What's your technique?
I once had a colleague who was habitually late to work. It was a BPO set up with Australian shift timings and hence login time was crucial. We usually had the opening shifts, hence showing up to work on time was challenging. And I had this boy, who successfully continued to pull my team’s average down. The problem solving approach graduated from regular discussion to serious one-on-one, and matter of discussion was just the late-coming trend. He was otherwise one of the top performer in the team.
We all have had handful of such cases in our professional lives where a certain difficult behavior of a person you deal with starts becoming a cause of a bigger work problem and holds the potential of posing an even bigger challenge to overall dynamics. This group of people lack Self-motivation in life and are dependent on outside forces to lead them. They are the ones that I describe do not know which block of Maslow's pyramid do they belong to. They need help to discover their inner need hence motivation. Have you paid attention to what exactly is your response at such times to these people? Think about it.
I once read a quote that stuck on to me since. It said, “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want to get done because he wants to do it". Very few actually understand the gravity of this quote. Simply put it means, an employee is motivated to do something that you want, because you are able to build the confidence in him to do it. Which means you first decode the puzzle of why he isn't naturally doing it. The timeless adage – ‘there is always more than what meets the eye’ applies here. Even the most celebrated leader can find it hard to motivate different types of employee personalities. Myers-Briggs character chart can be one tool to identify employee personality types. And additionally, the fact that motivation levels keep fluctuating and are seasonal to each individual brings to us another challenge in behavior and hence corresponding performance. Are you able to probe into the real cause of such behavioral challenges?
Good Leadership isn’t about advancing yourself. It’s about advancing your team ~ Maxwell
At an organizational level we have seen folks like Starbucks and McDonalds do it beautifully. An article about “Inner Work Life” published under HBR talks about understanding the subtext of business performances. It talks about the power of Positive Strokes and Perceptions which can help turn the cycle from vicious to virtuous. But beneath all this lies the fundamental question of how will you accomplish it or what is going to be your strategy? As for me, I do it most times as I take the route to 'Inspiration'. It has worked for me. I am able to build internal motivation within the person with clear guidelines of inspiration. In Invictus (the movie), Mandela asks Francois, 'What is your philosophy on Leadership? How to get them to do better than they think they can do?'. Well the gap between what an employee's current performance and his motivation to actual potential – is where inspiration steps in.
Leadership isn’t about age, but about Influence, Impact and Inspiration ~ Anonymous
Now this isn't going to be any easy. Inspiration is the technique to Motivation, but to motivate you need to know whats their inner need. This will only come with strong people understanding or let's say more psychological awareness. There are series of psychologist’s workshops and modules available to equip EQ for professional successes. I believe a very good EQ score is the essence of good leadership and goes a long way to help you decode your people.
Coming back to my story, after series of discussion with this boy who was once the troublemaker in the team, I finally figured the motivation that could drive him. We set out a goal and worked up on a daily-routine to overcome challenges. It took many positive strokes and constant reassurances, up until my goal became his goal. His quarterly performance showed zero late-coming instances.