Understanding what the people you supervise truly value will give you real insight into why they do what they do. You can assume that those in our charge are lazy and lack a connection to the needs of the company, but that will get you nowhere with respect to making the progress you’d really like to make. Once you understand where your employees are coming from you can reframe your thought process so that you can truly make the progress you desire. Some might look at this process as manipulative, but the truth is that until workers connect with the company on more than a cursory level, real progress will be difficult to make.
Our experience is that workers really want to know how they fit into the larger scheme of things. Lacking the connections, workers will do exactly what most managers do – make assumptions. Those assumptions will most likely be off the mark, and can color their perceptions of the company and management. In the long run this will affect productivity and profitability.
If you want to give yourself the biggest advantage possible you will need to know where your people are coming from. That can only be ascertained through careful observation of what they do and why they do it; not just at work but outside of work as well. In a comprehensive study we conducted of route drivers for the vending industry we discovered that unlike their managers, route drivers were not strongly motivated by money. Money was important as it allowed them to pay their bills and engage in the outside activities they valued most, but they we far more driven by a desire for consistency, predictability, and knowledge of what was and what was not expected of them in the workplace. Their interest was in putting a clearly defined amount of work for a clearly defined and fair amount of pay so that they could spend their off-work hours with their families and friends engaged in other activities that they valued just as much as work.
In that same study we could see how managers were misreading these drivers. They often looked for a route driver that would behave in an entrepreneurial way. That is, they would look at their route as if it was their own company and take on all of the “responsibility thinking” that a business owner would take on. This is not consistent with how the route drivers thought or believed. The route driver did not want that burden. In those companies that took that approach there was constant turnover in route drivers. The business owner and manager took on those responsibilities because that was part of what motivated them to get up and go to work each day. They loved that challenge. That was their world, not the world of the route driver.
Careful observation will provide the insight you are looking for.
If you want to give yourself the biggest advantage possible you will need to know where your people are coming from. That can only be ascertained through careful observation of what they do and why they do it; not just at work but outside of work as well.
Step One: Identify the direct reports that you find the most challenging to motivate.
Step Two: Begin to observe what they do, and why they do it. What do they talk about at work? What do they do when they are not at work?
Step Three: Is your observation consistent with what your assumptions?