Maximizing Your Human Assets - Part 2

This is part 2 of a 3-part series.  Wouldn't it be nice if every member of your team were to arrive at work each day engaged and motivated to move mountains? That's not the reality that many leaders observe. Some have even said that they - the owner of the company - dread coming to work in the morning! How can you maximize your human assets when they don't want to be maximized?

Perhaps this is a bit of a trick question. You can't motivate people. Motivation comes from within each of them. You can, however, create the type of climate, the tasks, and the rewards that lead to them feeling motivated. 

The challenge in this is that each of your team may be motivated differently, and they may be motivated completely differently than you are. This is not the situation where you treat people the way you want to be treated. You help them feel motivated when you treat them the way THEY want to be treated.

Seven Values/Motivators

The Values Index (VI) we use with our clients scores individuals in seven different motivators. We tend to look at the top one or two as being their primary motivators. See whether you recognize yourself in any of these...

• Aesthetic - This motivator is about harmony and balance, creation rather than destruction. It might relate to the arts, to life balance, or even to ecological concerns.
• Economic - The most obvious manifestation of Economic is money as motivator. But economic also has to do with other kinds of payoffs. The economically motivated person wants an outcome from the effort he or she puts in.
• Individualistic - This person's theme song could be "My Way". Autonomy is important to the individualist, and sometimes the drive to be unique shows up in this value.
• Political - Separate from politics in the governmental sense, this motivator relates to the desire to seek out and take on responsibility, to exert authority and be accountable.
• Altruistic - The altruistic person is motivated by helping others, looking out for the good of a group or another individual in need more than themselves.
• Regulatory - A regulatory person feels the most comfortable with rules. And if there are not rules surrounding a situation, the regulatory person seeks to create them.
• Theoretical - There's learning, and there's learning for the sake of learning. The theoretical person likes to take on new information, do research, and analyze. Because it's fun.

Implications for You

As you can see, two people on your team might be motivated by completely different things. If you are going to maximize their contribution, you need to know each of them well enough that you can match the task and/or its rewards to the individual's motivators. One of your employees might be thrilled at the opportunity to take a class, while someone else might look to it with dread. One of your team members might be excited about the assignment to lead a team project, while another would prefer a project that can be done solo, where he or she is left alone with a computer or raw materials with which to figure things out.

This requires an investment of your time, in one on ones with your team members or via some other method where you can gain insights person by person. Needless to say, the number of direct reports you have can impact your ability to invest time with them to this end. But if you have too many for it to be practical, better to structure to have fewer individuals who directly report to you. Full engagement is too important for you to attempt shortcuts or default to guesses.

One last thought - Uniqueness among your team members may make things more complicated for you, but it is where you can find joy at work - when you see a team member's eyes light up at an opportunity you have well matched to his or her motivators. In this case you, they, and the company can win.