The word "motivation" means certain motives of a person, motivating causes or impulses that determine his attitude to the matter. Although now the word "motivation" refers to almost anything, even the size of wages. You can even hear something like: “Peter, what’s your motivation for this month?” In this article, the word “motivation” will be used only in the meaning of “motive reason, motive”, motivation means a person’s own impulse to do some kind of work. And of course, we will talk about what the leader should do to raise and maintain high motivation of employees.
The business community today, unlike the business of the 19th century, requires not only physical strength and willingness to follow the rules from employees. Today, success requires the sincere expression of creativity on the part of employees. We live and work in the post-industrial world, and in addition, the CIS business environment is characterized by high dynamics in the development of consumption standards. The level of services and products that satisfied our customers 10 years ago, today no one is satisfied. Therefore, today companies, in which employees are highly motivated and put their heart into the work, achieve success today. Therefore, it is especially important that managers understand what the level of motivation depends on and how to increase it in practice. As part of the project, the School of Business Owners at Visotsky Consulting I have described the system for increasing staff motivation. And now I’ll open the backstage a bit and share this valuable data with you.
To begin with, a little theory, people are characterized by four levels of motive. Initially, this classification was described in one of Ron Hubbard’s articles (“Promotion and Incentives” on November 11, 1969, L. Ron Hubbard, ed.), Where he described behavioral features characteristic of each level.
These four levels:
A sense of duty is the highest level of incentive. At this level, a person considers it his duty to contribute to the activities of the company. We can say that people with a sense of duty tend to invest 100% of their creativity and strength in their work. These people are devoted to the company, inspired by its goals and the benefits that the company brings to customers, are proud of their company and work. Of course, even people with a sense of duty can make mistakes due to incompetence, but their motive is the desire to benefit the company. Most companies have a certain number of such employees, but not all.
Personal conviction is the next level. At this level, the main motivation of a person is the implementation of the principles and rules that he considers correct. At this level, he is not attracted to the company's goals, but to the opportunity to realize his own idea of "right or wrong." For example, if he is an accountant at the level of personal conviction, he will try to maintain the quality of accounting that he considers correct. We can say that at this level there are people who are not inspired by the future of the company, but who have their own strong professional beliefs. This is the head of the sales department, who does not care what the company sells and what its goals are, but he considers it important that the work goes well in his subordinate area. In terms of creativity and dedication, this level is lower than a sense of duty. Nevertheless, this is a rather high level, since at this level employees show creativity aimed at fulfilling duties and obtaining results.
Personal gain - at this level, the only thing that makes a person move is the desire to get something for himself personally. This “something” can be experience, communication, social status, circle of acquaintances, office computer, car or even a place of work near home. At this level, there is no longer professional pride, there is no impulse to realize our principles, only the desire to get something. At this level, work becomes a hated necessity, work has to be done because otherwise there is no way to get what a person needs. Managing people at this level of the scale is very difficult. After all, when this person needs to do something, he does not have his own impulse to do the work. He has to force himself to act, he needs internal and external incentives.
Money is the lowest level of the scale. At this level are people who do not care what to do, if only there is an opportunity to get the necessary money. Even the other benefits are not important to them; they are only interested in money. Usually these are people for whom some kind of money problem has become the biggest problem in life. Such people are very rare, managing such guys is the most difficult, because they are not even interested in any benefits in the future, only money right now.
On the project, the School of Business Owners in Visotsky Consulting , we propose to compare four levels of motivation with a nested doll: higher levels include lower ones. For example, a person motivated by “personal conviction” has both “personal gain” and “money”, but there is no “sense of duty”. Imagine a programmer who likes to write programs.
He received an excellent special education, the quality of the programs he writes is important to him. At the same time, he also has motivation at the level of personal gain - he wants a comfortable workplace, the opportunity to improve his qualifications at the expense of the company, he needs connections and fame in a professional environment. Moreover, he has the motivation “money”, because he wants to get wages and wants her to grow. But at the same time, he doesn’t care what the company in which he works and writes programs does, he is not interested in the goals of the company. In this case, we can say that he does not have a “sense of duty”, and if he needs to give up some own ideas about how his work should look, for the purposes of the company, he will choose his own principles.
For owners of a workshop on organizational structure of organizations that we have, I always repeatedly emphasize that, with approximately equal qualifications, the most valuable employee will be the one with a higher level of motivation. Even if a person with high motivation does not have enough competence, he has a strong impulse to increase it and find answers to questions. You've probably heard of the “amateur phenomenon” - when a person who does not have competence ultimately succeeds? Quite often this happens when a person with high motivation gets down to business.
An ideal state of affairs for any company when people with a “sense of duty” work in the company. Companies where the percentage of such people is very high exist. For example, one of them is Google. Want to see such a team? Visit one of the branches of Vysotsky Consulting.
When you understand this, the question immediately arises of how to raise an employee on a motivation scale. To do this, first of all you need to understand what the position of a person on this scale depends on. Most likely you have already guessed that the level of motivation is determined by what types of values a person agrees with. If the only value in the field of professional activity that exists for him is money and benefits that he can get for himself personally, his level is “personal gain”. If for him there is such a value as professional pride, respect for competence and the like - his level of “personal conviction”. And if he sincerely considers it personally valuable to achieve the goals of the whole company, his level of “sense of duty” will be. Therefore, people with a level of “sense of duty” come to Google to get a job, but they don’t come to "ABC" (an invented name). After all, Google is known to a huge number of people, among whom there are people who sincerely admire both the company and its products, and "ABC" is not known to anyone, its goals do not inspire anyone, at least for the reason that no one knows about them.
The foundation of highly motivated personnel is laid by the owner of the company at the moment when he formulates and proclaims the main goal (long-term ideological goal) and the plan (mission) of the company. The formation of such goals is the first step in increasing staff motivation. Of course, such goals should be described in an official document, should be in the official folders of each employee. Naturally, these goals should be such that they inspire people. We can say that the most inspiring goals are those that benefit a significant area of activity. How to formulate inspirational goals is described in detail in the book "The business owner defined", so now I will not stop there. Pay attention, even having formulated an inspiring goal - not all employees, holding hands, will immediately take off on the motivation scale.
If people are low on this scale (as it usually happens), you will have to spend a lot of time and effort for these goals to become clear to them, to exist as values. For more than 10 years I have been observing how owners learning to build a team on the ball joint training system, and clearly defined goals, people with high motivation start reaching for them.
Personally, in my first production company I had to repeatedly talk about the goals, give a large number of examples from the real activities of the company, which demonstrated how the work of the enterprise influenced people's lives and contributed to the implementation of these goals. We can say that after the goals are formulated, a period of propaganda sets in, when the leader insists on them, constantly demonstrating on real examples the connection between real activities and stated goals. Remember, to increase motivation, it is necessary that these goals become clear and valuable for employees. And for example, for a person who has worked all his life at the level of “personal gain”, it will take big changes in values to rise to the level of “sense of duty”, it takes time.
We can say that human thinking at the level of “personal gain” is thinking with “material, solid” categories. Thinking at the level of “sense of duty” is thinking by goals. It will take months of persistent work of a leader to raise people to such a level. And besides a constant reminder of the goals and demonstration of the connection with the real results of the company, there are two other important points that significantly accelerate the process of employee growth on the motivation scale.
The first of these is the reward of employees for achievements on the way to goals. When the leader consciously pays attention to the achievement of his subordinate and rewards him, from the point of view of the formation of motivation, he actually makes this achievement (even if it is not too significant) more vivid, more understandable for the employee. For example, the seller made some special sale, and the manager handed him a thank you at the meeting, shook hands and told how this sale affects the achievement of the goals of the whole company. At this point, the seller realizes that this is not just a sale, but a valuable contribution to achieving long-term goals. And at this moment for him the goal itself becomes more desirable and more understandable. You will be amazed how powerful this tool is, do not forget that it is not just about giving a prize or somehow rewarding a person for achievements. It is important to give him an accurate idea of how this achievement contributes to a common goal. Visotsky Consulting CIS specifically creates games among branch employees whose winners receive valuable prizes (trip to the annual Visotsky Consulting conference, strategic business tours, Apple MacBook, etc.).
The second point that helps to quickly make long-term goals more realistic and valuable for employees is the history of the company. By the way, pay attention to the fact that often employees who have long been working in the company, those who “stood at the forefront” have a higher motivation. The reason for this is very simple - if employees are familiar with the history of the company, they know the stages of its development, they understand that over the years it has become bigger and stronger step by step, their confidence in future success is growing. This is logical - if there were successes in the past, more confidence in high achievements in the future. Therefore, wise leaders seek to write a compelling company story that clearly demonstrates the company's ability to achieve its goals. The leader uses this story in the same way when he promotes goals and gives examples.
Goal promotion is a key component of leadership. A manager of any level is responsible for promoting goals to his subordinates. This is the only effective way to increase motivation. It is impossible to raise an employee on the motivation scale from the level of “personal gain” with the help of promises of some benefits. You can increase the level of motivation only by changing the values of people, this is the work of any leader. If you look at the greatest business leaders, the creators of successful companies, you will find that the main thing that they do is in one way or another promote the long-term goals and plans of the company. So start doing this as quickly as possible and eventually find out that the motivation of your subordinates is growing and this leads to an increase in the results of work.
It is difficult to “raise” employees on the motivation scale without a clearly formulated goal and purpose of the company, described organizational schemes with predefined functions and expectations of valuable end products, and indeed an established work system. I advise you to take a test and learn about the bottlenecks of your business, and only then begin to work out staff motivation.
