The psychology of employee motivation

“I wish I could make my employees (do something, show initiative, make a decision, etc.)!” Have you ever had this thought? This statement, or something quite like it, is what I hear so often from business owners. If you want to do more, with fewer employees, or get more from the people you currently employ, read on.

If you’re short on time, I’ll give you the concept in a nutshell. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, she simply had to click her heels and she would be back in Kansas. You also just need to listen to your employees and act on what you hear. Do this and you will be amazed at the results.

Yes, listen, your employees will tell you how to create a climate that allows them to be much more productive, especially in these uncertain times. This is the platinum rule of employee motivation: it applies universally, regardless of age. To maximize the effectiveness of your listening, consider the following:

1. Reduce your conversation.

2. Measure your listening. There’s a reason two ears and only one mouth are original equipment.

3. Learn to ask discovery questions: Explain to me… Tell me more, why, how… What do you mean by…? What do you think?

4. When an employee speaks, listen deeply. The mark of a professional salesperson is a closed mouth every time the prospect speaks. Why? To get information to help them sell, you need information too.

5. As you listen carefully to what they say, watch their body language for subtle clues to additional meaning.

6. Pre-plan your discussion about wrong and right performance, always end on a positive note. I suggest you become intimately familiar with Blanchard and Johnson’s The One Minute Manager.

7. Question what you hear. Make sure you understand what is really being said – use the feedback method. This is where you repeat what you heard or thought you heard and ask if the information is correct.

Do the above and your chances of reducing employee revolving door syndrome will be greatly increased. Just as it is important to listen, it is equally important to understand how time and experience shape people.

In a previous life, when I was in the sunglasses business, I worked for an owner who was only motivated by money and thought that everyone else had the same motivation. This is simply not true. Yes, we all need money but there are many more needs that must be covered with a job.

Dr. Morris Massey spent nearly 20 years at the University of Colorado as a professor of marketing. He developed a model of human behavior that I think will shed some light on the subject. His model takes a unique approach to how values, biases, and ways of reacting to change are “programmed” into people of different age groups. The population is divided into four groups:

1. THE OLAGERS, the traditionalists, were raised anytime before World War II. They remember the Great Depression and were influenced by the results.

2. THE SCHIZOS, the in-betweens, grew up in the 1940’s and early 1950’s. They’re not quite sure if they’re Olagers or Nuagers and it drives them crazy.

3. THE NUAGERS, the rejecters (where I and many baby boomers fit in) grew up in the mid-1950s and early 1960s.

4. THE SYNTECHS, the synthesizers and technicians, were raised after 1965.

Let’s look at the Syntechs (today called GenXers and GenYers) because many of today’s entry-level workers and lower-level management grew up after 1965. They grew up hearing one thing from the Olagers, their grandparents, and the opposite of the Nuager, usually her parents. To make matters worse, they get all kinds of mixed messages from the schizos. Syntechs have grown up with technology: my oldest son, for example, used a computer before me and my youngest son has always used a computer. They were also brought up in the 30-second TV commercial that solved even the most complex problem faster than getting the right water temperature for a shower.

Val Surf & Sport, a small specialty retail chain in the San Fernando Valley (an area in the northwesternmost part of Los Angeles County) goes to great lengths to give their sports experts free time to enjoy their sport, says Mark Richards, owner. He says scheduling is a bit tricky at times, but he thinks that’s the price he has to pay to reduce employee turnover. Richards knows the value of slowing down the employee turnstile.

When you go grocery shopping, for example, and are impressed by the person at the register (now called customer service employees), hand them your business card. Tell them they just passed their first interview with your company! Wherever you go, in everything you do, look for that person of quality. It’s so much better than putting a cattle call ad in the local paper or waiting for some loser to walk through your door and give him the job because you’re too lazy to find the employee you really want.

Now that you have found that ideal person, you need to train them properly. You should start training on the first day. Gene Geromel, Professor of Human Resource Management at Spring Arbor College, says, “The first few days, even the hours on the job, often set the stage for employee attitude for years to come. When a poor foundation is laid for new hires, they’re taking a risk.

When you consider the time, effort, energy, and cost of training an employee, it’s obvious that retention is preferable to retraining. To keep any employee, especially younger ones, you need to show them that you care about them as employees and as human beings. This brings us back to listening and acting on what you hear. A quick method of turning off an employee is to frequently ask them what they think and then ignore what was said!

I think employee recognition is very important. However, let me warn you about incentives, spiffs and commissions. Harvey Mackay said in his book, Swim With The Sharks, that you shouldn’t give a turkey for Christmas if you don’t intend to continue the practice. I too learned what I called the donut lesson. When selling to retailers, he regularly held product clinics to drive sales. He usually brought donuts as a peace offering for the employees, since not all of them were enthusiastic about compulsory attendance. Over the years, employees at my retail customers began to expect the donuts, and the value to me for bringing them began to decline. God forbid that the few times I didn’t bring my peace offering, it was hard to keep their attention.

My suggestion, based on years of working with business owners and a national survey I conducted, is to make recognition and/or incentives personalized specifically for the employee.

Most of the ideas I’ve shared with you are actually quite simple, you may be thinking, “I could have thought of those ideas,” or already have. I think the secret is to take action on these ideas. While it’s not always easy, it’s simple. To do these things, you need to get out of your comfort zone and change your business paradigm. Your new paradigm will be one of partnering with your employees instead of the old ineffective paradigm of being an authoritarian boss.

Here are some ideas to help you develop your partnership paradigm with your own employees:
o Understand what motivates your employees.

o Learn what motivates your associates to action.

o Be open to their ideas.

o Let your employees and yourself learn and benefit from mistakes.

o Be open in the conflict, accept responsibility that your associates may be right, may have a better idea, and stop defending your position when proven otherwise. A colleague of mine, Patricia Fripp, says it best: “Prove me wrong and I won’t waste time defending my previous position.”

o Accept the fact that teens and young adults have trust issues with their elders.

o Live by the Law of Reality. One receives from the universe in direct proportion to what one gives. Eastern civilizations call it karma, in the West we refer to the biblical passage, such as sowing, thus harvesting.

o Teach your new hires the value to their lives of learning sales skills. Help them understand how they will benefit in life if they know how to communicate well; after all, selling is helping through communication.

The psychology of employee motivation is simply listening and understanding. I’m glad you didn’t click your heels like Dorothy in Oz might have and read on for further understanding. One last thought to leave you with.

If you were driving a BMW 7 Series and stopped at your local dealer for a tune up or, more importantly, a major repair and noticed that the mechanic only had a screwdriver and a pair of pliers in his toolbox, would you? would you stay? Would you let that mechanic work on your pride and joy? No way! You’d get out of there so fast the mechanic’s head would spin.

You and your employees also have toolboxes. Inside you can find sales and communication tools, as well as product knowledge. Grow yourself and everyone you work with. Challenge yourself and the people around you to become your best selves daily.

One of my favorite quotes that you might want to copy for yourself is: “There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.” -Victor Hugo. I hope the time has come for you to listen.