Learn how to motivate your team with curiosity on YouTube here! I started a 4 hour class on motivation and influence with the words; ‘If you came here to learn how to motivate your team, I’m sorry to say, you won’t. You can’t motivate people.’ After the awkward chuckles and sideways glances, that class learned what you can do instead. Because the truth is, you can’t motivate your team, but you can encourage them to motivate themselves. In an earlier blog, You Can’t Motivate People, you learned how to encourage that motivation with 3 C’s. You learned to get Clear, Curious, and Communicating. Over the next few weeks we’ll be breaking down each C on a deeper level so that you can make the most of motivation on your team. Learn more about your first C, get Clear, right here. Today, we’ll focus on the second step of how to motivate your team, using curiosity.
What is motivation?
What does it mean to encourage your team to motivate themselves and why is clarity so important? Motivation is the reason, or reasons, someone has for acting or behaving in a particular way. It is highly specific. That means you have to get to that level of specificity when you foster motivation for people. Imagine you needed to motivate your team members to step up to the plate. Take a bigger role and work longer, harder hours. How would you do it? Would you offer them more money? Would you appeal to the good they’re work will do for the community or customers? Maybe you would remind them of how each new opportunity you take and win in opens the door to another one. Or maybe you could tell them this is just a season of work and they can coast a while after a big win. Careful now, choosing the wrong one might have adverse effects.
Trying to motivate your team with these options could be your biggest mistake
If you looked at that list of money, pride, customer care, opportunities, or rest and had an option that is your typical go to, we have a problem. You are very likely committing one of the biggest mistakes in trying to motivate your team. Let’s walk through the top mistakes in motivation and then see how they’d apply.
Motivating based on surface level generalizations
Everybody knows working moms would rather be with their kids than work late. It’s obvious that a young professional wants opportunities to show their skills and abilities. If they were wealthy they wouldn’t work, so they must want money. If you’re trying to motivate your team based on what you know of everyone in that demographic (age, sex, socioeconomic status, etc) you will lose. The only thing everyone has in common is that their values, background, and situations are all unique.
Motivating based on assumptions
Many people assume they know what will motivate their team, because they know them well. They might know how they themselves might be motivated in a given situation so they offer that up. This happens with the best of intentions and a goal of going deeper. They do connect more on the personal level. And yet, it’s still kind of lazy. It projects your values on to other people. What happens when someone actually values work-life balance over bigger opportunities? Now you’ve just alienated that person and showed them that they only ‘win’ on the job is to move on to bigger and better things.
Motivating with a square peg and a round hole
Some managers don’t even start with the team at all. They start by understanding what the company has to offer to motivate people, and try to push people to want that. Don’t do this. Don’t do any of these but really, don’t do this one. There are lots of opportunities to influence people but trying to influence what they actually value or want, is not an area to venture into. Not only does this assume you can make people want what you have to offer it also only allows for extrinsic motivators (outside factors like money, promotion, gifts). Many people are intrinsically motivated (by internal factors like sense of accomplishment or because they actually like the work) and getting stuff feels like it cheapens the deal.
Photo by Prateek Katyal on Pexels.com
The only way to motivate your team
Rather than focusing on what you think you know, focus on what you don’t. Get curious with your team. Ask them questions. For whatever reason managers shy away from asking questions. Yes it will take time and yes it does mean accepting that you don’t know everything but let me tell you this, it’s worth it. Knowing that your star data analyst never wants to leave her role and only wants to go deeper into the skills and innovation that data has to offer is invaluable. Rather than offering her a seat at the brunch where she’d rub elbows with senior leaders, you can offer her a Coursera certificate program on the impacts of AI on big data. Then, you can use that extra seat at the table as an opportunity for your up and coming quality assurance specialist who wants desperately to make a name for himself despite being 100% remote. Just because he wants to work from home doesn’t mean he cares less about face time with the C-suite.
Getting to know these specifics for your team will actually speed up time in the long run. When you know what role Suzie aspires to, you can start to frame every project as a means to get her to that corner office. Knowing that Jim just wants the prestige that comes with having his name on the Winner’s Circle plaque, helps you tailor your feedback to support him getting there. But knowing the details does something else too. It helps you gauge just how far someone is willing to go for what motivates them. Yes we’re all motivated differently but we’re also motivated at different levels of success in those values.
Even when the motivators are similar, results can be wildly different
No two people are motivated exactly the same way. Differently people are motivated differently based on their personality and specific situations. For example, when I was first put in charge of managing people it wasn’t because I felt a calling to lead. It wasn’t because I wanted more money or to get to call the shots. The very first time, I wanted to be a manager because I wanted people to show me respect. I was from out of town and still looked like I was 14 years old. There was nothing I wanted more than for people to actually care what I had to say. Whether we went with my idea or not, I just wanted the respect of having a seat at the table. Fast forward 15 years. Taking on a huge challenge to lead a department and I wanted the role so I could be part of transforming the culture.
Maybe that sounds like a selfish start. It doesn’t have to detract from creating a huge impact. Let’s up the scale a ton and consider someone starkly different from myself who followed a similar motivational path. Franklin Deleno Roosevelt started his political career similarly. He didn’t run for state assembly in 1910 because he had a deep desire to transform New York. Roosevelt ran for government to make a name for himself. He was in awe of his cousin, Teddy Roosevelt, but also living in his very large shadow. Later on, after he was struck with, and largely recovered from polio, he ran for President. At that time he saw a true need for leadership and transformation in the country as we battled the Depression.
You don’t need FDR level employees to get transformational results
Getting curious with your team members allows you to understand their motivators and reframe that clear goal we talked about last week through the lens of their goals. Next week we tie it all together with communication. There is a way to motivate your team without any additional time and effort on your end. Next week, I’ll show you how it’s done.