A new employee walks into the workplace for the first time. He might be thinking, “I hope I can sulk, balk, complain, never take a risk, backbite, brown-nose, do as little as possible and still get paid.”
Or he might be thinking, “I hope I do well. I hope they like me and will respect me. I hope I’ll learn a lot. I hope I’ll feel satisfied, and be productive. I hope that what I do will matter.”
If you believe the first set of thoughts, shame on you and you should never be allowed to supervise a well-behaved Dachshund, never mind a human employee. If you believe the second, we can move a step forward.
Under these conscious thoughts of your new employee, there will be some unconscious thoughts as well. What do you suppose these might include?
Maybe ...
1. Tell me when payday is, and all the days I will have off.
2. Give me a nice desk and a comfortable chair. And a window.
3. Show me the cafeteria with its award-winning decor and award-winning menu.
4. Give me the promotion schedule, so I'll know when to expect a raise.
5. Show me the company newsletter, and give me an internal email address so that I can receive regular missives, updates and exhortations from management.
6. Remember my birthday.
So this is how to motivate my employees? Just give them stuff? Piece of cake.
... or maybe not. Do these things and you can be pretty sure that your employee will not be demotivated by what some call 'hygiene factors,' but not necessarily that he will be motivated to any reliable degree for any reasonable length of time. Like the classic old New Yorker cartoon in which a woman tells her husband, "Saying you don't hate me is not the same as saying that you love me."
Sorry about the cake.
The difference between 'motivating' and 'not demotivating' has been known for many years - although, sadly, by very few actual supervisors. The 'secret' of motivation was first explained in 1968 by Frederick Herzberg in his wonderful article for the Harvard Business Review, "One More Time, How do You Motivate Employees?" It has never been explained better than Herzberg's Schnauzer analogy: I want the dog to move, I kick the dog, he moves. If I want him to move again, I have to kick him again. And yet, motivation is supposed to be a little like a conscience - an engine that runs itself. If I have to do something before the dog moves, it's me who is motivated, not the dog. So under what circumstances will the dog want to move?
A properly motivated Schauzer can't be kept from moving (Cassandra has tried. It can't be done.) Just like a properly motivated employee can't be kept from working - not by ugly offices, by junky food, by low pay, not by anything.
Herzberg's article, with its update, should be required reading for all first-time supervisors before they even sit down behind their new desks. It should be required reading annually thereafter. It is not long, and it is invaluable.
Please go read it. Then come back here.
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Ready? Now let's try another list of your new employee's possible thoughts. Some of these involve powerful motivators. Others look as if they do, but actually do not. Consider...
1. Set me up to win. Help me understand what I’m doing and why it matters. See that I get all the training I need, so that I won’t make mistakes. Give me parameters within which I can work confidently. Encourage me to ask questions without mocking me or growing impatient.
2. Impress me. Let me know that you are a strong, confident leader who will help and protect me. Be the one I will want to emulate, not the one I will want to avoid.
3. Give me some autonomy. Trust me with opportunity.
4. Praise me. Encourage me by using my strengths, not harping on my weaknesses. Tell me every time I’ve done well; I never get tired of hearing it.
5. Tell me immediately if I make a mistake. Then show your confidence in me by letting me fix my error, or by making me a full member of the group that will fix it. (A possibly apocryphal tale involves a young employee whose mistake cost the company $100,000. When he asked his boss, 'You're going to fire me now, right?' the boss responded, 'Fire you? Not a chance. I just spent $100,000 training you!')
6. Show loyalty down the chain of command. Show your commitment to me - not just to YOUR boss. Let me know for certain that you have my back.
7. Don’t play favorites. Discipline my coworker who is out of line, even if she is senior. Hold everyone accountable to a single standard.
8. Don't pass it on. Even though your first boss treated you like crap, or your current boss treats you like crap, don't take it out on me.
Feeling slightly convinced but not yet committed? Here is another useful viewpoint.
And here is still more to consider:
Motivation is not all-or-nothing. Take Marilyn, who works as a kind of auditor. She finds significant professional and personal meaning in helping units that have strayed from the regulations or that aren’t working efficiently get back on track to produce a faster, more accurate product that they can take pride in, and do take pride in by the time Marilyn is finished helping them. Marilyn loves her work, gets up early and stays up late on her own time to do her work, talks about her work, and feels enormous pride in her work. She gets notes and emails from employees she has audited sometimes years before, thanking her for her help and the permanent changes she made in their working lives. She keeps those messages; they are precious to her.
On the other hand, the office where Marilyn sits when she’s not out auditing runs like a dormitory of nine-year-old schoolgirls with all the concomitant gossip, hair-pulling, shifting alliances, whisper campaigns, character assassination and tattling. If you ask Marilyn what she thinks of her boss, she will tell you quite cheerfully that, if The Ferret’s brain were on fire, she wouldn’t piss in his ear to help put it out. She didn’t start out feeling that way; but Marilyn has friends in this office; she knows what The Ferret says about her, never to her face. Yet if he believes her work is not impeccable, he had never told her why he believes this. She tried approaching him twice to ask what she was doing wrong, and got no clear answer upon which she could act to change any of her work practices. Reluctantly - because she is not an egotistical person - Marilyn has concluded that he somehow dislikes her personally, for a reason he will not discuss with her, but he does murmur to her co-workers who are in the ‘in’ crowd, and to her potential team leaders.
So Marilyn - like many, many employees, is both motivated and not motivated. She does the minimum required in the office, and saves her energy, expertise and creativity for her clients. She will someday walk away from this job with a sense of accomplishment tempered by the bitterness of unfairness and unprofessionalism. Will the company have gotten its money’s worth from her? Sure, as far as it knows. Could it have gotten more? Much, much more. This is an extremely common phenomenon. Organizations suffer for it, without even knowing their loss.
Motivation. A supervisor can't create it, exactly, but he or she can destroy it.
Will there be a test later? You bet there will. It will be called doing your job.
I knew Marilyn. She rode into political rallies in a motorcycle, waded into swamp water happily for the mission. She loved work and wanted to live at work. Until she worked for Lady Ferret. I can confirm that if the Lady Ferret’s brain were on fire, she wouldn’t piss in her ear to help put it out. Unfortunately, Lady Ferret has lots of godparents and may soon become deputy CEO of that store out there.
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