How to Motivate and Inspire Employees

Hello there. Today we're going to talk about how the best companies inspire and motivate their staff for increased productivity. The X factor is a mystery factor in motivation that I'm going to explain. It helps to explain psychological factors that determine performance and productivity. It is harnessing the power of people and motivating people to get better results, holding all other things constantly. That is called the X factor. The discovery of this has led to a revolution in management that has taken place in the last 60 years throughout the free world. The discovery of the X factor explains why industry in companies that are not free have never been able to tap their natural resources and energy and enthusiasm or the commitment and ability of their people. It is now called the psychological factor. The discovery of the psychological factor has led to the greatest breakthroughs in modern management. Up until the Great depression of the 1930s, almost all advances in management had taken place as a result of advances in technology and science and production processes in bigger machines and factories after World War II. Most of the great advances have been managerial and psychological in nature. The technological revolution is a huge player in increased productivity of modern business. But the X factor explains more than anything else why some companies succeed and others fail. Where the top 20% of companies in every industry earn 80% of the profits and why the most talented people are drawn to the best companies, the X factor explains why people in top companies perform better than people in average companies or below average. By tapping into the psychological factors that determine performance and productivity, you can make a dramatic difference in your effectiveness as a manager and in your ability to get results. Motivating people to make their full contribution to the organization is the fastest way that a manager can multiply his or her personal effectiveness and productivity. Most people are just waiting for someone to come along and motivate them to higher levels. All excellent managers and executives and leaders have developed the ability to bring out the very best in their people by learning and understanding what causes them to behave the way they do. The psychological factor really comes down to a very simple point. This is perhaps the most important breakthrough in the development of human potential in the 20th century and in the 21st. It's a discovery of what is called the self concept. The many years of research into peak performance and high levels of motivation can be distilled down to one idea. When you read the work of Tom Peters, Abraham Maslow, Warren Bennis, Jack Welch and other management authorities, there's one common theme that emerges over and over again. Successful companies are those that create an environment where people feel terrific about Themselves. Understanding the role of the self concept in behavior is the starting point of effectiveness in management and motivation. The self concept is the belief structure or value system of the individual. It's a composite of all of the beliefs and values and attitudes and opinions of the individual starting in early childhood and continuing to the present day. The self concept is like the command center that sits at the core of personality and productivity. It is what governs individual performance, behavior and output. All changes or improvements in external performance and behavior begin with improvements in the self concept, the way the individual sees himself and feels about himself and believes about himself. To put it another way, all changes in the outer world of the individual begin with changes in the inner world. Now, the self concept is made up of three the self ideal, the self image and the self esteem. Let's take each of these in order. The individual's self ideal is a summary picture of what the person aspires to be in life. It's made up of the goals and dreams and hopes and ideals that the person has about himself and what is possible for him to become at some time in the future. Each person is consciously or unconsciously guided and motivated by an inner desire to be more and better than he is at some time in the future. In the world of work, the individual's self ideal is influenced by the corporate values, the role models represented by the senior people in the organization and the corporate culture surrounding employees. When this environment is changed in a positive way, individual employees begin to perform at higher levels. Ken Blanchard and Norman Vincent Peale wrote a book together called the fortunate 500. They looked at the top 20% of companies in each industry. Those companies that had consistently achieved higher levels of profitability over multi year periods than those in the bottom 80% in the same industry. One of the distinctions they found among these companies was that all the companies had values of some kind. But the top 20% of the companies had written values that were clearly formulated and which everyone in the company knew and lived by consistently. The companies in the bottom 80% might have had values, but very few employees knew what they were and very few were able to articulate how to live or work by those values in the daily activities of the organization. It seems that the best companies have the best people in terms of both character and competence. The second best companies have the second best people. The third best companies in this competitive environment are probably on their way out of business. When a person joins a high quality organization, one that is known for its values and its commitment to quality, the new person begins to Take on the thoughts and feelings and attitudes of the new organization and begins to become a better and higher performing person as a result. When a person is surrounded by winners in a corporate climate that encourages and rewards winning, he or she tends to become a high performer as well. The second part of the self concept is the self image. This is the way a person thinks he or she is viewed by others. Your self image is greatly influenced by the way people treat you on a day to day basis. When people are treated as though they are valuable and important and respected, they see themselves and think about themselves in a more positive way. As a result, they perform at higher levels and do better work. Now the self image is also affected by the way the individual sees himself and thinks about himself relative to what he or she is doing. Positive feedback on performance from the boss improves the individual's self image and increases his or her ability and desire to perform at higher levels. The third part and the core of the self concept is the individual's level of self esteem. This can be defined as how much you like yourself. The more that people like and respect themselves on the inside, the better they perform on the outside. The more people like themselves, the bigger the goals they are that they set for themselves. The more they like themselves, the higher standards they set for the quality of their work. The more they like themselves. The more they like other people and become excellent team players. The more they like themselves, the more people perform at a higher level in every area of life. So the key to creating a peak performance organization is to create a high self esteem environment by removing the fears of failure and rejection that inhibit personal performance. The manager who creates a positive high self esteem workplace will have higher performance, lower absenteeism, lower employee turnover, higher productivity and fewer mistakes to perform at their best. Individuals have two basic needs in the world of work. The first is called the autonomy need. This is the need to be seen and respected as an individual and to stand out for one's personal performance. It's a need to be recognized for individual achievement or the I am special need. The second need that each person has in the workplace is the dependency need. This is the need that people have to feel a part of of something bigger than themselves. People want to be part of a team. It's what psychologist Abraham Maslow called the affiliation need. It's the need to feel recognized and accepted as part of a group of people in the workplace. Good organizations and good managers create environments where people feel both autonomous, powerful as individuals and important on the one hand, and have their dependency Needs satisfied by making them feel as if they are part of a team, part of the whole organization. The reward structures in excellent organizations are designed to reward not only individual performance, but also team performance. The key factor in motivation and peak performance is just one thing. The nexus between the manager and the managed. It's what takes place at the moment of contact or communication between between the manager and the employee that is the key determinant of performance effectiveness, productivity, output and eventually the profitability of an organization. This is the point at which the two people connect, whether positively or negatively. It's where the past, present and future performance of the individual and the organization is determined. When this contact between the boss and the subordinate is positive, supportive and encouraging of self esteem and a positive self image, then performance, productivity and output of the individual will reach its highest level. If this point of contact between the manager and the managed is negative for any reason at all, performance and output will decline. A negative relationship between the boss and the employee will trigger fears of failure and rejection and disapproval. If the boss is negative for any reason, people will play it safe and only do exactly what they need to do to avoid being fired. Almost everyone has worked in a low self esteem environment. These are usually remembered as the worst jobs the person ever had. Everything you do to improve this intersection of contact improves the overall quality of your work life. No matter where you are on the ladder of management. The more effective you can become in eliciting peak performance from each of your staff members, the more and better people you will be given to manage for peak performance. The top managers and leaders of today and tomorrow are those who are capable of eliciting extraordinary performance from ordinary people. One last point is as Einstein said, nothing happens until something moves. By the same token, nothing happens until someone moves. None of these ideas will be of any value until and unless you take action on them, preferably as soon as possible. Effective managers are intensely action oriented. When they hear a good idea, they move quickly to implement the idea and put it into action. Therefore, if you hear about anything that you think can help you to motivate your staff to a higher level, don't delay. Practice it immediately. That very day you will be amazed at the results that you get and continue to get in the months ahead.