Promote Job Motivation

You might wonder how you, as a leader, can promote job motivation for your employees. Well, you definitely can, it's not only a question of having, or not, the support of upper management. Regardless of your position in the hierarchy there are ways for everyone to motivate others which will create an amazing culture of job motivation.

Your beliefs around delegation is what you need to change!

For many years in my own leadership career I have held the wrong beliefs with regards to delegation. I originally thought, that delegating was a sign that I could not perform the tasks that were given to me by my superior. Essentially, I saw this as a sign of weakness of my own personal skills. The reality eventually became evident to me, and it was actually a sign of weakness, but not of my personal skills but rather, a weakness of my leadership skills. The reason I made that mistake was because I was analyzing the situation from my own perspective, and thus believed, that my subordinates' would think that I would get them to do all the work I had to do.

Instead of being self centered, I should have analyzed the situation from their perspective, which I understood one day after seeking feedback from my direct reports. From their perspective, they felt that the fact that I did not delegate to them meant that I did not trust their own abilities. In hindsight, it was quite ironic, I was doing more work feeling totally overwhelmed and my actions were clearly did not promote job motivation for my staff. Needless to say that it didn't take me very long to turn that situation into a win-win.

Recognize the work performed

As a manager you should always value the efforts, regardless of the results! Of course we also need to ensure we attain the corporate objectives, but at this time we should not be worried about the results. Focus on how to promote job motivation, this will bring you some longer term gains and, will ensure that your staff will feel comfortable stepping out of their comfort zone. The organizational culture that you want to create is one where people will go the extra miles and unfortunately there are time that going the extra mile doesn't pay off! But remember, never going the extra mile never pays off!

In addition, as the leader, you should play an active role in creating this culture and there are two ways you can do that. First, encourage your staff to recognize each other's work and value the efforts. Second, practice what you preach and take a few minutes every day to look for those going the extra mile and make it known to your staff and/or coworkers that you appreciate the efforts they are giving, free of charge, to the organization and to make you, as their leader look good.

Treat your employees and co-workers with respect

This sounds like a given, but sometimes it is difficult to do on a day to day basis. To promote job motivation, being respectful of others implies the obvious like honesty and a discrimination free work environment, however some little nuances should be noted.

First, respect their time, if you omit to show up for a meeting or you will be late you should inform them in advance, or at least as soon as you know.

Respect their strength and weakness. Don't overload someone on a particular task because it is an area of expertise for him or her, this will only increase their stress levels and you will not promote job motivation, but will promote job de-motivation. On the flip side, adjust your expectation when providing someone with a task that falls within their area of weakness, make sure you follow-up, perhaps a little more than usual, don't wait till the end to tell them that it isn't what you were expecting.

Follow the same policies as they do! So many time in my career I have seen leaders that apparently follows a different set of process and/or policies from the rest of the organization! Like my father told me when I was younger, don't ask others to do what you cannot do yourself! Transparent and regular communication about factors important to employees

When there are topic (s) that are important to your employees, make sure that the staff receive very clear and constant communication if you want to promote job motivation. It doesn't need to be lengthy, it must be clear, concise and address the communication need. Too often, leaders will provide some unclear high level information's to their employees, but the information isn't addressing the needs of their staff and the communication exercise becomes one of allowing the leader's main concern to be one of self-value, so that he can feel likes he's done his job, at the expense of providing up to date and relevant information to their staff so that they feel valued by the leader and the organization.

There are at least two possibilities here, one you do not know any updated information on the topic or bad news will be coming down. In the former situation, I have found it to always serve me when I at least communicated that I don't have any updated information with regards to the situation at hand. Let them know what you have done and when you do expect to have more insight to share with them. Make sure you also follow up with the persons that will provide you with the information and ensure that they do provide you with a timely response so that you can inform your direct reports. Telling them I'm waiting on so and so forever isn't acceptable. The other possibility is that the information is either bad news that can only be released at a certain time or the information is confidential. Regardless of the specifics, in this case simply tell your staff that you cannot share the information with them, but that you will as soon as you are able too.

Just as a side note transparent and clear communication with your staff is more of a hygiene factor, as per Herzberg's Motivation Theory - Two Factor Theory. Meaning that having these communication might not provide job motivation, but not having them will definitely create job de-motivation.

Promote job motivation by providing feedback and coaching

Feedback and coaching can take multiple forms, it does not need to be in an office or one on one, it doesn't even need to be you coaching or providing the feedback, What! Yep, that is correct, coaching and mentoring can be done by various people within your circle of influence, even a subordinate could become a coach for either yourself or others in your organization. This will promote job motivation in an exponential manner. Everyone in your company as different strength and has acquired different experiences, more importantly they don't have the same perception as you do, so take full advantage of this untapped expertise. It is important, as leaders, to remember that we were nominated or selected, in most cases, to hold a leadership position not because we had all the answers, but because, we had some of the answers and we know where or how to get the answers we don't have. How to give employee feedback

Management and leadership actions that empower employees

This topic alone could fill multiple books, but let me give you a brief overview. The first question we need to ask is why our staff need to feel empowered? We can go into a very long and detailed scientific explanation here, but at the end of the day the reason why our staff need to feel empowered is because it gives them the opportunity to see their decisions turn into results, which in turn will boost their self-confidence giving them a sense of happiness.

The next question, is more of a practical one, which is what actions can we, as a leader, pose in our day to day activities which will results in making our employees feel empowered? There are two ways we could really answer that question. The first being by providing you with a set of examples or the second, which is what I have chosen for this article, is to focus on our own beliefs which will change our thoughts, which will in turn, change our own personal behaviors.

Providing regular employee recognition

The secret here is the employee recognition feedback needs to really be provided on a regular basis and needs to be inconsistent. Well, that doesn't make any sense! You might think that I made a typo and should have written consistent? No, I really meant to say inconsistent. Let me explain, what I mean is, we, as leaders, need to introduce variance in our pattern, we cannot provide our employees with recognition on the same day at the same time like a recurrent task. The best way to introduce variance is to keep your eyes and hears open to what your staff are doing and saying and provide the recognition as it happens. Whatever you do, just realize that time and authenticity are of the essence here to ensure employee motivation

If you have programs that are designed to recognize your employees on a regular, don't worry as they are part of the organizational culture and are good to promote job motivation and for developing a culture of employee recognition. In addition these event is an award ceremony to make the recognition public, and the actual employee recognition should have happened when the actions where posed. There is nothing worse than to award the employee of the month and the employee him or herself don't know what actions they did to be recognized.

Empowerment of your staff

For the last few years, employee empowerment as become a trendy word or a "buzz" word as some would refer to it. But what does it really mean? It means to provide your staff with the abilities, skills and knowledge they need to perform their job creatively and independently. The next question is how can empowering our employees promote job motivation? Because little by little as you empower them they will gain self-confidence and will feel very comfortable to make career choices that will enable them to grow. You can find Employee motivation techniques