Energising your team

Columns / 21 December 2011

Vibrant organisations don’t develop as a result of money or fear, say Jeff Grout and Liz Fisher – you should inspire your staff to greatness

If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to get a current or potential leader’s eyes rolling in alarm, it’s the assertion that it is their responsibility to motivate and energise their followers.

Some leaders are blessed with a natural ability to inspire, but they are relatively few and far between. Others are able to motivate but not always in a positive sense – fear, unfortunately, is still used as a motivational tool. For the rest, the idea of motivating a group of people to produce their best is a terrifying thought.

So how do you begin to approach motivation? The fallback position for many organisations is that the element most likely to concentrate people’s minds on their performance is money. The City and most sales-based organisations are built largely on this belief – the better you perform, the more money you make. But Daniel Pink, in his book Drive, argues that many studies on psychology and human behaviour have shown that paying people more to do a task only works when the task has a simple set of rules and an obvious outcome.

The best incentive?

Unfortunately, business life is not so simple. Relatively few tasks have simple rules and a beginning, middle and end. Business usually means making complex decisions and applying creativity – and studies have shown that money is useless as a motivational tool for these types of tasks.

So if money doesn’t work, what does? Fortunately, this is an area where many management and leadership academics and writers generally agree. The management writer John Kotter explained it well when he said motivation and inspiration energise people, not by pushing them in a particular direction, but by satisfying some basic human needs, such as the need for personal achievement, recognition, self-esteem, some control over our own lives and the chance to be part of something admirable. "Such feelings touch us deeply," said Kotter, "and elicit a powerful response."

The correct vision acts as the best possible motivational tool for everyone involved. And the best leaders ensure that everyone in the organisation, from the top managers to the receptionists, knows that they all play a vital part in achieving the fulfilment of that vision.

Grout and Fisher

If we translate this to the business world, we mean that employees will be motivated to do their best if they believe in the vision set by the leader, if they feel they have the resources they need to do their job and are trusted to complete it, if they are set challenging but achievable targets, and if they feel that the company and the leader cares for their welfare.

One vision

Probably the most important element of this is the vision – if people feel they are working towards achieving something great, they will contribute their full effort. We talked in an earlier column of the importance of setting the right vision for an organisation, and this is why.

The correct vision acts as the best possible motivational tool for everyone involved. And the best leaders ensure that everyone in the organisation, from the top managers to the receptionists, knows that they all play a vital part in achieving the fulfilment of that vision.

It is possible to see business leaders applying the theories of motivation in practice. A good example of this is Sir Terry Leahy, retired chief executive of Tesco. He frequently said the success of a leader depends on maintaining a happy workforce.

He argued that a leader must provide four basic elements in meeting that aim: an interesting job; the chance to improve their prospects; respect; and a leader who helps them, rather than being their biggest problem.

Sir Terry worked hard at Tesco to ensure his large workforce, most in relatively low-paid roles, had access to each element. He said the performance of check-out assistants, shelf-stackers and everyone else depended not on the targets set for them, but on how they felt about their employer. So, for example, managers praised employees and built their confidence rather than criticised. Sir Terry also introduced a shallow management structure so, in theory, there were only six levels of management between him and a check-out assistant, which created an atmosphere where anything was possible. Sir Terry himself had worked as a shelf-stacker in his teens – as he would often remind his staff.

Creating a sense of collective involvement, where everyone feels that they are contributing to a greater good, is not easy and becomes far more difficult the larger the organisation. But it is possible to keep motivation levels high by following a few simple rules. One of the most important is remembering to say ‘thank you’, because the single biggest drain on motivation is the feeling that you’ve done your best but have had no recognition for it. Try it for a week, and ask your managers to do the same – two simple words can make a world of difference.