May 18 2011

A White House Union? Motivation with High Achievers

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It jumped out at me from the jumble of other news stories – “Staffers in the White House budget office filed a petition to gain more input into their working conditions.” They wanted to join a union! The story went on to say that the workers were seeking a little more say in their working conditions and a little more recognition for long hours and even weekend work.

Perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise, but I must admit it wasn’t something I expected to see. After all, people who work in the White House are usually pretty highly motivated, aren’t they? They are at the very heart of power; a position envied by many, and are there because they want to be. Right? I’m sure they are, but they are also people, and like all people, need to know they are appreciated.

I speak and write about motivation from a leadership perspective so naturally I evaluated this story from that viewpoint. I have a very firm idea of what is and isn’t motivation, based on Fredrick Herzberg’s Motivation – Hygiene theory, which is strongly supported by other studies, as well as my own experience. Motivational factors, such things as the opportunity to practice and improve skills, to be a valued part of the team, and to be recognized for that are most likely what drive those White House workers, just like they do in any group of high achievers. So why this press for union representation?

One worker said they didn’t mind the long hours but wanted more recognition for their work. These are already highly motivated workers. They know they’re doing important work and they know they’re important to that work. They have the opportunity to learn and improve themselves. But they aren’t happy. I’m sure they work long hours under considerable stress; that’s the norm for a government staffer. Their complaint is they don’t feel they’re recognized for that sacrifice.

While I can’t attest to what goes on in that particular office, I have seen this problem before. Leaders who are blessed with a team of highly motivated people for whom it is not necessary to spend much time helping them find and enable their motivators sometimes assume that recognition is unnecessary. After all, “these people are doing great so they must not need any words from me.” If the workers are that motivated, they will press on, even in the absence of a few kind words from the boss. Motivation is an internal factor and the boss can’t motivate them anyway. The problem is, even the most highly motivated worker needs the occasional pat on the back. They know they’re important, but they want to know the boss appreciates their contribution. That pat on the back is an essential enabler for their own motivators.

I suspect there may be other reasons for the push toward unionization; when has a union ever fought for a worker’s right to be recognized for doing outstanding work. But this is a cautionary tale for leaders of highly motivated teams. Your people want to know that you appreciate what they do and know how hard they work.

There was a bumper sticker that used to be quite common that asked, “Have you hugged your kid today?” Leaders need to ask a very similar question. “Have you recognized your great workers today?”

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May 11 2011

Leading Through the Generational Conflict

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There certainly isn’t anything new about conflict between generations. When I was young they called it the generation gap. In Rhetoric, even Aristotle writes at some length about the problems with youth. But today, this conflict seems to have become even more significant; especially in the workplace.

Leadership tends to be very personality driven and people tend to reflect previous leaders when they take on a leadership role themselves. Leaders from the Baby Boom Generation grew up at a time when an authoritarian style was more common; but, also when some leaders were becoming more enlightened. Until fairly recently though, most leaders didn’t concern themselves too much with the idea of knowing individual and understanding needs and motivations. They just issued orders and expected obedience. That’s the way their bosses were and so that’s what they learned. But, there were those who studied leadership in the mid-twentieth century and began to suggest a more participative style of leading. As other leaders saw that those styles were more effective, there began a general shift towards the newer methods. Of course, that wasn’t universally true. In some industries, those who were uncomfortable relinquishing the more authoritarian styles felt threatened and tended to hunker down and adopt a defensive posture.

To complicate matters, many Baby Boomers worked hard their whole lives to reach the point where they were making the decisions and issuing the orders and they saw new ideas about leadership styles as threatening everything they worked for. When a new generation comes along with different, sometimes radically different, ideas and work ethics, the older generations don’t always want to hear it.

On the other hand, Xers and Millennials grew up in a very different world and expected not only a different leadership style, but a whole new work environment. The Silent and Baby Boom Generations were accustomed to a certain status quo, while Xers and Millennials were more used to getting what they wanted and making their own decisions at a much earlier age, thus setting the stage for conflict.

Obviously something, or someone, has to give. But who? Most of the literature written by Boomers indicates they have done great things and other generations need to realize that and follow their lead. The literature written by Xers tends to show that they have had a difficult life up to now and, though the other generations don’t understand them, they have the answers to a better world and other generations need to realize that and follow their lead. There isn’t much real literature yet by Millennials, but one can certainly find a considerable body of their musings on the internet indicating they’re the only ones who really get it and everyone else is just wrong or confused and needs to follow their lead.

There is a common thread in all this; everyone needs to change. We no longer live in a “my way or the highway” type of world. Everyone must be willing to see where changes are needed. At the same time, everyone must understand that it isn’t just the other guy who needs to change.

No matter their age, everyone in the workplace has something to contribute. Because of their age, they may contribute in a way that is foreign to older or younger co-workers and supervisors. The only way to resolve this in the 21st Century Workplace is to strive to understand each other and be willing…maybe just a little, to change.

What do you think? I’d really like to know. Please leave a comment.

This post was taken from my new book, Balancing the Generations: A Leader’s Guide to the Complex, Multi-Generational, 21st Century Workplace

Get a copy today

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May 04 2011

Leadership Development – Don’t Motivate, Enable

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This is the final installment in a series on motivating your workers.

“These experts who say that pay is not a motivator don’t know what they’re talking about. If you don’t pay people enough, they will not be motivated to work hard. In fact they may be motivated to leave.”

There are many leaders in the world who believe pay and benefits are all that’s needed to motivate workers to work harder and produce more. Let’s look at that argument.

Humans have what Abraham Maslow called a survival need. To meet that need, they must receive sufficient compensation to provide food and shelter for them and their families. If they aren’t paid enough to meet this need, then the statement above will probably be correct. It will be difficult for them to realize any other motivation than to meet their survival needs. So, if you’re paying your employees a pittance, don’t expect them to move much beyond their motivation to survive.

But, consider this carefully. Once the employee is receiving enough to survive, (the definition of survival will vary from one person to the next) further pay and benefits just prevent dissatisfaction. This is a difficult concept to grasp so we’ll come back to it shortly.

For now, let’s look at what real motivators are. Fredrick Herzberg’s extensive studies on the subject of motivation revealed that real motivation does not involve material and external forces acting on the worker. Rather, workers were motivated by such things as recognition for their contributions and abilities, a feeling of achievement, and a chance to grow and develop. Many independent studies through the years support Herzberg. But aren’t those still external forces acting on the worker? It’s better to think of them as enablers. When a leader provides these things, they are encouraging, or enabling the workers internal motivation to be activated.

Let’s go back to the idea of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. A worker who is dissatisfied is less likely to activate their own motivators. Removing the cause of dissatisfaction will not make the worker satisfied, merely less dissatisfied. But, when the worker is less dissatisfied, he or she will be much more receptive to those enablers that help them exercise their own motivation. Only then can they really be satisfied.

Confused? Look at it like this. You can pay your workers as much as you want and give them all the benefits they could ever desire. In doing so, you will have removed dissatisfaction stemming from that one area. They may appear happy, but if that is the only thing you do as a leader, and you don’t help them activate their internal motivators, they will not be as effective as you would like. When you enable those internal motivators, you will see a big difference in their effectiveness and productivity.

What do you think? Please leave a comment. I’d really like to hear from you.

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Apr 27 2011

Leadership Development – Are You Satisfied, Or Just Not Dissatisfied?

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This is the second installment in a series on motivating your workers.

Frederick Herzberg’s (1923 – 2000) study of human behavior was driven by his experience as a member of the liberating force which arrived at Dachau concentration camp in 1945. He wanted to understand why people would do such things. His study led to development of the Motivation-Hygiene theory. In presenting this theory, Herzberg said two factors acted on workers; motivational factors and hygiene factors. Hygiene factors are things that can cause dissatisfaction, but whose removal does not cause satisfaction or motivation. Motivational factors on the other hand, do result in better performance and production. It’s important to understand the distinction between dissatisfaction and satisfaction. Herzberg said that hygiene factors could cause dissatisfaction, and fixing a hygiene factor could remove dissatisfaction, but real satisfaction could only come from actual motivational factors. What is surprising to some is the definition of motivational factors versus hygiene factors.

Hygiene factors include such things as environmental conditions, work schedules, wages and benefits, communication, etc. If there is a problem in one of these factors, the worker may be dissatisfied and unhappy. But, when the problem is fixed, it does not follow that the worker will be satisfied and motivated to produce more or be more efficient.

Motivational factors are those things that do help the worker to be more productive. Motivational factors include recognition, appreciation, a feeling of achievement, more responsibility, etc.

Do you notice something about these two factors? What Herzberg calls hygiene factors are influences from outside the person. I might offer my factory workers a punishment for not producing more, or perhaps a reward if they do produce more. In neither case am I motivating the worker. In fact, it is my own motivation that caused me to attempt to coerce the worker into increased production. To that end, I tried to manipulate the employee through the use of hygiene factors. Unfortunately, this is the method often used by leaders attempting to get things done. That isn’t to say that hygiene factors always fail to get the desired result. In this example, I may coerce the workers to produce more, but I haven’t motivated them to improve and the benefit will most likely be short term at best.

So, if you decide to motivate your employees by raising their pay, they may appreciate that. In fact they most likely will appreciate that, but your gesture really will not motivate them. For that, you need to activate their own internal motivators.

In the next installment of this series, we’ll look at what motivation really is.

What do you think? Please leave a comment. I’d really like to hear from you.

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Apr 20 2011

Leadership Development – Help! How Do I Motivate My People?

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This is the first of a three part series on motivating workers.

“How do I motivate my people?” “I need to find ways to motivate the workers.”

These are common laments among leaders stemming from the idea that one person can motivate another. Is that true? Can one person motivate another? Do employees need external motivation or is motivation a force internal to the individual? To answer these questions, we need to examine the true nature of motivation and why people actually feel motivated.

What is motivation? We’ll define motivation simply as that which causes a person to act and meet a need. So, to motivate a person is to enable them to act in a certain way. Motivation is sometimes thought of as either external or internal. Is there really any external motivation? What’s thought of as external motivation is often a form of coercion which may or may not produce the intended results. For instance, if I meet you at night on a dark street and present myself to you in a very threatening way, demanding you give me your valuables, you might be likely to comply and I will believe I’ve motivated you to do what I wanted. But if, unknown to me, you are actually an off-duty police officer in the same situation, I may    quickly come to believe that I’ve motivated you to do something completely different than what I intended. Frederick Herzberg calls this KITA (Kick in the Ass) and points out that the one doing the kicking is really the one motivated. The receiver of the KITA action is not really motivated, but just takes an action in response to the doer’s motivation.

Leaders and managers can also use external motivation to cause subordinates to respond in a certain way. Of course threats of violence are not allowed in today’s workplace, so these external motivators will be of a more peaceful, though perhaps not less threatening nature. For instance, I might tell a factory worker that he must produce 20 more widgets by tomorrow or I’ll reduce his pay by 5%. Or, I might say that if he produced 20 extra widgets by tomorrow I’ll give him a 5% bonus. This type of motivation looks a lot like coercion. That’s because it is! So, it appears that external forces aren’t really motivators!

Internal motivation is a force within the person that causes that person to do something. Let’s say you are happily employed but don’t see a lot of opportunity to learn new skills or advance in the company. You are offered another job at the same pay and benefits but this job would allow you to broaden your knowledge and have opportunities for advancement; exactly what you’re looking for. If you take the new job you are acting on an internal motivator. But, isn’t the promise of the opportunities in the new position really an external motivator? No and here’s why. The motivation to change jobs comes from an internal desire to better yourself. The new job simply provides an avenue to accomplish that. The motivation to take the action of changing jobs comes completely from within you.

In the next installment of this series, we’ll discuss satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

What do you think? Please leave a comment. I’d really like to hear from you.

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Apr 13 2011

Leadership Development – What do Workers Need? Self-Actualization

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When Abraham Maslow developed the Hierarchy of Needs, he placed the need for self-actualization at the top. Self-actualization is the need to reach an individual’s full potential; as the U.S. Army used to say, to “Be all you can be.” Maslow felt that this was the highest need humans possessed and he noted that many people never reach this level. That’s why it’s vitally important to understand and recognize this pinnacle of the human needs.

John was a quiet associate. His managers really liked him because he could tell a customer where any item was in the store. When a recent store-wide reset was completed, he seemed to instinctively know all the new locations, even more amazing considering the store had a large inventory of small products. Unfortunately, John’s managers saw his quiet demeanor as a lack of motivation, completely missing his need to be self-actualized. When opportunities to move to new positions within the store arose, he was usually not seriously considered. John works for another company now, lured away by the prospect of continuously learning new parts of the business.

When an employee feels his or her survival and safety needs are met, and they feel a genuine sense of belonging, they move to a need for self-esteem. The need to reach a higher level of self-esteem that results from personal development is not far removed from the need to be self-actualized. These people will actively seek out opportunities to learn and grow, both personally and professionally. They want to be successful and they define success as the ability to constantly learn and improve.

Since not all people ever reach this level, it is essential that managers recognize those who do. There are several things to look for. A self-actualized person will seek out opportunities and strive to learn new things. They’ll often display knowledge about a wide variety of subjects. Be careful though. Their personality traits may or may not be what you expect. As with John in the example, the person may be quietly confident, but they may also be very outgoing and even boisterous. You can’t always judge this book by its cover. Rather, the leader should look a little deeper to see what the person is striving for.

A manager who discovers a self-actualized employee should consider herself very fortunate. These people don’t come along every day and must be handled with care. The employee who has reached this level of human need can be worth their weight in gold. They usually don’t require a lot of supervision and can often help train others. They’re motivated by this need for personal challenge and success and the inability to achieve that will create serious conflict that is usually resolved by seeking a new opportunity.

Look around at your employees. Identify at what level of human need they seem to be. What are you doing to help them satisfy that need?

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

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Apr 06 2011

Leadership Development – What do Workers Need? Belonging and Self-Esteem

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Where do you belong? Are you part of a group, a team, a church, a social club, a professional organization? There’s been a lot of discussion lately about how some generational groups aren’t team players and want to work individually. Yet, these same people have families, and friends. Maybe they like to go to sports events or concerts with the same small group. Psychologist Abraham Maslow identified belonging as a basic human need on his Hierarchy of Needs.

Maslow linked belonging and love. He referenced love, not in a sexual context but rather as a need to be appreciated by others. While Maslow’s work was not particularly aimed at leaders, his thoughts on belonging translate well. Most people have a need to be part of something. More importantly though, most people need to feel they are a valuable part of something.

A leader must be careful on this point. It’s easy to dress everyone in the same clothes and have a meeting every morning to remind them of their part in the “team.” The true belonging need requires more than that. Truly belonging means being a valued part of a group. If you lead people, how many times have you sought out their thoughts on an issue and then seriously considered what they had to say? Or, as is unfortunately more common, do you not consult them at all, using only one-way communication to downward direct? Interestingly, belonging is a human need that works both ways.

As I said, a person has a need to belong, but leaders also need them to belong. For the person, being treated as a valuable member of a group helps satisfy this need. For leaders, having workers who genuinely feel like they belong is the best way to realize the full potential of their human resources.

When a person truly feels like they belong, they can then work on the next level of need; self-esteem. Self-esteem is a little complicated and certainly an over-used term in today’s world. Maslow said there are two levels of self-esteem. The first is the feeling that comes from mastery of a task or attainment of a level of competence. The second is a sense of recognition from others. Both are important for leaders.

Recognition from others is closely related to belonging, but let’s be clear. The need is for genuine recognition of the person’s value and the worth of their contribution. The pat on the head, everyone wins attempt at building self-esteem is false and can actually have an affect opposite than the desired one. Seeking out an employee’s input and genuinely appreciating their contribution is what builds this type of self-esteem.

The second type of self-esteem need is met when a person attains a level of success. When a worker masters a job or learns a new skill, it helps satisfy this need. The key is that the need for this type of self-esteem will cause an internal motivator to seek out new challenges, and new things to learn. If those opportunities aren’t available, the conflict can be significant enough to drive a good employee into your competitor’s store. This need is very close to self-actualization which is the pinnacle of Maslow’s hierarchy.

Do you appreciate your employee’s contribution and seek out their expertise? Do you give them the opportunity to genuinely fulfill their self-esteem needs?

In the final post in this series, we’ll take a look at the highest level of need; Self-Actualization.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

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Mar 30 2011

Leadership Development – What do Workers Need? Safety

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We previously discussed the first level of human need on Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy. Next we’ll look at the second level of Maslow’s hierarchy which is the safety need. Maslow focused on the need to be free from fear and was generally referring to a larger social context. However, leaders should consider how this level of need applies to the workplace. When workers feel unsafe, their attention becomes completely focused on their own safety and they experience fear. That feeling of fear will keep them from considering much else. Of course it’s impossible to be 100% safe all the time, but workers need to believe their safety is a significant concern of their leaders. Workplace safety has become such a concern that there are federal and state agencies that focus exclusively on the issue. Leaders must always keep the safety of their workers foremost in their mind. The resultant benefits go beyond just preventing injury. A worker who doesn’t feel safe at work, and is experiencing the resultant fear, will not be as productive as they otherwise would be. They certainly won’t be as likely to experience motivation to move to higher levels of need.

Though I doubt Maslow was considering this when he developed the hierarchy, there is now an additional consideration in regard to safety: psychological safety. In times past, leaders had little concern, and workers little recourse for what is now considered to be various forms of psychological threats. This is a legitimate concern as a worker who doesn’t feel safe from harassment based on race, gender, etc. will have the same motivational problems as one who feels physically unsafe. Leaders must strive for a workplace free of this sort of threat. Of course the overall workforce seems to be growing a continually thinning skin making this a very difficult issue to manage. So, is it possible? Probably not always. There will always be a few people around who are just waiting for the next insult, or who have only to fill in the date on their pre-filled harassment forms. But, the vast majority of workers will recognize a leader’s sincere effort to keep the workplace free of such problems and that leader’s swift and fair handling of any incidents that do happen. To effectively meet this basic need leaders will ensure each person is treated fairly, insist managers treat employees with respect, and not allow any discriminatory practices of any kind. Easy to say, not always as easy to do, but critical to meeting employee’s safety needs.

Do your employees feel a sense of physical and psychological safety?

In the next post, we’ll begin to examine the higher levels of human need with a look at the belonging need.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

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Mar 23 2011

Leadership Development – What do Workers Need? Survival

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Jennifer was a good worker and the customers liked her. She consistently received favorable customer comments and many of the regulars asked for her by name. The store manager always gave Jennifer high marks on her appraisals and felt she had a great future with the company. When Jennifer announced that she was leaving, it was a great surprise for both her department and the store manager. Jennifer left the store because she had found a job that paid more.

But wait, aren’t there studies in management academia that show people are not motivated by more money. Yes there are! What companies must realize though (understanding that local managers of chain businesses usually have little or no control over salaries) is that compensation sufficient to meet an employee’s basic physiological needs is necessary before they will be motivated to reach a higher level of need.  In Jennifer’s case, and she is representative of many employees euphemistically called “associates”, she was not paid a sufficient salary to meet what she felt were the basic needs for herself and her family.

At this point we need to define what the survival need is. In his Hierarchy of Needs, Abraham Maslow defined this level of need as including such things as air, water, sleep, food, and shelter. These needs have become more complex through the years. Our ancestors saw survival needs as perhaps a cave to live in and sufficient quantity of food on the hoof.

Needs, or perhaps the definition of needs, changes over time. Today, we’ve certainly progressed beyond that; we want a little more than a cave and we usually get our food in the store, not by chasing it around the Serengeti. Certainly, what some people see as a need today might be viewed as an extravagance by others. One of the many factors involved in the recent economic downturn is people deciding that they need much more than they can reasonably expect to pay. I’m certainly not suggesting leaders are responsible for subsidizing a society that is heavily leveraged in the quest to meet “needs” for big houses and more toys. That’s definitely an unwinnable endeavor.

Rather, consider the worker whose paycheck is not sufficient to pay the bills and put food on the table. That worker is going to seek out other opportunities to increase compensation enough to meet those real survival needs. They may take a second job, affecting their concentration on the first job, or they might even resort to illegal activities. Whatever they do, in all cases, they will not be able to realize any motivation to move to higher levels of need.

Are you losing good people because they feel the company is not meeting their survival needs?

In the next post, I’ll take a look at the next level of physiological need; safety.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

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Mar 16 2011

Leadership Development – What do Workers Need?

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This is the first of a five part series of posts on employee needs beginning with an overview of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, then examining each level with an emphasis on how a good leader can use the hierarchy to improve worker productivity.

A restaurant owner once told me that it was difficult to motivate employees because most workers in the food service industry were just working there while waiting for whatever was next. That’s a common thought throughout the retail industry and in many cases it’s true. Why? For one thing, our society doesn’t see hawking disassembled furniture at Target, or waiting tables at Applebee’s as glamorous jobs. If we ask why again, there are several popular answers, but I want to concentrate on a particular area that many leaders don’t seem to pay much attention to. That is, leaders seldom make much effort to satisfy employee needs. You may say it isn’t about what they need, and you’d be at least partially correct. Companies are not formed for the sake of employees: a business does not exist to create jobs. However, to be successful, all but the smallest, single person businesses require employees to make things happen. Therefore, the needs of employees become, or at least should become, the needs of their leadership. Or, to put it a little differently, to be successful, leaders must be aware of employee needs. Companies seem to understand this to differing degrees.

Abraham Maslow, a psychologist who lived from 1908 to 1970, developed the Hierarchy of Needs. His theory was that every human has a progressive set of needs and fulfilling those needs significantly affects what a person will do and how that person is motivated. His hierarchy begins with basic survival needs and progresses through safety, belonging, self-esteem, and finally self-actualization. There’s much discussion about how to interpret this hierarchy, and unfortunately Maslow passed away while doing more advanced research on the subject. For a leader though, this five level hierarchy is a great place to start to help employees become more motivated to excel on the job.

Where a person falls on Maslow’s hierarchy is directly related to their motivation. For instance, if a person does not have enough money to buy food, they are less concerned about belonging than they are about basic survival. Once they are reasonably assured of survival, they can turn their attention to higher level needs. Likewise, a worker who doesn’t feel safe in the workplace will be less likely to worry as much about self-esteem. It’s significant to note that if a person doesn’t feel assured of survival, or doesn’t feel a reasonable assurance of safety, (what Maslow called the physiological needs) a leader cannot expect that person to be motivated to achieve higher level needs.

A leader must recognize where workers are on this hierarchy as that knowledge will provide them with a basic idea of how to help them be motivated. When considering needs and motivation, remember that motivation is internal to the employee and will drive attempts to satisfy needs. In other words, realizing that a person is at a certain level of need should allow the leader to help that person realize and act on their own motivation to meet the next level of need. Understand that different people will demonstrate different levels of need and therefore require different levels of input to activate their internal motivators.

How many leaders in retail are taught these basics and understand that their workers have needs that are probably not being met? How many employees walk everyday because they don’t even see even a rudimentary effort to meet their needs?

In the next post, we’ll take a look at the first level of need on Maslow’s hierarchy; survival.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

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