SHORTS | Warning Signs That You’re Demotivating Your Team
12 Sept 2024 · 2 min
A short podcast segment in which Ben Morton argues leaders' role is not to actively motivate employees but to avoid actions that demotivate them. He observes that most people begin new roles motivated, so declines in motivation usually result from organizational or leadership actions; therefore leaders should focus on preserving existing motivation rather than trying to (re)motivate demotivated staff.
Chapters
I do not believe that it is our job as a leader, a manager, to motivate our people. Instead, it's our job to ensure we are not doing things to demotivate them. Why do I say this? Why do I take this slightly alternative, contrary view? Well, think about it this way. Think about the last time you yourself started a new job and think about your emotional state. I'm going to take a bet here and say you were excited, you were motivated, you felt passionate about the job and eager to get started. Yes, there's probably a little bit of nerves and anticipation in there, but you started in a motivated state. The same is true for most of us. When we start a new job, receive a promotion, in any of those situations, we start motivated. Yes, there might be an exception, right, if we take on a bigger role, but we've not been given the pay and compensation to reward it. But generally, 99 times out of 100, and by the way, 99% of statistics are made up on the spot, so that's not an actual statistic. But 99 times out of 100 people start a job motivated and excited. And therefore, if their motivation changes, something must have happened to cause that. And more often than not, it's things that the leaders within the organization are inadvertently or unwittingly doing. Now, of course, it's not quite that black and white. Okay, there are exceptions. To my point here, there might be a lot of significant organizational change that has led people to become slightly less motivated. You as a leader might be accepted a new job yourself and taken over a team that is demotivated because of something that's gone on with the past because of how the previous leader led that team. So, yes, there are exceptions, but my point is this. I truly believe we need to pay more attention to keeping our team motivated than motivating them, because it's much easier to keep motivated people motivated than to try and motivate demotivated people.