The Only Motivators that Matter
Many young leaders approach me with defeated looks when things do not go as planned with their teams. I know that look, sullen and worn out, it is an indicator that a young leader hasn’t had success communicating the company’s vision to their team in their own words. Young leaders make the mistake often of being someone who they aren’t — the CEO, their VP, their Director — all these people are different from them and have different equities with people inside the team. It’s always tricky at first of finding who you are and what your voice is. So young and inexperienced leaders try and copy their direct superior’s stylings.
MISTAKE — but an honest one, and one that we can recover from.
HOW? — by teaching the young leaders the only 3 motivators that matter and how to begin using them genuinely from within.
ANGER, FEAR, LOVE
…and in that order.
Now understand that these are just motivators and to get real results you will need to inspire the people around you (but that will be for another article). These motivating forces are potent in their own right and management teams need to understand what they are as much how to use them. Allow me to give you my takes on each:
Anger — anger is not to be mistaken with its evil cousin hatred. On the contrary because anger is powerfully letting someone know that the job was done poorly, mistake prone and not up to standard. That shows that you are the one in the room that understands the level needed to be achieved to be successful. With your anger, you are setting the bar for everyone to see and letting those who are giving lax effort and offering poor results notice they need to improve.
Fear — the dark side of the force is truly special in making people do great things. It’s a well researched fact that most people will work to keep what they have as opposed to work to claim new possessions or status. Taking things away from us, always bring out our best. That is the “fear”. More specifically, it’s the fear of loss. Whether it is loss of job, title, bonus, salary, perks, office location, playing time or whatever it is, we are motivated to keep what we have because once we lose something we deem it a failure. A strong leader doesn’t walk the office floor intimidating people by raising their voice, snarling and bullying staff but instead creates a culture of performance that has a robust system of incentives — both positive AND negative.
Love — we all love to love, but love is critical when developing your team and establishing yourself as a leader for you will not be able to be angry and use the power of fear if they do not know that you love your life, your role, your responsibility, your career, your job, your organization and most of all: them. So why is love listed last? And in that order? Cause love takes time (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkDpwF6-QiA) ok but seriously it does! In the work place or field your human-ness will show to your team how you feel about them as they will be judging your actions from the very start. If you care? They will feel it and begin the process of evaluating you as a leader. If they feel that you LOVE what you do? They will begin to listen to you when you talk. If they feel that you LOVE your company? Then when you set that bar of expectations and they don’t reach it and you show your displeasure? They will know it’s coming from the right place. And most importantly? When you set discipline or execute a policy due to failure? They will know that it is coming from the right place. But love takes time…😀
Anger/Feel and Love. The three motivators that really matter are powerful operational leverage that all adept leaders must learn to utilize. When, how and why to use them is another conversation that I will cover in future articles.
Good luck motivating!