Team Motivation When You Need It Most

It’s that time again: I dug up an old gem from Dave Kurlan as I was working on building the incentives for our Executive Team at Hire Better.

Earlier this year, Dave shared his opinions on the 5 Steps To Motivation.  We Tweeted just this past week about ensuring that you’re worrying less about Motivation as a Leader and more about De-Motivating your employees.

Below are some of Dave’s thoughts.  Of note: he suggests that various people react to these in different ways.  I found that doing a Communication Builder with my Sr. Team and Executive Assistant was really valuable (thanks to the suggestion of my Mentor Lois Melbourne).  Knowing how each of them wants to receive information and how they want to be Praised/Critiqued was really valuable but I still have found that the #1 item on his list is the most valuable.  I’ll only (personally) use #2-5 as the situation gets more dire.

“I believe that motivation is very misunderstood.  You can’t motivate by being a cheerleader, nor can you motivate by reciting somebody else’s inspirational quotes.  Motivation comes from within and you must find out what your people’s internal motivators are.  Why are they doing this thing called selling?

The other thing that’s important to know is that everyone reacts differently to motivation and motivation takes many forms.  For instance, perhaps you have some people who respond to one of these methods when trying to get them to perform:”

1. Challenge them (I have a challenge for you…do you think you’re up to it?)
2. Feign that you’ve lost faith in them (Tell them that you don’t think they can do it)
3. Encourage them (I just know you can do this!)
4. Demand that they perform (You are required to do this)
5. Ultimatums (If you don’t do this you’ll be out of a job)

Tags: A-Player, A-Players, Baseline Selling, challenge, Dave Kurlan, demand, encourage, Fortune, hire better, job description, lois melbourne, lose faith, motivate, motivation, Scorecard, Twitter, ultimatum