilities of both the leader and the employee. The more brave you are in these conversations, the less disappointment, misalignment and passivity you’ll see from your employees.

Uncertain if it they are growing? Look & listen for if your employees are taking actions or reflecting around their progress.

Depending on what phase your employee is at they or you will be the main driver. You can read more about the activities in the article (Tool 1) that describe the structure.

The Responsibility as an Employee

Many of us leaders, with good intentions, inadvertently assume too many responsibilities—often due to inexperienced boundary-setting or employees' hesitation to take charge. Regardless of the cause, it's crucial for leaders to empower employees to own their responsibilities to foster self-leadership.

These 4 accountabilities below encourages employee to steer their own growth and actively engage in thoughtful learning throughout the iterative processes.

1. Want. The desire for growth must originate from the employee. This might seem obvious but it’s yet very important because in the end, it’s your employee who will need to want to do things, reach the goals, do the work. You can help them, support them, however the willingness to grow and evolve needs to come from themselves.

During many years I was leading a designer who didn’t have any interest in growing. For a long time I tried to be the driver for her goals and for wanting to reach them. Not until I took a step back, expressed the need for her to drive things and started to hold her accountable for her lack of evolving, something started to change.

2. Do.?It is in between the 1-on-1 session that the real magic happens, when the employee work, try new things and do things. If her success isn't depended on someone else, they should be in full control of doing all the things they want.

3. Reflection. Learning stems from action combined with reflection. When your employee starts to take action and then reflect on their experience, they will learn new things. Encourage employees to frequently reflect outside of the 1-on-1 sessions. (Feel free to reach out if you want some tools and tips here).

4. Adapt. Both the one-on-one process and the actual goals the employee want to achieve are probably unfamiliar ways of working for your employee. Learning is a cyclical process of action and reflection that takes time and often requires goal adjustment or renewed commitment to progress and the process. The adaption is easier to come to terms with if you continuously endorse a learning mindset and keep in mind that the most important thing is to learn and evolve, not to reach the specific goals.?

Sam wanted to become better at selling our design services. We decided that during two months he was to sit in on more client meetings and try to pitch twice. When we met a month later Sam had hardly done anything and he expressed that he felt low self-esteem in the selling context and couldn’t contribute with anything. But he still wanted to become better at selling. So we decide to change the activities slightly so he could get started more easily whilst we made sure he recommitted to the goal. We decided that he would create proposals prior to the client meetings just so he would feel more confident and be ready to contribute with something concrete.

How to apply the Goal-focused 1-on-1 Method

Implementing this approach is straightforward, but its success hinges on a leader's confidence and rational expectations. Here are some pointers for applying the method:

• Build your own skills. Start with 1-2 goal-oriented employees so you can gain confidence in the approach.
• Adopt a long-term perspective, growth takes time. Learning how to set & work towards goals takes time. Both for you and your employees.
• Don't overcommit! Adapt the approach to your resources: time, budget, and number of employees.
• Adapt your leadership skills. Go between being a director, mentor, leader and coach, depending on the maturity of your employee.
• Be clear on your boundaries. Categorization of private and professional goals depends on the company culture and the leader's comfort level. However, I normally avoid private goals to not extend my responsibilities too far.
• Don't! Salary reviews should be conducted separately and not mixed with the goal-oriented approach.

Some more inspiration

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/5-leadership-practices-building-great-teams-tony-gambill/?trackingId=smJ7tPFzQPW7NnWlopVwsg%3D%3D

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2022/04/20/14-ways-to-build-manager-employee-relationships-based-on-mutual-trust/

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/five-ways-to-strengthen-the-employee-employer-relationship-in-2023/

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About Anna?

I’m a leader, entrepreneur, board member, and organisational designer. I have been leading teams since I was a teenager. During my 10 years at Topp Design & Innovation I have not only helped clients transform but also taken Topp through three big organisational changes. The last was when Topp to the global design firm Manyone where I nowadays am a Partner. In addition I also mentor designers and invest time in entrepreneurs, to help them reach their ambitions in life. I’m passionate about self-leadership and with a toolbox full of methods and processes to enable individuals and teams to thrive.?

TOPP and nowadays Manyone is a strategic design studio that works with clients around the global. Ensuring that future signals are turned into strategies, designs, products and brands. We are proud to be working with companies like Volvo, Nike, Samsung, Google, Amazon, Miele, Skatteverket, Ikea, GSK, and more. As a partner, I’m part of a world-class team of professionals with entrepreneurial spirits.