Motivation is always a hot topic for speakers, corporate leaders and managers alike. People look for new techniques on how to inspire, engage and otherwise influence employees. But rarely is the most obvious issue discussed: ‘What’s demotivating our people?’

Every person starts out a new job or position bubbling with energy. They’ve got ideas they want to share and goals to accomplish. In fact, if you hear a new hire say “Oh great…I’ve got to go start that horrible new job next week.” Fire them. Then fire the person who hired them, and hope it wasn’t you. Because, with few exceptions, most start out enthused and raring to go!

That enthusiasm doesn’t last forever, after a while (hopefully much later than sooner) people become less motivated. There are a number of reasons for this, perhaps through the complacency of knowing a job down pat, policy implementation, management styles or plain old personality conflicts. This reduction is what we need to focus on. The solution is not finding a short term booster shot that wears off in a few days or in some cases, as soon as the motivational meeting is over!

We need to think about our impact on demotivation and what are the things that cause it?

1. Micromanaging. It’s an obvious demotivator but rarely understood by managers. You hired someone to do a job…so let them do it! Nothing starts pecking away at a desire to work than being lorded over, having someone ‘hover around’ or any other form of obnoxious micromanaging. By showing your employees faith in their judgment and allowing them to utilize their skills in the way they do best -letting them, you know, do what you hired them to do- you’ll go a long way in keeping them motivated.

2. Ignoring feedback. Often corporate leaders and managers say they have an “open door” policy. But do they bring an open mind to that policy? A good manager, CEO or leader in general is open to hearing new ideas, constructive criticism and the occasional warning. Yes, they have the final say and guide the “vision” of the project/company/plan but they also have to be able to get to the information that allows them to guide everyone to the finish line.

If you ask for ideas in an open forum or meeting, do any that oppose your view get acted upon or even considered? If you ignore good ideas that do not share your viewpoint, your team will see that and remember it. They realize that if small ideas are ignored in meetings, there is no way their larger objection or concerns will be addressed in private. Frustration will build and the idea that they’re stuck in a situation without getting out erodes their motivation. You need to be open and flexible, not a black hole where good ideas are absorbed, never to be seen or heard from again.

3. Unrealistic goals. I have a friend who worked in sales. On what seemed like a whim, his manager set some very high, nearly unobtainable goals. The worst part about it was that these goals were pulled out of thin air. They were not market driven, historically related to previous goals or based on any additional information. They were simply arbitrary goals placed on the team because the owner of the company needed a certain amount of revenue in a certain amount of time. Through poor judgment and mismanagement, a burden was placed onto the sales force, causing a ripple effect (or in this case a tsunami) of dread, stress and helplessness on the entire staff. Think they went out motivated?

Just to put the cherry on the top of this little fiasco, he sat the entire sales staff down and played the famous scene with Alec Baldwin from “Glen Gary/Glenn Ross” where Alec’s character goes on to threaten, degrade and offend the sales staff to “motivate” them. It’s no surprise that a few months later that company went out of business. It only really motivated everyone to update their resumes and look for other jobs.

Challenging the staff to achieve, to push a little harder, to reach goals is a major part of success. It builds teams and drives productivity. This works only if they can achieve or at least come close to the goal. Otherwise it just undercuts all they have been collectively working towards. If the goal is not something everyone can at least imagine is possible, the stress involved to reach that goal may be too much.

In order to find out if you are the ‘demotivator’, what we need to ask ourselves is:

“What things am I doing to demotivate?” “Am I listening to help or to placate?” “What policies are causing undue stress?” “Are my expectations and goals realistic, not just to me but to my people”.

We need to really look at ourselves as leaders and managers to recognize things that we do that may have adverse effects on our workers. Often the more we change our style to fit the situation, the less we need to rely on motivational quick fixes and gimmicks.

Although I still think Ice Cream Fridays are a great idea!

Here’s a topic that I actually address in my own self-help book “Half a Glass: The Realist’s Guide”  (not my choice, the publisher categorized it as self-help, I always thought and still do, that it’s a great management book!) as well as my “Getting a Grip on Negativity” keynote. I strongly believe this and I find many people tend to agree:

Most self-help books are crap!

They only distract from and delay growth.

Do they all suck? Of course not but the most popular ones are the quick-fix oriented ones, like “The Secret”. Want the real secret?? The secret is to write a vague book with no accountability, no real action plan other than wishing and rake in dough. The “4 Hour Work Week”? The book took me 5 hours to read! And then it pretty much lays out a plan of outsourcing your life at a considerable cost. So yeah, if you make $500,000 a year, you can work 4 hours a week by delegating and outsourcing. “Who moved my Cheese?” I did. What are you going to do about it? The book claims most people, absent their vital cheese, would whine and die of starvation, but I know in Texas we’d find the person, shoot them, drag them back onto our property and take our cheese back. Or go look for other cheese.  That would work too.

As this article from the Daily Mail points out:

In his book Sham: How The Self-Help  Movement Made America Helpless, author Steve Salerno argues that there are huge costs associated with the public acceptance of the self-help movement.

Buying into the overblown claims such books make, he argues, can lead to you blaming yourself for failure when you don’t achieve the  outcome you hoped for — and avoiding treatments that actually work. I tend to agree.

Furthermore, very little of the advice offered in self-help books has been tested scientifically, despite the fact that there are ways to do so. Indeed, there have been many good scientific studies on how to become happier

There are plenty of great books out there. But not one has an all-in-one easy fix. And certainly there are more books out there that are more about making you feel like you can do something than give the tools to help you actually do something.

If it sounds to good (or easy) to be true…guess what? Yeah, it is. Self-improvement takes work, a real thought out plan of attack. I think the “Motivation” poster from Despair Inc. sums it up nicely:

If a pretty poster (or book) and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon.

What say you? What books do you think hurt, help or stand out in some way?

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
The smart left a long time ago.

You have to love the folks at Despair, Inc.

Just a quick follow up poster to this weeks newsletter. If you haven’t signed up yet, do so today!

Another funny poster from Despair Inc.

Today is this blog’s 1 year anniversary. Also it is my 200^th post. So celebrations abound.

My gift to you is a small reminder that everyone has a place in the world (even if it’s not the one they wanted)

I’m too busy to post but figured I should anyway.