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How to Unlock the Power of Work Motivation for Your Employees

GeneralEdward Kiledjian

Photo by Alexas_Fotos on Pixabay

In today’s competitive business landscape, motivating employees is essential for success. Work motivation can help increase productivity, morale, and engagement, but it can be difficult to unlock the power of work motivation in your employees. In this blog article, we will discuss how to identify and improve work motivation in employees, as well as strategies and techniques for keeping them motivated. We will also look at successful work motivation strategies and common challenges to work motivation. Let’s get started.

Introduction to Work Motivation

Work motivation is the drive that compels an employee to do their best work. It is the result of an internal or external stimulus that energizes individuals to take action and achieve their goals. Work motivation is an important factor in any workplace and can significantly impact an employee’s performance.

What is Work Motivation?

Work motivation is the passion and enthusiasm an employee has for their work. The intrinsic drive encourages an individual to work hard and achieve their goals. Work motivation is a key factor in employee engagement and satisfaction. The more motivated an employee is, the more likely they will be productive and successful.

Work motivation can be either intrinsic or extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is an internal drive, such as a desire to learn or gain recognition. Extrinsic motivation is an external stimulus, such as rewards and incentives. Both types of motivation are important for encouraging employees to do their best work.

Benefits of Work Motivation

Work motivation can have a significant impact on an organization’s performance. Employees motivated to do their best work are more productive, engaged, and likely to stay with the company. Motivated employees are also more likely to take the initiative, be creative, and develop innovative solutions.

Work motivation also has a positive effect on morale. Employees who feel motivated are more likely to enjoy their work and have a positive attitude toward their job. This can positively impact the workplace atmosphere, resulting in greater collaboration and teamwork.

Finally, motivated employees are more likely to be successful. When employees are driven to do their best work, they are more likely to achieve their goals and contribute to the organization’s success.

How to Identify Work Motivation in Employees

Identifying work motivation in employees can be difficult, as it is not always easy to tell if an employee is truly motivated. However, there are a few signs that can indicate whether an employee is motivated or not.

For starters, look for signs of the initiative. A motivated employee will take the initiative and devise creative solutions to problems. Additionally, look for signs of engagement. Motivated employees will be engaged in their work and eager to learn new things.

You can also look for signs of enthusiasm. Motivated employees will be enthusiastic about their work and eager to take on new challenges. Finally, look for signs of success. Motivated employees will take pride in their accomplishments and strive to achieve their goals.

How to Improve Work Motivation in Employees

Improving work motivation in employees can be done in a variety of ways. Here are a few tips to help improve work motivation in your employees.

First, provide clear goals and objectives. Employees with clearly defined goals and objectives are more likely to be motivated to do their best work. Additionally, provide feedback and recognition. When employees receive feedback and recognition for their achievements, they are more likely to be motivated to continue their success.

Next, provide opportunities for growth and development. Employees who feel like they are growing and developing in their careers are more likely to be motivated to do their best work. Finally, create an environment of trust and respect. Employees who feel trusted and respected are more likely to be motivated to work hard.

Strategies for Enhancing Work Motivation

A few strategies can be used to enhance work motivation in employees. Here are a few of the more popular strategies:

  1. Provide rewards and incentives. Rewarding employees for their efforts can be a great way to motivate them to work hard.

  2. Foster collaboration and teamwork. A strong team environment can help foster motivation and engagement.

  3. Offer training and development opportunities. Offering employees chances to learn and grow can help them stay motivated.

  4. Promote a culture of recognition and appreciation. Recognizing and appreciating employees for their efforts can help boost motivation.

  5. Encourage autonomy and flexibility. Giving employees autonomy and flexibility to manage their work can help motivate them.

Techniques for Keeping Employees Motivated

Keeping employees motivated is essential for a productive and successful workplace. Here are a few techniques for keeping employees motivated:

  1. Provide feedback and recognition. Regularly providing feedback and recognition can help keep employees motivated.

  2. Set achievable goals. Setting achievable goals will give employees something to strive for and help keep them motivated.

  3. Offer rewards and incentives. Offering rewards and incentives can be a great way to motivate employees.

  4. Encourage collaboration. Collaboration and teamwork can help keep employees motivated and engaged.

  5. Celebrate successes. Celebrating successes and achievements can help motivate employees to do their best work.

Recognizing and Rewarding Employee Motivation

Recognizing and rewarding employee motivation is important to any successful work motivation strategy. Recognizing employees for their efforts and achievements can show them that their work is valued and appreciated. It can also help motivate them to continue to do their best work.

Rewarding employees for their efforts can also be a great way to motivate them to do their best work. Rewards can include recognition, bonuses, promotions, or other incentives. Rewards can help show employees that their hard work is valued and appreciated.

Examples of Successful Work Motivation Strategies

There are a few examples of successful work motivation strategies that businesses have used. One example is Google’s “20% Time” policy, which allows employees to spend 20% of their time working on projects of their choosing. This policy has successfully motivated employees to be creative and take the initiative.

Finally, Amazon’s “Leadership Principles” have motivated employees to take the initiative and be creative. These principles focus on customer obsession, ownership, and continuous improvement.

Common Challenges to Work Motivation

There are a few common challenges that can hinder work motivation. These include non-competitive wages, lack of recognition, lack of resources, lack of training, and lack of growth opportunities.

Non-competitive wages can lead to demotivation, as employees may not feel valued. Lack of recognition can also lead to demotivation, as employees may not feel appreciated for their efforts. Lack of resources, training, and growth opportunities can also lead to demotivation, as employees may not feel challenged or have opportunities to develop their skills.

Best Practices for Maintaining Employee Motivation

Maintaining employee motivation is essential for a successful workplace. Here are a few best practices for maintaining employee motivation:

  1. Recognize and reward employees for their efforts.

  2. Provide clear goals and objectives.

  3. Offer training and development opportunities.

  4. Foster collaboration and teamwork.

  5. Encourage autonomy and flexibility.

  6. Promote a culture of recognition and appreciation.

  7. Set achievable goals.

  8. Offer rewards and incentives.

  9. Celebrate successes.

By following these best practices, you can ensure that your employees remain motivated and engaged in their work.

Conclusion

Work motivation is essential in any workplace and can significantly impact an employee’s performance. Identifying and improving work motivation in employees can be challenging, but a few strategies and techniques can help. By providing clear goals and objectives, offering rewards and incentives, and fostering collaboration and teamwork, you can help unlock the power of work motivation in your employees. By following these best practices, you can ensure that your employees remain motivated and engaged in their work.

Microsoft has launched an initiative to help individuals acquire new digital skills

GeneralEdward Kiledjian

Microsoft has launched an incredible new initiative powered by free learning content, low-cost certifications and job seeker tools to help 25 million individuals re-enter the workforce.

Microsoft has launched a new initiative that combines content from it's LinkedIn learning and Github entities, mixed with other content previously only available internally to Microsoft employees.

The purpose of this initiative is to help upskill or retool individuals that may have lost their jobs due to COVID. Microsoft is forecasting up to a quarter-billion unemployed individuals (globally) in 2020 due to COVID. Microsoft is using its proprietary data to identify the most in-demand jobs; it is building a curriculum from its various entities and is offers low-cost certifications.

You can access all of these resources and more at opportunity,linkedin.com.

Combining all of its employment and tech-related data, Microsoft believes that the ten most in-demand jobs (globally) over the next decade will be:

  1. Software developer

  2. Sales representative

  3. Project manager

  4. IT Administrator

  5. Customer service specialist

  6. Digital marketing specialist

  7. IT support

  8. Data analyst

  9. Financial analyst

  10. Graphic designer

Microsoft has designed a custom curriculum for each of these career paths and makes the training content available for free until March 2021.

The content is available in English, French, Spanish and German.

Each custom-designed curriculum path includes LinkedIn learning content. The curriculum may also include content from Microsoft Learn. To prove proficiency, Microsoft has made its new role-based certifications available for $15 (if you attest that COVID19 has impacted your job).

Microsoft blog

Effective Executives Lead By Example

GeneralEdward Kiledjian

Close your eyes and think back to an executive you worked with (or for) that was truly inspiring. Someone so incredibly motivating that everyone around him/her seemed to work better, faster and more efficiently. What did this person possess that motivated everyone around them? 

When you meet someone like this (and they are few and far between), it feels like they were born for that job. But as explained in my previous article  (Answering the most important leadership questions (Link)), these leaders are made and are not born with these skills.

Effective leadership can be summed up in a few simple concepts:

  1. an effective leader knows what has to happen (strategy)
  2. an effective leader knows how it has to happen (operational excellence)
  3. an effective leader knows who has to make it happen (people management)
  4. an effective leader can let it happen by removing red tape and providing executive sponsorship (accountability, enablement, responsibility)

If you want to become one of those much needed leaders, you need to honestly assess your current skills gap and build a roadmap to acquire the missing knowledge. When was the last time you really took time to improve yourself?

Perform (or ask a superior to perform) a true  and honest 360 evaluation for you. This evaluation should include feedback from colleagues, employees, bosses, clients and anyone else you work with. This is  a great way to determine if you have any misconceptions about your skills. These evaluations also help you identify your real weaknesses (things you may not even know or realize yourself). 

 

Answering the most important leadership questions.

GeneralEdward Kiledjian
Image by Ludovic Hirlimann used under Creative Commons License

Image by Ludovic Hirlimann used under Creative Commons License

Leadership is as elusive a concept as leprechauns. Everyone fancies themselves a good leader and leadership is a fantastic buzz word to sell books or fill seminars but very few have provided real tangible implementable definitions.

But before we talk about what leadership is, please talk about what it isn't

True leadership is not 

Your senior executives may not be leader! Most employees mistakenly believe that their organizations most senior executives are the leaders. Look at the number of companies that fail in the hands of these so called leaders. Does the staff working for these most senior execs think they are being lead in the right direction (towards success) or out to pasture for slaughter? 

“Real leadership is earned and is not automatically bestowed on someone because of seniority, organizational position or pay.”

I have worked with a handful of C-suite executives that were leaders but not all of them are. Inversely, 

“You can be an organizational leader without having a CxO type title”

Management and leadership aren't the same. The other fallacy I fight with is the mistaken belief that management and leadership are the same thing. Management is the art of managing your organization for efficient exploitation of your resources to deliver value to the shareholders. This means a good manager must  be able to plan, measure, validate, hire, fire, budget, market, etc. All very necessary skills for companies but remember that this is not leadership.

“Managers manage processes but leaders manage people.”

A leader doesn't have to be charismatic and well spoken. A leader could be charismatic and well spoken but he/she doesn't have to be. We have been raised in a world where we see leadership coming from extremely talented, public and opinionated people. Jack Welch (former CEO of GE), Rudolph Giuliani (former mayor of NY City) or Donald Trump. The fact is that none of these characteristics are required for true leadership because they don't help you lead your people better. 

True Leadership is

“The only thing you can say about a leader is that a leader is somebody who has followers.”
— Peter Drucker
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
”
— Peter Drucker

In the words of Anatole France "When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple: take it and copy it." Drucker is the father of modern management techniques and provides a simple yet powerful definition of leadership. He is correct but other leaders have then drive the point even further

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
— John Quincy Adams
“People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.
”
— Theodore Roosevelt
“As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”
— Bill Gates

These definitions further expand on the meaning of leadership and provide additional context. These are all wonderful but they are still missing one element: moving towards a mutually beneficial goal. Add this last element and you have the winning formulae. 

So my definition of leadership is a person that empowers his followers to become better and helps them achieve the required goals while also achieving the organizations goals. Don't forget that your most valuable asset is your people.

IQ, EQ and beyond

Long ago, we accepted the fact that Emotional Intelligence (EQ) was more important than IQ for a leader. Emotional Intelligence equips a leader to discuss things at an emotional level. To make decisions based on emotions. Through research, we have learned that there is a small yet important link between EQ and good leaders.

The new world order suggests that social intelligence is a critically important "intelligence" for a modern leader. It is the ability to understand social situations, to occupy socially defined roles and to influence others. It allows the leader to see and understand other peoples perspectives while understanding the complex new "social rules or norms" used in social relationships. No where is this more evident than the migration of some of our social relationship to the digital world (personal and work). 

New research suggests that social intelligence may be the most important intelligence trait successful leaders possess. 

Where IQ was defined at birth, emotional and social intelligence is teachable and can be developed. 

Are leaders born or developed?

Emotional and social intelligence can be taught. The next question is are leaders born or made? Many leaders claim that they are born with the gift of good leadership but research says otherwise (link). 

Tests conducted using twins concludes that leadership is 1/3 born but 2/3 developed. Unfortunately the leaders that claim it is an innate skill typically don't spend much time developing or fine tuning it in themselves or in their followers (which is bad). These leaders falsely believe that they must find the next "needle in a haystack" leader with the right stuff to help the organization succeed. This means they could be turning down amazing future leaders under false pretences. 

 

With the economic downturn starting in2008, many companies have dramatically slashed their internal training programs which means they are not preparing their future leaders. These companies don't understand that finding the perfect leader "in the market" is a long, complex and expensive proposition (as opposed to developing internal talent already showing early signs of greatness).

Early on in this entry, I wrote "A leader could be charismatic and well spoken but he/she doesn't have to be." Research shows that extraverts have greater leadership potential (compared to introverts) but remember that this is the 1/3 of the solution that you are born with. 2/3s of leadership are learned thus only extroverts that improve or develop their emotional intelligence and their social intelligence emerge as leaders. 

Conclusion

Leadership is a critical skills for any company wanted to success long term and I have provided much of the roadmap needed to increase your pool of leaders. 

  • Remember that leaders are made not born. 
  • Remember that a good leader is constantly learning and doesn't rest on his/her laurels 
  • Remember that you are more likely to make great leaders from within your company than finding good leaders from the outside.

4 characteristics of super learners

StrategyEdward Kiledjian

Back in the day, you went to school to learn a skill and then performed your skill for the next 40 years. Times have changed and anyone working today knows you never stop learning. As a guy who started in IT as a technical specialist, it seems I was asked to pick up new skills every week.

Over the years, this drive for constant learning became a way of life which I keep until today.  As a business leader, I try to instill this same desire in all of my employees but some complain that they are “bad learners”. Some complain that they have never been good at learning new skills so it caused me to ask my self “what makes a good learner?”

Contrary to popular lore, anyone can train themselves to be a good and efficient learner if they master the following skills:

Curiosity

Curiosity is critical. You must develop a sense of wonder and a sense of curiosity.  

When I learned speed reading, one of the first skills I had to develop was curiosity. I learned that without a genuine curiosity, your sub-conscious will help you learn easier and faster.  

Why do you want to learn the skill? What about this skill is most important to you? How will this skill or knowledge positively impact your life?

Learning is an ongoing process

Too many people rush to get to the end rather than using the learning journey to improve themselves. Learning is an ongoing process and you will “never be done learning”. Using this approach, find the traits, skills or patterns that will ultimately lead to the desired end result and practice each one (one by one).

Learning is an ongoing process and this approach will allow you to break it down into manageable and measurable chunks. Always keep improving. 

Teach it

Find opportunities to teach the skill you are acquiring to others. Research shows that teaching a skill has an incredibly positive effect on your ability to assimilate and master a new skill or knowledge.

Teach it even if you feel your skills isn't 100% yet.

Live it

To really master new knowledge or a skill, you have to apply this to often. A good example of this is a student that spends 2 high school years learning Spanish and then never uses it. A couple of years later, you probably would have “lost” this knowledge.

If you are learning a language, find a language support group where you can periodically chat with native speakers. If you are learning a new technical skill that is not part of your day to day job, do a side project to use it.

Refresh your knowledge

I strongly recommend that you take notes using (the brain compatible) mind mapping technique. This is a great way to learn a new skill. If you re-open your notes many years later, you will realize how quickly it will refresh your knowledge and bring it almost all back with minimal effort.

There are dozens of sites explaining mind mapping but the only one you should pay any attention to is the books or sites from its original creator, Tony Buzan.