How to Motivate a Demotivated Team

Welcome to HBR on Leadership case studies and conversations with the world's top business and management experts hand selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. Are you struggling to motivate your team? You're not alone. Case Western Reserve University management professor Richard Boyatsis says there's a motivation crisis in workplaces. He cites research that shows that more than three quarters of all workers in the U.S. europe and Japan report feeling disengaged at work. And that study was released before the COVID 19 pandemic. Boyatzis places the responsibility for workers demotivation with leaders, especially immediate supervisors. He argues that they're in the best position to shift a demotivated employee in into a go getter or the reverse. In this episode, Boyatsis takes questions from listeners who are struggling to motivate their colleagues and teams. He offers his advice for what to do when your colleague wants the status of a prominent role but doesn't want to do the work that comes along with it. And he also discusses how to respond when your employees are leaving at a high rate. This episode originally aired on Dear HBR in November 2019. Here it is.

Welcome to Dear HBR from Harvard Business Review. I'm Dan McGinn.

And I'm Alison Beard. Work can be frustrating, but it doesn't have to be. We don't need to let the conflicts get us down.

That's where Dear HBR comes in. We take your questions, look at the research, talk to the experts and help you move forward. Today we're talking about motivating employees with Richard Boyatsis. He's a professor at Case Western Reserve University and the author of Helping People Change. Richard, thanks for being here.

Thank you.

How often is it that people are coming to work completely unmotivated to do their jobs?

Well, sadly, the engagement numbers suggested that we're suffering with a motivation crisis. I mean, if 76% of the people with full time jobs in the US don't feel engaged in their work in Europe, I think the last one I saw was 83% in Japan. 81. That's a huge number of people who aren't bringing their talent to work. And the responsibility for that lies with the managers and leaders, the people who are supposed to be energizing people and engaging them.

And you think that bosses can effectively shift someone from being completely demotivated to a go getter who wants to outperform?

I think it's the only way to do it. And I think the immediate supervisor has the most impact.

First question Dear HBR I'm a young female founder director of a not for profit student program. I find it hard to motivate and manage my team to get into the group and get volunteering experience for university. They always promise to achieve something, but they end up doing nothing. They say they have to balance their own study and out of school activities. One student on my executive team even tells people that she's the co founder of our program. That's a lie. She doesn't even contribute effort equivalent to her position. She wants to be a leader and always argues with me about her role. I really struggle to have her on the team, but she wants to stay for the title and experience. No one is paid to do these jobs, so I can't really force them to do anything. But I really want to make this program a success. What should I do?

This is a great example and a dilemma that's all too typical because we don't really help people learn how to manage or motivate others. Even in management schools, we're not good at that. We teach people how to do analysis. And one of the great predictors of people who develop important competencies for life and jobs are being in extracurricular activities, clubs, community organizations and sports teams. So she's in the right place to not just help add value, but she's also in the right place to help develop herself more holistically.

But the big problem is that she is managing this team of volunteers who don't need to be there, who aren't paid to be there, and who seem sort of apathetic.

I think the challenge, if you will, for her leadership right now is to think about how do we build engagement. And the single most powerful way to do it is to have people talk about and arrive at and then reaffirm their sense of purpose, their shared vision.

Yeah, I mean, there's always a challenge in managing volunteers. You have to use soft power. You can't quite boss them around the same way as if they're a paid employee. Purpose, I think, has to be part of it. Relationships have to be part of it. Even if somebody joins because their girlfriend dragged them in, if the person gets in there and gets energized and becomes believer and likes the relationships they're forming, they can be a great volunteer.

Presumably these people are interested in the cause, so how does she get them more energized about the cause?

It is likely, Alison, that people did sign on because it sounded good. Now what they have to do is think of and be a part of a dialogue. What's our purpose? What are our values? Why do we exist? How are we contributing? And then she reminds people about that along the way, that no meeting goes by without saying something about why they're there. The more it can have meaning to people and the less instrumental it feels, the more passionate people are and the more we see what's called organizational citizenship. People doing more than their jobs.

Yeah.

And especially in volunteer settings like this one. I also think a leader needs to sort of program a certain amount of fun into it.

Yes.

That's something we see in organizations like this that are successful and that have engaged people.

And again, going back to medical research, we know that playfulness is one of the four major things that activates the body's own kind of healing and renewal process. Plus, you know, they're in college, so it's, you know, it's not a time in which you're supposed to be, you know, doing 90 hour work weeks like you're a new associate at a law firm.

Yeah. I think also this can't be a top down endeavor. She needs to have just more one on one conversations and group conversations again in a really fun way to get people more invested and feeling as if it's their organization too, not just hers.

Have you seen a leader who found an innovative way to get people to remember or recognize the purpose of the organization on a daily or weekly basis?

An example of that. Tom Strauss was a brilliant CEO of Summa Health Systems. Started out as one hospital. By the time he retired about four or five years ago, they had nine hospitals and seven outpatient clinics. He would have a meeting of the heads of every one of the hospitals and clinics once a week in his office for 60 minutes. As they left, he would pick two of them and say, bring me back a story for next week's meeting of some patient helped in your unit this week. The next week he'd open the meeting, he'd give five to 10 minutes of his 60 minutes to them telling two stories. And the guy is brilliant because what he's doing is he's reminding everybody that, that their real purpose is healing.

Our listener is struggling to get the overall organization engaged. But she really seems to be struggling with this one person on her team, the person who's lied about being a co founder, the person who is not contributing equivalent to her position and is really just there for the title and the resume line. How should she deal with this one dynamic which seems really at the heart of what she's struggling with?

My sense is that if the shared vision Purpose discussion doesn't awaken her, then I would suggest talking to her. And it really comes down to does she know why this person. She's inferring why this person wants to be there. But she should ask her. She might be surprised. And then once she hears from her, how do we design a role for.

This person and what should she do about this issue that everyone seems to be struggling with of time management? You know, just feeling that they don't have enough time to give to this volunteer, not for profit organization in the midst of their busy schedules.

If it's fun, if it's engaging, I think people will be drawn to it. I think they would give more time.

Alison, were you on your school paper in college?

I was.

Did you spend more time at the paper than you did on classes at points in your career?

I spent every night, Wednesday night there, like the entire night.

Ours was Sunday night. And is that one of your best memories of college?

Yes.

Well, and the important point that you raised, most of the actual learning that helps people be better at work and better citizens and family members, they're learning in the non course related activities at school.

Yes.

You each found something that you're using today.

Yeah.

Right.

Alison, what's our sum up?

So first we want our letter writer to realize that this is a really good opportunity for her to learn how to manage. We want her to start out by finding the why. What is driving her? How can she find the why of the people that she's working with? What is bringing everyone to this organization? We think that she should involve her people in these discussions about what the organization should be and do and what its goals are. We also want her to make sure that everyone's having fun. Playfulness along with purpose is key to engagement. In terms of the problematic executive team member. If this shared purpose conversation doesn't change her behavior, it's definitely worth a one on one conversation about her personal motivations. And maybe there's a special project or something different she should do in her role. We think that if she does all of this well, people are going to stop worrying about their busy schedules and really want to come work for this mission that she has set out.

All right, next question. Dear HBR, I work at one of Canada's top 50 employers to work for, but we struggle to retain talent. We've started losing our top performers to other companies due to a lack of growth and development opportunities. To counter this trend, the company has decided to identify and focus on rising stars. We're hoping this new program will control the talent drain. Here's the dilemma. How do we prevent the employees who aren't selected to join this program from feeling discouraged if confidentiality is needed, how do we maintain it? How do we ensure that we achieve the goal of nurturing our best people while still sending a positive message to everyone?

This is a brilliant question and a very common dilemma that people face. This person is talking about a classic retention brain drain issue. And whether we're talking about countries losing their talent or companies, this is a major issue. The problem is their answer is a bit simplistic.

So what are they doing wrong?

It's dangerous to focus on the few people. What do HIPO programs do? They make the people selected into them feel special and elite and they make everybody else feel like chopped liver. And we also know that some percentage of the people, the non high potentials actually are and all they need is something to wake up to. So what you want to do is approach a lot of the folks with the opportunities for job shifting, for adding to their activities. Look at the issue of what's engaging, what's exciting, what's novel, what can people do and learn on the job?

So you're arguing, and I think we agree with you, that there are downsides to high potential programs. And if a company's going to go down this path and have a hypo program, it should have alternate tracks and alternate opportunities for development for the people who are not selected.

Yeah, and I would say they should talk about the larger engagement and motivational program that they're doing for learning opportunities and novelty. And then if they want a high potential program within that, they might do it as a subset.

I'm going to cite my two favorite Argentines, Tomas Chamora Prumuzik, who talks about looking not just for ability, but for social skills and drive, and Claudio Fernandez Arouse, who talks about having the right values, curiosity, insight, engagement and determination. And all of those things aren't typically what leaders look for when they think, oh, who's my star here? So I think it's very important if this company does a hypo program to have our letter writer exert some influence on who is going into it and why.

She asks very specifically if the company goes ahead with this HIPO program, which it seems like it's going to, how does it maintain confidentiality so that they don't get into this situation where there's the haves and the have nots. Right.

That's the dilemma with these programs.

So on this issue, I might make an argument for transparency because I think when people are chosen, it will get out. I think it's sort of impossible to maintain confidentiality. And I would rather know, well, what do I need to do to get into that?

Why were they selected?

Yeah. What are the performance metrics that I need to hit?

And if the organization, Allison, also offers some options for you to explore these other capabilities or deliverables, then you end up feeling, okay, I'm disappointed, but it's a fair process.

Yeah, yeah. And also if there's sort of either a rotational or a cohort or a cadence to it, where there will be chances in the future to be selected. I think one of the problems with the secretive approach is that one gets the impression that because it's secret, you don't know when it started, how long.

It is, and you assume that it's unfair. That's where the human mind will go.

Our letter writer is smart to recognize that you can't anger all of these people who you haven't tapped. You need to make sure that they feel valued, they that there are still growth and development opportunities for them, as you said, Richard.

And in professional service organizations, which by their very nature are more egalitarian, this becomes a serious sustainability issue. Because if, like at a university or a hospital or a consulting firm or an engineering firm, if somebody knows that somebody is picked in this high potential program, the peers feel a little bit of resentment.

Yeah. I know people who are cynical who would look at the people who would be put in a hypo program and be like, oh, that's a try hard thing. My teenagers use the term disparagingly. Oh, that person's a try hard too. Sort of ambitious and corporate in a negative way. So I can see how, like, culturally that could, like, the program could be seen as a turn off by a certain group of people. Are there other downsides, even for the people who are selected for them?

I think that it is possible that people might rest on their laurels, if you will, and that backfires, or they end up generalizing the impact. Well, I'm good at these things, therefore I must be good at all these things. I think the high potential programs, there's a basic notion that you want to spend time with the people that you think are really the water walkers. But it's got downsides for the water walkers as well, because all of a sudden then they think they can walk on water.

Just to wrap this up on a practical note, what exactly should she do now? Should she go to the leaders who are planning this hypo program? And give them suggestions for how to change it.

I think that if she frames it in terms of what they're trying to do and the resource constraint environment that she describes, and she may say, you know, there's a way we can push this that might help a lot of people and we can do a hypo program, but let's not put everything into that. Let's make that a little lower key, but include something.

And then in terms of the people on her own team, as an individual manager, she can just work to make sure that anyone who hasn't been included feels as if they have room to grow.

Yeah, you bet.

Sudan, what are we telling our letter writer?

We're telling her there are a lot of downsides to these high potential programs. They do create resentment. They create a have and have not kind of environment. We think our listeners should speak up to management and point out that these programs have downsides and suggest alternatives. Among the alternatives would be to make sure that people who are not selected for the program also have other kinds of developmental opportunities, that there's something there to keep those people engaged to make it a more rotational program that make it clear that people that if they weren't selected this year for the program, there's a chance they can be selected next year and try to make it clear what they have to do to get into the program. At the end of the day, we wish that companies didn't do this sorting in such a visible way because of the downsides, but it sounds like the train may have left the station on this one and she just needs to try to speak up so that the program is executed in a way that minimizes the downside risks for the people not selected.

Dear hbr, I'm one year into my role as a manager of a team of five that I inherited after joining my company. I have 10 years experience and a master's degree in my field, but I'm struggling to manage one employee. I remote worker, in case that matters. Since day one, she's given me extreme resistance when I ask her to share information or perform minor tasks. She always provides long winded responses for why she shouldn't have to or how that's not how we do things. For example, I asked to see draft agendas before they're circulated and she balked. When I joined the team, I made a point of not immediately introducing major changes, even though I saw tremendous room for improvement specific to her. I've identified major knowledge gaps and have done what I think a good manager should by providing her with training opportunities. I tell her all the time she's a star performer, thank her for her contributions, and give her public praise. Despite being remote, she has great relationships at the main office and is always chatty with colleagues. During her quarterly visits, she seems to behave badly only toward me. I'm not a micromanager, although I suspect she assumes I am because her past managers were 100% hands off. I've explained that my job is to connect the day to day back to the bigger picture strategy, and I can't do that if she's cutting me out and treating me coldly. All I can make of it is that she simply doesn't like to be managed or doesn't like me. At one point, she went over my head to complain about me to my boss, who shut it down and told her that unless I was doing something illegal or unethical, badmouthing me would not be tolerated. After learning about this, I scheduled a call with a report to hear her out. She asked for more time, which I granted, while also mentioning that we couldn't simply brush these issues under the rug. We did discuss later. Her chief complaint was that she does not have full autonomy. I asked her to improve her team spirit and understand that at times I will ask her to do things she may not agree with. Since then, she's shifted from overt to subtle hostility. I see her taking credit for my ideas and work, which we usually hear about managers doing to their directs, not the other way around. Quite frankly, I could never imagine saying or doing any of these things to my boss. What more can I do here to strike harmony with this report?

Wow, this is a complex situation and it's one that a lot of new managers run into, I bet you. And this could be an action step for her to go talk to the person who was the predecessor in her role and say, I just need a little bit of perspective. When you were running the unit, how did people do? Were there anybody who you thought was high potential and doing really well? Was there anybody who you thought was very distraught or dissatisfied or a pain in the rear? My prediction is if the predecessor is still around, they will identify this person as having had these problems. The boss could decide to reassign this person.

It's interesting that you immediately jumped to having a conversation with the boss basically about how to get rid of this woman. Because normally in these situations we would say, try to figure out what this employee's motivations are and what's really going on. Give her direct feedback. But I do think that our letter Writer has done a lot of those things already. She's already had the direct conversation. She's already put the woman on notice.

Which is why I didn't go there, because I think this is too far down the road. Plus, the letter writer is giving off very strong mixed signals. So she says she thinks she's doing a great job and praises her a lot in public. Meanwhile, she thinks she has major technical deficiencies and she's told her about training she needs.

Right.

And the dilemma is it's gone so far. I'm not sure that a conversation with this remote person is going to bring her back to the light.

I was really impressed with the way the listener laid out the problem. She, she seemed like she was doing all the right things without a lot of success. So I empathize with her. At the same time, I empathize with the problem employee. Alison, you and I have a lot of autonomy in our jobs. And I think if tomorrow you and I had a new boss who was a lot more supervisory and was a lot more involved in day to day decision making than we've become accustomed to, I don't think we would become problem employees, but I think we would bristle and it would take some adaptation and that there would probably be some tension around that.

I agree. So I do applaud the person who's written in for everything that she's done. But I think both of you are right in that she hasn't fully taken her employees feelings to heart. And also, Richard, to your point, she hasn't coached her in the right way.

Right.

So before she has that conversation with the boss, maybe she could hit a reset button on this whole relationship and just start over and try to coach with compassion. So how should she do that?

Excellent point. And I think that's the other concrete alternative to try to engage this person. Here's my fear. Because this has gone on for a while and I suspect even with the prior manager, this person's not going to trust her. So what can pull her around? If somebody can, which is possible, I'm not sure it could be this manager.

So essentially you're seeing this relationship as too far gone to fix At a.

Certain point it sounds like that to me. Especially when she's done these things and the person's now gone passive aggressive about it. That's a lot. That's a lot for this is a lot of healing. One technique I've seen used well is when there is a toxic relationship, the manager finds somebody else, a peer of hers. That's also A manager, but in a different unit, who has a good relationship with this person and encourage them to have the engagement conversation. I mean, it's kind of like third party conflict resolution.

And that third party should probably be the boss.

It could be, but it doesn't have to be. Again, it depends on whether or not the boss is afraid of this person too. And that's why he, in a sense, kicked the can down the road.

Why shouldn't we just fire her if.

She'S done well in the past and if she has some commitment to the organization? You know, to pick up on the theme of the prior question, you don't want the brain drain. But the question is, she might not be in the right job. So if this manager meets with the boss and says, look, so and so is good at these things, she makes an important contribution to the firm. But in this role, as a part of this team, it just doesn't work. It's really trying to say, how do I find another job that she can do? Find some opportunity that she might find more engaging. If that doesn't work, then as I say, sometimes you have to get divorced.

One of the things about this employee that is unique and the letter writer says this at the start, this is a remote worker, in case that matters. I wonder if it does matter whether the letter writer might have a subtle bias that she needs to more closely supervise somebody who's remote because she can't see her every day. And I wonder whether they need to take a look at that aspect of the relationship and see whether the person is being treated a little bit different because she's out of sight, and whether.

The employee is more sensitive because she isn't around her colleagues and her boss every day.

That's all possible. And it's also possible that a year into the role as a manager, the letter writer hasn't had sufficient training or coaching herself to be able to think through these things.

Or that because of the remoteness of the relationship, they just haven't. They don't have the everyday social interaction, water cooler things that people typically have in an office setting. So that while our letter writer has probably bonded the way you'd want to bond with your other four employees on the team, this fifth one is the outlier. Not just because of performance, but also because they haven't had the daily interaction that you have from being in an office together.

And clearly a lot of things in our work situations are based on the quality of our relationships. And if the letter writer has not interacted with this person or the rest of their team, they don't have a prior relationship. So I think working with remote workers to pick up on your point is more challenging.

Yeah, we did an entire show on remote work and the unique challenges that it presents for managers. So listeners, please go check it out.

Great.

The one thing that I also want to add as a piece of advice is to make sure that this toxic situation with one employee isn't diminishing her management of the entire team.

Excellent point. Excellent point. We do know that managers tend to get fixated on a problem person when they should be spending all their time thinking about the good performers. And if she lets it get to her, she's going to be so preoccupied that she won't do the things that she knows she should do.

All right, Allison, what's our advice?

So, first, we applaud this letter writer for the things that she's done so far to try to better manage this employee, but we do worry about a few things. First, we think she needs to take a little bit more time to understand where the employee is coming from. She had a lot of autonomy before, and she doesn't now. The fact that she's a remote worker is certainly a factor because the two of them haven't had a chance to develop any kind of personal relationship. We also worry that she's sent missed signals. You know, she sees major deficiencies, but she's telling her she's a star and praising her, which probably doesn't sense. Sit right with the employee. It's possible that she could just hit the reset button and try to coach and motivate her in a better way, asking about, you know, what her dreams and aspirations are and trying to develop a path forward collaboratively. But it does seem like the situation has become too toxic at this point, so we think it's probably wise to bring in a third party. It could be the boss, and you could have a conversation about what to do with this woman. Perhaps it's a different role, a different manager. If that doesn't work, it might be time to consider letting her go. But ultimately, we don't want this letter writer to lose focus on the big picture. She needs to make sure that this one problem doesn't diminish the way she manages her entire team as a new manager.

Great. Richard, thanks for joining us.

It's been delightful. Thank you.

That was Richard Boyatzas in conversation with Alison beard and Dan McGinn on Dear HBR Boyatsis is a management professor at Case Western Reserve University, and he's the co author of the book Helping People Coaching with Compassion for Lifelong Learning and Growth. We'll be back next week Wednesday with another handpicked conversation about leadership from the Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, be sure to leave us a review. We're a production of the Harvard Business Review. If you want more articles, case studies, books and videos like this, find it all at H. This episode was produced by Kurt Nickish, Anne Sanney and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Rob Eckhart, Adam Buchholz, Maureen Hoch, Adi Ignatius, Karen Player, Ramsey Kabaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you, our listener. See you next week.

SA.