Motivating Your Team

Make sure that every individual realizes the link between their performance and the rewards.

There are other methods of motivating employees in addition to direct positive reinforcement. These include:

• Strengthening effort-performance-reward expectancies. To get the best from your team, emphasize the anticipated reward value, whether extrinsic or intrinsic. Make sure that every individual realizes the link between their performance and the rewards. Even if you organization does not provide performance-based pay, you can bestow other extrinsic rewards, such as allocating more favorable job assignments.
• Giving performance feedback. Provide feedback to demonstrate that you know what the members of your team are doing and to acknowledge improved performance or a job well done. Especially when individuals are unsure of themselves, you should point out ways in which the person is improving. Praising specific accomplishments will help to bolster the person's self esteem.
• Reinforce the right behavior. Quite often what managers say they want, what they reward, and what they get from their teams are quite different. If you verbally espouse innovation but reward doing things by the book, you are sending mixed signals and reinforcing the wrong behavior that you want to see repeated.
• Empowering employees to achieve. Empowering the people you are managing, by giving them the authority, information, and tools they need to do their jobs with greater autonomy, can greatly improve their motivation levels.

ACTION POINT: Reinforce right behavior and empower your team for independence.

Using Positive Reinforcement

Try to understand whether each individual you are managing values intrinsic or extrinsic rewards more highly.

Rewarding progress and success and recognizing achievements are powerful ways to motivate your team. By rewarding someone for doing something right, you positively reinforce that behavior, giving them an incentive for doing it again. There are two basic types of reward: extrinsic and intrinsic. Many people depend on and highly value extrinsic rewards that are externally bestowed, such as praise, a promotion, or a pay raise. Others place a high value on intrinsic rewards, which originate from their own personal feelings about how they performed or the satisfaction that they derive from a job well done.

Try to understand whether each individual you are managing values intrinsic or extrinsic rewards more highly. If you always praise achievements, for example, a motivated person who excels largely for the feelings of intrinsic satisfaction will probably begin to view you as superficial. The professional may think, "I know I did a superb job on this project. Why is my manager being so condescending?"

People also desire different types of extrinsic rewards. Praise may be perfectly acceptable to the person motivated by acceptable to the person expecting a more tangible reward, like money. Typical extrinsic rewards are favorable assignments, trips to desirable destinations, tuition reimbursement, pay raises , bonuses, promotions, and office placements.

ACTION POINT: Use intrinsic and extrinsic rewards to reinforce your teams efforts.

Spiritual Attentiveness

O taste and see that the Lord is good...

Psalm 34:8

[Psalm 34:8]...suggests the mystery of love, the fact that we know God and attain to a deep knowledge of him through love rather than by intellectual reflection. ...According to the psalmist, we must first taste, enjoy, and then understand...The spiritual senses are an analogy of the material ones: sight, hearing, touch and taste. In bodily things, taste and touch are the most intimate because an object is present directly when you taste or touch it. It is less directly present when you see it, hear it, or smell it. Touch is experienced when an object is present inwardly. God is substantially present in the inmost depths of our soul, and if he makes his presence felt there, the most appropriate analogy of it is taste -- the most intimate, the most direct experiences of the senses. It is an analogy; not a sensible reality, but a spiritual experience.

Psalm 34:8 O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.

Motivating Others

There are two aspects to what makes a person perform well: ability and motivation.

Everyday, people make decisions about how much effort to put into their work. Managers have many opportunities to influence these decisions an motivate their team by providing challenging work, recognizing outstanding performance, allowing participation in decisions that affect employees, and showing concern for personal issues.

As a manager, you need to understand what drives your team to do the best that they can. American psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed that every individual has a five-level hierarchy of needs that they are driven to attempt to satisfy. Once a lower-level need has been largely satisfied, its impact on a person's behavior diminishes, and they begin to be motivated to gain the next highest level need.

There are two aspects to what makes a person perform well: ability and motivation. Ability is the product of aptitude, training, and resources, while motivation is the product of desire an commitment. All of these elements are required for high performance levels. If someone is not performing well, the first question you should ask yourself is: "Is their poor performance the result of a lack of ability or a lack of motivation?" Motivational methods can often be very effective for improving performance, but if the problem is lack of ability, no amount of pressure or encouragement will help. What the person needs is training, additional resources, or a different job.

ACTION POINT: Evaluate your team through the lens of ability and motivation.

How to Delegate

Let everyone who may be affected know what has been delegated to whom and how much authority has been granted.

Getting things done through other people is most effective when the following steps are considered:

• Clarify the assignment. Explain what is being delegated, the results you expect, and the time frame.
• Set boundaries. Ensure that the delegatees understand precisely what the parameters are of the authority you are bestowing on them.
• Encourage participation. Involve delegatees in decisions bout what is delegated, how much authority is needed, and standards to be attained.
• Inform others. Let everyone who may be affected know what has been delegated to whom and how much authority has been granted.
• Establish controls. Agree on specific time for completion of the task, and set dates when progress will be check and problems discussed.
• Encourage development. Insist from the beginning that when delegatees come to you with a problem, they also bring a possible solution.

ACTION POINT: Use the steps above when delegating to others.