How Good Are Your Motivation Skills?

Motivate your team for real success!

Managers everywhere want teams that are effective, focused, and committed to organizational goals. With a team like this, just think of the performance and results you could deliver!

Teams only perform like this if their managers are motivating them effectively.

This is why you need to be able to motivate your team if you want to create a productive work environment. By combining good motivational practices with meaningful work, the setting of performance goals, and use of an effective reward system, you can establish the kind of atmosphere and culture that you need to excel.

The better you are able to link these factors together, the higher the motivation levels of your team are likely to be. That's a win-win for you, them, and the organization.

The motivational skills quiz in this blog helps you identify the aspects of team motivation that you can improve. From there you will be directed to specific tools that will help you improve your motivation skills.

Take the test and apply the things you learn from it. You could well see the performance of your team soar!

Instructions:

For each statement, check the column that best describes you. Please answer questions as you actually are (rather than how you think you should be):

                                                                  1       2      3      4       5

Question		Not at all	Rarely	Some times	Often	Very Often
1	When faced with a performance problem, I take care to establish whether it is caused by lack of resources, lack of motivation, or lack of skills or something else.
2	I establish clear performance standards and expectations
3	The rewards and discipline I use are clearly linked to performance and defined behavioral objectives.
4	I structure work so that is interesting and challenging, and allows for appropriate autonomy.
5	When I give a reward I make sure it is one that the recipient values.
6	I am consistent in the way that I discipline people for sub-standard performance.
7	When I see good work, I praise it immediately.
8	I make sure people have the tools, resources, and training to achieve the results I expect.

9	I work to understand what motivates each individual member of my team.
10	I make a major effort to ensure that I offer competitive wages and other forms of compensation.
11	In order to be fair, I use the same rewards for everyone when recognizing good performance.
12	I help people establish performance goals that are challenging and specific, and that are linked to organizational objectives.
13	I make sure I know what is going on in the real work environment before taking any remedial or disciplinary action.
14	I encourage people to set their goals high, and make their achievement measurements challenge them fairly.
15	I combine and rotate job assignments so that people can learn and use a variety of skills.

Score Interpretation

Score	Comment
15 – 34	Ouch. The good news is that you've got a great opportunity to improve the way you motivate others, and your and your team's long term success! However, to do this, you've got to fundamentally improve your motivation skills. Start below!
35 – 52	You're good at some aspects of motivating others, but there's room for improvement elsewhere. Focus on the serious issues below, and you'll most likely find that your team's performance will increase.
53 – 75	You're probably motivating your team very effectively! Still, check the sections below to see if there's anything you can tweak to make this even better.

As you answered the questions, you probably had some insight into areas where the motivational practices you use could use a pick-me-up. The following is a quick summary of the main areas of motivation that were explored in the quiz, and a guide to the specific references you can use for each.

Providing Productive and Challenging Work

(Questions 1, 4, 15)

The first step in building a highly motivated team is providing interesting work, which is well organized to meet the needs and desires of team members. No matter how self-motivated a person is, how challenging the goals he or she sets, or how wonderful the rewards, if the work is badly designed, it will be hard to motivate people and work will be less than ideal.

Effective motivators understand that work design has a strong impact on performance. When a person finds a job inherently unsatisfying, there's not much you can do to motivate him or her. Job design and enrichment combine to match characteristics of the job with workers' skills and interests: The more variety, challenge and autonomy there is to a job, the more intrinsically satisfying it will be.

Setting Effective Goals

(Questions 2, 3, 12, 14)

When you are confident that the work you provide is well organized, the next thing to do is to ensure that workers have clear and attainable goals that they're working to achieve. Managing the goal setting process is essential for creating a highly motivating environment. The effectiveness of goal setting in motivation is a well-recognized fact, and by making goals specific, consistent, and appropriately challenging, you can set goals that are powerfully motivating. As such, the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound) acronym helps you define effective goals.

Specific goals are measurable, unambiguous and behavior-changing. They outline exactly what needs to be accomplished, and when it will be considered as "achieved". Having goals that are consistent with other personal goals as well as organizational goals is also important. If goals are inconsistent, the resulting confusion and incompatibility would like cause the person to do nothing rather than work in different directions.

Finally, challenge is important, due to the observation that we get what we expect. Up to a point, the more you expect from someone, the harder they will generally work. This has been shown time and again, and is explained by the idea of Expectancy Theory: The idea here is that you need to link high effort with high performance, and high performance with a positive outcome. With those two linkages established, people are motivated to work hard to achieve a positive outcome.

Tip:

Think carefully about the goals you set, and make sure you adapt them to circumstances in a reasonable way. If you're too rigid with your goals, you may motivate members of your team to "cut corners" in order to reach them.

Understanding Individual Differences in Motivation

(Questions 5, 9, 10, 11)

Motivational techniques should bring out the best in people. That means they should build on an individual's strengths and minimize his or her weaknesses.

There are certainly some common denominators in motivation, like fair wages, decent working conditions, a sense of camaraderie with co-workers, and a good relationship with one’s supervisor. Abraham Maslow and Frederick Herzberg are two famous motivation theorists who established that even if these sorts of things are not necessarily motivating in themselves, they have to be present in order to even think about enhancing motivation.

However, the assumption in most modern workplaces is that these lower order, "hygiene" factors are being met, and that people are seeking the things that provide real motivation.

These are things like challenging work, control, growth opportunities, and recognition for a job well done.

To decide which motivating factors to provide you need to look at the individual employees. Some will be motivated by more time off, while others may prefer to gain status and recognition in the company. Understanding these individual needs is mandatory for building a motivating workplace, and is why question 11 above is a "trick question": if you try to motivate everyone in exactly the same way, you're likely missing plenty of opportunities for motivating individual members of your team.

Meeting peoples' needs, providing challenge, using a variety of rewards, and matching them to the right people are issues covered in: Mazlow’s Hierarchy, Herzberg's Motivators and Hygiene Factors, Theory X and Theory Y, and Expectancy Theory.

Providing Rewards and Recognition

(Questions 6, 7, 8, 13)

When you know what you want to provide in terms of reward and recognition, it's important to establish an effective system. The primary focus of a reward system is fairness. Both reward and discipline have to be perceived as fairly distributed according to clear guidelines. This is why setting specific performance expectations is so important. ("Fairness" doesn't mean that everyone has the same reward package – it means that differences between people's reward packages need to be clear and understandable.)

It is equally important to make sure you give your team members the tools they need to be successful. If you're setting goals, then you need to make sure that they are attainable, and you do that by providing the necessary support, tools, resources, and training.

It's also important that you get to understand the challenges your team faces. This way you can appreciate the small victories that lead to the major accomplishments. Motivation is all about encouragement and appreciation.

When you are part of the team and not simply an "observer from above" you will have many opportunities to thank people and recognize good work right on the spot. This is a really important factor in successful recognition. You have to be in a position to show or tell people everyday that you appreciate their contributions. Once or twice a year in formal review process is not enough!

Click here to read a related post entitled: How to Really Motivate People

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's culture, employee engagement and leadership capability? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

The Best Leaders Make it Safe for Others to Tell the Truth

Days before January 28th, 1986, as NASA was making its final preparations for the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger, Allan McDonald, an engineer on the project, realized something was wrong. There was a cold snap surrounding Merritt Island, Florida, where the Kennedy Space Center was located. Temperature on launch day was forecasted at 20 degrees colder than during any previous launch.

McDonald worried that the cold would prevent O-ring seals within the shuttle’s rocket boosters from functioning properly, possibly bringing catastrophic damage to the ship. He brought his concern to NASA and refused to sign off on the launch recommendation report — a move that could jeopardize his career.

But NASA’s high-level managers were suffering from “go-fever.” They were in a rush to launch on deadline for fear of losing federal funding. They dismissed McDonald’s warnings and went ahead with the launch. McDonald watched in horror as his predication came to pass. Less than two minutes after launch the Challenger exploded, killing everyone on board. The cause of the tragedy, a post-mortem investigation revealed, was malfunctioning O-rings.

Although we tend to regard incidents like these as freak accidents at the time, history shows that in many well-known organizational disasters, failures, and mistakes, there’s almost always an Allan McDonald — someone who thinks, “Uh-oh, I have a bad feeling about this.”

As a leader, it’s imperative — even a matter of life and death at times (Especially, if you're in a high-consequence industry) — that you not only listen to concerns but make it easy for people to tell the truth

In addition to avoiding bad outcomes, making it safe to tell the truth can help your team achieve extraordinary results. Google’s five-year study on highly productive teams, Project Aristotle, found that psychological safety—team members feeling safe to speak up, take risks and be vulnerable in front of supervisors and co-workers—was “far and away the most important of the five dynamics (Pictured below) that set successful teams apart."

As a leader, you should want to hear the truth for many reasons, albeit less dramatic than the Challenger example, but still very important.

• To understand what it’s like to be in a professional relationship with you.
• To know your blind spots so you can address them.
• To assess whether your communication skills lift or diminish others.
• To have an accurate view of your performance and personal leadership brand/ reputation.
• To learn the reality about a business issue early on, so you can address it before it’s too hard, too late or too expensive to solve.

A wise Cherokee proverb applies to the last bullet point: “Listen to the whispers and you won’t have to hear the screams.”

Researchers have found that human beings are wired to lie. Absent safety, our old lizard brains crank up our sense of risk.

Here are some ways to make it safe for others to be truthful in your presence.

• Show sincerity in wanting to know their truth. (I say their truth because not everyone’s version is accurate, complete or helpful.)
• Convey that you respect their point of view and will be vulnerable (Click here to read Brené Brown’s definition of vulnerability), especially to employees junior to you.
• Prove through continued experience that you won’t dispute or challenge their position, defend your behavior or dismiss their feedback out of hand.
• Perhaps, most important show through new behavior that you value their risk taking and by extension trusting you enough to improve.
• Carefully consider the physical setting. Find neutral ground to show that you’re’ not above them or anything they have to say.
• Take notes and ask for clarification.
• Genuinely ask for specific examples.
• Encourage them to give feedback.
• Do not defend or refute.

It’s the leader’s responsibility to create an environment that encourages people to speak their minds. If you create the expectation and remove the barriers, you will begin to receive candid input. The more you listen and connect, the more you will build trust. Once trust is established, good ideas will flow naturally and people will use their discretionary effort for the greater good of the organization.

Listed below are four ways to start making it safer for your direct reports and colleagues to tell the truth. Doing these things will require the courage to stretch outside your comfort zone. Even so, it will be well worth it because the real magic occurs outside our C-zones.

1. Consider what you're doing to encourage or discourage others from sharing with you their truth about you.
2. Assess your current organization or team, is not saying anything "negative" or spinning rewarded? Is truth-telling unsafe?
3. Show that you value feedback by changing your behavior and thanking the giver.
4. Above all, when someone does take the risk to provide feedback, don't dismiss it, disregard it, or defend yourself. Listen mindfully, show appreciation, then discern on your own whether it's worthy of acting on. Some feedback will be more about the person offering it than you.

Click here to read a related post entitled: 33 Activities of Trusted Leaders

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's culture, employee engagement and leadership capability? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

5 Critical Ways Leaders Slip Up

Companies rise and fall on leadership. Period. And there are five areas that top senior leaders tend to focus their attention. It’s no surprise that these same areas are where unsuccessful senior leaders make critical mistakes.

These are the most critical mistakes, because by the time the leader or other senior managers can understand what has happened, there is massive momentum heading towards a discouraging future.

The Research

Robert S. Hartman, a Nobel Prize Nominee, devotes his efforts to helping people maximize their leadership potential, understand their thinking and prioritize team dynamics. Through his study of The Science of Axiology (a scientific approach to how people make value judgments in leadership situations), Hartman has developed a valuable assessment tool.

Throughout his research, he noted that high-performance leaders selectively place importance on some information while neglecting other information. The result is criteria for decision-making. After surveying and assessing over 1000 top leaders worldwide, he found a pattern of consistent attention and regular lack of attention to vital areas of leadership.

What follows are The Five Most Common Mistakes Of High Performance Leaders, inspired from the research of Robert Hartman, and from decades of my consulting, coaching and leadership training of high performing leaders.

Five Critical Mistakes that Thwart High-Performance Leaders

1. Lack Of Consistency And Conformity

Although most senior leaders will profess that consistency and conformity are top priorities for the growth and scaling of their company, in practice many leaders demonstrate and/or embody a different message. Conformity is usually a paradox in growing corporations, where thinking outside the box is heavily encouraged. And consistency could even be a joke – depending on how much rapid growth is occurring at an organization – it is not uncommon for a trend of “fire fighting” to take hold as the company culture.

To avoid this mistake: Messaging how important systems and procedures are to your team, even in rapid growth, is essential. Systems and procedures maintain brand, product, customer service and other departmental consistency to the customer. Internal attention to having growth spurts be individual stages that get gelled back into the corporate structure will pay huge dividends.

2. Lack Of “Strategy Follow Through” Discipline

It is tough to choose a strategic direction, see less then favorable results, and stay the course. The innate human instinct is to jump ship quickly before the ship goes down!

However, more often than not that the problem is not the strategy, but the tactical execution of it. Top leaders often look for the “right” strategy, and although there are likely stratospheres of probability for strategic outcomes, world class leaders focus on execution and course-correction of a strategic direction before abandoning ship. Having the discipline to continue the course-correction process, particularly through the ability to ask probing questions, results in solutions. This is how we solve problems that are real versus solving problems that are an extrapolation of a probable outcome.

To avoid this mistake: Consider the best case, worst case and possible unexpected forks in the road ahead of time. Work with your team to create the expectation of long-term commitment to a strategy – even through tough times. Focus on the execution of a strategy chosen and avoid the temptation to keep returning to the drawing board!

3. Lack Of Mission, Vision, Values

There are very few companies where one could walk into a random office, ask team members to recite the Mission, Vision, Values of the company, and have them actually recall something even similar to the document prominently displayed in the lobby. Yet, this offers the most compelling barometer for all decision-making and emotional engagement of your team. The No. 1 reason the team is not related to the company Mission, Vision, Values is because the leader is not connected to it.

When a leader is disconnected from, not embodying or not presenting the Mission, Vision, Values of the company frequently – in meetings, emails and at corporate events – the entire culture begins to slide. Team cohesion and focus wane, perhaps not all together but surely from the optimum state, and you end up with disengagement and dissatisfaction in the company.

To avoid this mistake: Create a daily habit that connects you with the Mission, Vision and Values of the company. As the leading beacon for the company, this is the leader primary driver, and should be consistently present in both physical and psychological form all day long. If you find that your documented Mission, Vision and Values no longer ring true, make it a priority to update them to ones that you and your entire company can get behind.

4. Lack Of Instilling Responsibility And Integrity

There are two common mistakes that thwart the interest in increasing self-ownership and high accountability in companies.

The first is “Leadership by Friendship.” We all know that a leader who interacts with their team by being the “best buddy” or friend will often fail to make good judgments, hard decisions and key shifts at important inflection points. Most Senior Leaders ask themselves, “How can I get my team to take higher levels of Self Ownership and Accountability?” but often sacrifice what they want most in an attempt to avoid upsetting the “culture.” Once the leader has allowed accountability to drift and get sloppy, the rest of management follows and results inevitably suffer.

The second common mistake that thwarts instilling responsibility and integrity is “Leadership by Fear.” Commonly taking the form of passive-aggressive or simply aggressive interaction, communication and actions, this model requires constant attention and energy by the leader. This model primarily inputs scarcity into the culture – leading to a “good enough to not get your head bitten off” model. The carrot and the stick are only part of the equation that causes self-ownership and high accountability:

Clear Expectation + Owner Agreement + Rewards & Consequences = Ownership And High Accountability

To avoid this mistake: Setting an example of clear, actionable expectations, soliciting agreement from your team and having a published and clear set of Rewards & Consequences will instill responsibility.

5. Little Fostering Of Innovation, Innovative Thinking And Change

How does this jive with Mistake No. 1? Well, along with the need for systems, procedures, conformity and consistency, a company will also need a high level of innovation, innovative thinkers and a drive for constant change.

From a politically correct standpoint, every leader will tell you that they encourage out of the box thinking, or innovative thinking. In practice, many company cultures instill a sense of fear for stepping too far out, really being a true innovator, or creating change. Even if some innovation is allowed, the leader must decide how far down the chain of command there is willingness for innovation and change.

To avoid this mistake: Top companies and leaders have designed systems that support innovation and for employees and key execs to have the experience of their input actually impacting the company (and possibly strategic decisions). A top leader can avoid a stagnant company by fostering innovation from every person at the company and openly rewarding those that contribute.

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's culture, employee engagement and leadership capability? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.