Simon Sinek argues that you cannot truly "motivate" the unmotivated through carrots and sticks; instead leaders should seek to inspire by creating belonging, vision, and being seen/heard. He emphasizes diagnosing situational causes (culture fit, fear, lack of preparation), taking hiring responsibility, helping poor fits transition, and fostering loyalty that outweighs higher pay elsewhere.
I don't think you can motivate the unmotivated. I don't think you could motivate people. People either are motivated or unmotivated. I think you can inspire people.
And.
You can motivate people with sticks and carrots. Offer them bounty or threatened punishment and you'll get behavior that you want. Is there loyalty? Is there love? Absolutely not. Usually when people are unmotivated, it's not necessarily them. It might be the situation they're in. Maybe they don't belong in the culture. Maybe they feel unseen or unheard. Maybe they're scared, maybe they're unprepared. So we have to, you know, when somebody's unmotivated, let's not label them as unmotivated first. What are the 20 other things that it could also be? Let's start there. Now, are there some people in the world who are unmotivated? Absolutely. You hired them, which means you bear some responsibility if it's time to transition them, to help them find another place where they're going to be a better fit. We can't yell at them and call them stupid and unmotivated and push them out the door. We have to bear some of the responsibility. We hired them and if we made a mistake and hired somebody who's a bad cultural fit, then we have to take care of them and help them transition to somewhere where they're going to be a better fit. I think that if we only focus on motivating people and that's a factor, then you're only going to get very finite thinking, an excessive amount of motivating things like hit this number, get this bonus. You'll get a motivated employee pool that doesn't care about each other, might stab each other in the back and eventually will take a better job somewhere else. We have to inspire people. We have to give them that sense of cause and vision that their work is worth more. We have to make them feel like they matter and feel like they're seen and heard and understood. And what ends up happening is those people are not only more motivated and inspired, but if they're offered a better, higher paying job, someone else, they turn it down. Because it's not just about the bonuses and the money. It's because they would rather be here with these wonderful people.
