The Complex Relationship between Motivation, Incentive, and People Management.

So what are you finding to be the main motivators? Yeah, because that's, that's a challenge, right? It's a challenge for everybody. It is figuring out what motivates this person that works for them, because most of the time they're liars. I'll tell you one thing, that is what's motivating them. And I think those motivations might change over time. I think when we're younger, more motivation might be just financial security, like, I gotta make some money. Right. But as we get older and we've made a little money, our motivators change. And then as we get more experience, would they even change some more? Are you seeing any of that?

Yeah. So I think a great example is what I also remind myself all the time, is that that is all not static. Right. Everybody is one deeply meaningful conversation with a loved one, a grandfather, at a very pivotal inflection point in their life away from completely rejiggering all that too. So it's like, it's a, It's a, it's a. It's a weird thing.

The.

As far as I can tell right now, I'm going down the decision tree because it. It's approval, and then sometimes it's internal and external. And when it's external, is it somebody else within the company? Is it somebody else there? Can you even figure that out? And so now I'm, I'm trying. Once we get down to about the fourth level of that decision tree, to me that becomes a super squishy process where I almost want to say, okay, we need to go back up and simplify and just address this from, is it the approval of me, the owner of the company, or is it the approval internally? And then we start dealing with that and then trying to assign a situational leadership style to that is step two for me. Number one, I am on a mission to find motivators for my people. And honestly, I've only. I've only. I've only really got intentional with maybe a third of them. And even then, I'm kind of only 50. 50 on my assessment because I'm not an expert. Right.

So I know you said you don't read a lot of books. I'm scared to give you one. Have you ever read the book Freakonomics?

So listen to the podcast. And I've listened to portions of the books. Never listen to the full book.

So that book is all about incentive, what motivates us. And we don't do anything. Anything. There is nothing that we do that doesn't have an incentive associated with it and you can break it down real simply like just brushing your teeth, right, like we brush our teeth so we hope they don't fall out at some point. So why do we do the things we do? And it's funny how often we apply the wrong incentive thinking we're going to get this result from it. But the human being on the other side isn't necessarily motivated by the incentive you think they're going to be motivated by. That's what that book is all about. I think you'd love it because you're on this path right now. And that book was a game changer for me 20 years ago about understanding motivation, incentive and that kind of stuff for my people because you're right, it is vastly different. And they're not looking normally for anything that benefits your business unless it's a byproduct of what they gain. And so they're looking for external benefit, whether that be financial growth, knowledge gain, whatever it may be. Maybe there's a fulfillment aspect by giving back and there's all kinds of different folks out there. But tapping in and figuring out what that is, that's a challenge by a long ways. And then to try to apply it broad base across a business. Are you finding that to be challenging?

Yeah, it is the most challenging. And it's the thing where it's hard and not many people do it right. Judging by, you know, the average sizes of business in the US where you know, when you look at the stats, you know, 4 to 8% of businesses employ more than 10 people of all businesses in the United States, some crazy stat like that. So that tells you intrinsically how hard this is. Now the thing that I love thinking about, that I know that it's a lifetime's worth of work, but then I also have to do pattern detection and say what kind of head trash and stuff do I bring to this from my upbringing Because I'm not this objective arbiter of these things. I'm not coming here like a blank slate and taking everything perfectly for facts and that I'm coming here with 30 years of being in a very regressive trades based business and things like that when standards are all over the place. So now there's another sort of like asterisk at the end of that which is now how much of this is my feelings that are coloring this stuff too. And that is, that's where I really start getting lost in the weeds of like nothing's sticking out to me. I'm going to Stay with it. I'm going to keep thinking about it, but, boy, this is. You get into the number of variables on that, and that's complicated.

Well, if you ever figure it out, I can't wait to read the book, like, because it is it. When we deal with humans, like you said, they're not necessarily snowflakes, but they are individuals and everything's different. They all have their own baggage. They bring with them things they bring with them from their childhood. And. And like you said, even for yourself, you bring stuff from your childhood and from your upbringing and your preconceived notions to the table. And to mesh those two together is just challenging. What are you finding that's working?

Yeah. So happiness and empathy and circle of trust up front and honest. It was not the way I was raised in the trades, and it took me a lot of years to get over it. That. You know what? It's not fair. I was screamed at for a lot of years, do it better, do it faster. And even when I did do it better and faster, there was no attaboy. I mean, it took my own father 11 years to tell me, good job. And even that I was kind of a surprise. Like, oh, good job. One of those things.

So you noticed it?

Yeah. And it was like, oh, that was weird. Did we just have a moment together? This is. It's one of those things. So and so. It was actually really hard for me. Again, this is the head trash that I bring into it, which is, that's not fair. These young people should suffer, too, just like I suffered. You're like, is that the company you want to build? It's like. But again, it's. You're laden with that, which is this. I have this internal scale of justice where it's like, hey, if it worked for me, that's fine, but this is my passion, so I'm going to stick through it, whether people are screaming at me or not. So empathy and happiness. I had a very important person to me in the company. My production manager, Holly, pulled me aside years ago and say, hey, you know what? When you show up and you're happy on these job sites, production goes up. You should try more of that. And I was like, all right, let's try that. And it does work. It doesn't feel fair all the time, especially when you're addressing basic kind of accountability stuff, but it's what managers and leaders do. And I just kind of had to come to terms with, like, I don't. I shouldn't say it. I shouldn't Say, I don't trust it. I do trust the process. It's hard to trust the process. It doesn't always feel fair. It feels like you should just come out and say, stop doing that, you know better. But you have to go through this empathetic, happy way of doing it. And honestly, it feels better when I'm done and it's better for my people. So it is a thing I have to force myself to do, to be intentional, just like exercise. But when I'm done, I always feel better.

What does empathy mean to you?

I think trying to see it from their point of view, which is some things are so obvious to me that you would wake up extra early, break yourself to the point of exhaustion, and constantly be thinking about the next day, the next week, the next month, the future, your future, the company's future. And nobody else is going to do that. And it doesn't even mean they're bad people. It just means that this isn't their passion, doesn't mean they're bad people, this isn't their life's work, doesn't mean they're bad people. They're never going to think about it as much as you. And to hold them to your standard is actually very unempathetic. Like I. Back to psychology. One of the things that I readily use in my company is Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is, hey, listen, why aren't you interested in the coding signs of a cross linker and a new 2K poly from Renner and the amazing KMCA standards it can help reach with the, you know, the coffee and the burnish test and this and that. And they're like, dude, I might not make my mortgage payment three months from now, you know, and it's like, oh, you need to. If they don't have the base of that pyramid covered, they're not going to start thinking about self actualization, the future, or anything farther than what's in front of them. So you have to meet them where they are and just say, if the most important thing for you is a stable relationship, a stable job, constant progress, and maybe you want to not hate it during the day, I can provide that. Now. My hopes is that I can inspire you to love this as much as me. I want that for people, but it would be very unempathetic to have your love of this craft as the standard.

I think, yeah, that's kind of a, I don't know, a truism of being an entrepreneur. Nobody's going to love it the way you do. Nobody's going to feel the responsibility that you do. If I can get 80%, I'm pretty happy. Because they don't get the benefit you do. There's. There's an imbalance there, and we got. We got to kind of understand that.