Unit Outline

Employing Motivational Strategies

Implementing Motivation in Leadership

1. Why is it important to use motivational strategies in leadership?
2. Who benefits from using motivation in leadership?
 Maximize learning from mistakes
 Optimize growth opportunities
 Train them and trust them
 Invite decision making
 Validate the person
 Acknowledge performance through recognition
 Treasure their successes
 Exhibit good ethics and core values
3. What are some of the pitfalls of poor leadership?

Overcoming Employee Apathy

1. Why is it important to understand employee apathy?
2. How can I identify employee apathy?
3. What are some of the ways employees' jobs can hinder motivational strategies?
 Under-defined job responsibilities
 Over-commitment to work
 Under-utilized skills
 Under-appreciated efforts
 Under-developed skills

Unit Content

Employing Motivational Strategies

Implementing Motivation in Leadership

Why is it important to use motivational strategies in leadership?

You need to use motivational strategies in your leadership to help your employees perform optimally in their role
in the organization. Your employees need to feel as though they are helping meet a need. When you motivate
your employees to accomplish their goals and give them the necessary feedback to optimize their performance,
they feel they are helping meet the organization's needs.

Who benefits from using motivation in leadership?

You, your employees, and your organization all benefit when you use motivation in leadership. You benefit
because through motivation, your work group will perform optimally. Your employees benefit because they
experience job satisfaction and success in accomplishing their goals. Your organization benefits because its
members are more committed to helping it be successful and grow.

What guidelines should I follow when motivating my employees?

Regardless of the techniques you use to motivate your employees, you will find the guidelines in the ''MOTIVATE''
acronym helpful:

 Maximize learning from mistakes

 Optimize growth opportunities
 Train them and trust them
 Invite decision making
 Validate the person
 Acknowledge performance through recognition
 Treasure their successes
 Exhibit good ethics and core values

 Maximize learning from mistakes

You can maximize learning from mistakes by creating an environment that encourages your employees to take
some risks in their work. Encourage creativity and innovation among your employees as long as the risks they
want to take are not harmful to the organization's survival, or physically harmful to themselves or others. Many
ideas for organizational improvement are a result of taking risks and learning from mistakes. Employees who are
encouraged to experiment in ways to improve their work are more committed to an organization and its success.

 Optimize growth opportunities

When you optimize growth opportunities for your employees, they take a greater interest in their work than when
they do not see the potential for growth. Sharing your knowledge of the organization's history and the current
purpose of your group's work helps your employees see what growth opportunities have existed in the past and
what growth path they may like to pursue.

You can offer growth opportunities by providing educational and training experiences for your employees. Also,
you can optimize growth opportunities by rotating and expanding your employees' tasks and by involving them in
making decisions, so they will remain informed about what the group needs to accomplish.

 Train them and trust them

Your employees will be motivated to strive for goals and optimize their performance when they know you are
interested in training them to complete their work. You will also maximize their performance when you build their
confidence by showing your employees that you trust them. One way to show employees that you trust them is to
allow them to work with minimal supervision.

 Invite decision making

Inviting employees to help make decisions not only helps increase their enthusiasm toward their work but also
increases their sense of ownership in the organization. Your employees will feel that they have a degree of control
over their work lives, and you will accomplish your objectives more effectively when you solicit your employees'
input when making decisions.

 Validate the person

Your employees need to be validated--they need to be treated with dignity and respect. When your employees
feel validated, they are motivated to perform. Validating your employees is easy to do when you remember to
treat your employees the way you expect them to treat you. Some of the actions you can take to validate your
employees include the following:

 Listening to your employees without interrupting

 Not talking down to your employees
 Getting to know your employees
 Asking your employees' for their points of view
 Empathizing with your employees

 Acknowledge performance through recognition

It is important to acknowledge performance through recognition because your employees have a need to know
that their qualities and work efforts have value. Without recognition, your employees feel as though they do not
matter to you or your organization. When you want repeated good performance, help them feel good about what
they have accomplished.

You can motivate your employees by giving them private, public, and written recognition, or you can give them a
tangible gift. When you recognize your employees' accomplishments, be sure to recognize the work group for
their efforts, as well. When you recognize the efforts of the group, you help build better working relationships
among its members and create a ''team'' mindset with your employees.

 Treasure their successes

The pathway to future success is laid when you treasure the successes of your employees. Often, when a person
experiences success, the event is soon forgotten, causing the person to wonder why he or she made the effort in
the first place. Treasuring the successes of your employees is important because they will feel as though they are
part of the history of the organization's success.

You can treasure the success of your employees in several ways. For example, you might create a ''Hall of Fame''
in your work area to display recognition plaques or certificates. You could also keep a binder with written
documents that praise the employees' success, or you can occasionally reference your employees' past
successes during work-related gatherings.

 Exhibit good ethics and core values

As a leader, you are a role model for your employees. Therefore, it is important that you exhibit the ethical
behavior and core values that you expect your employees to follow. Your conduct affects your ability to motivate
your employees, as well as the morale of your entire work group. If your employees see that you maintain high
ethical standards and have strong core values, they will respect you as a leader and as an individual.

You should monitor your own behavior to determine whether you set a good example as they strive for excellence
in performance. The following questions can help you gauge your behavior:

 Does my behavior consistently reflect my ethical standards and core values?

 Do I encourage my employees to compromise their ethics or core values, either intentionally or
unintentionally, by asking them to complete an unreasonable or unethical task?
 Have I ever taken credit for my employees' or work group's success?
 Have I ever blamed my employees or work group for my own poor performance?

What are some of the pitfalls of poor leadership?

Poor leadership is costly to your organization. Some of the costs of poor leadership in your organization are
represented on financial reports. Other costs of poor leadership are those that may not be as easily measurable
but are just as important. Examples of some of the costs of poor leadership include the following:

 Uninformed and poorly developed employees

 Low employee creativity and initiative
 Reduced employee commitment and participation

Overcoming Employee Apathy

Why is it important to understand employee apathy?

It is important to understand employee apathy because it can hinder your efforts to motivate your employees.
Employee apathy causes your employees to give up when faced with challenges and to give minimal effort to their
assigned work.

How can I identify employee apathy?

Identifying employee apathy can be challenging because it will affect individual employees differently. You may
notice what appears to be an attitude problem, passivity, indifference, aloofness, or a lack of concern for what
happens in your work group. Some of the problems you may experience with your employees as a result of
apathy include the following:

 Tardiness, absenteeism, or high turnover

 Conflict or disruptive behavior
 Low productivity or diminished performance
 Poor organization or missed deadlines
 Poor morale or a lack of focus
 Increased stress or more incidents of stress related illness

What are some of the ways employees' jobs can hinder motivational strategies?

Your efforts to motivate your employees can be hindered by the actual work they are required to do. If you notice
a slow response to motivational strategies, consider whether your efforts are hindered because your employees
experience the following:

 Under-defined job responsibilities

 Over-commitment to work
 Under-utilized skills
 Under-appreciated efforts
 Under-developed skills

 Under-defined job responsibilities

Employees whose jobs are under-defined are likely to experience job-related stress. Stress in employees whose
jobs are under-defined is evident because they are uncertain about what is expected of their performance.
Employees in under-defined jobs need to have clearly written job descriptions that define the knowledge, skills,
and abilities they need to perform the job. The employees also need you to clearly outline your expectations for
them.

Having clear job descriptions and expectations allows them to organize their work and identify what areas they
need to improve in order to be effective at their jobs. When your employees' jobs are clearly defined, they will feel
that they have more control over their work.

 Over-commitment to work

Employees who feel over-committed to their work may have trouble prioritizing or completing tasks, or they may
have difficulty at work because of personal commitments that interfere with completing tasks. You should work
with individual employees to help them identify causes of over-commitment. If they have trouble organizing their
work or prioritizing tasks, you should encourage them to learn time management skills and help them set small
goals they can accomplish. Accomplishing smaller goals helps build confidence in their ability to meet larger
goals.

If your employees have difficulty at work because of personal commitments, you may need to meet with them and
discuss how the commitments affect their performance at work. You should encourage your employees to be
cautious of the stress they put on themselves. You should also encourage them to evaluate whether they need to
eliminate outside commitments if they result in extra stress that affects their work performance.
 Under-utilized skills

Another reason why your employees may not respond to your motivational efforts is that they feel under-utilized.
They may be frustrated because they do not feel challenged, or they may have knowledge, skills, or abilities that
are not being used to complete their work assignments.

If you have employees that are not motivated because they are under-utilized, you may want to consider
redistributing workloads to give them tasks that challenge them. It can be helpful to have your employees rotate
job assignments, increase their responsibilities, and allow them more input in decisions that are made for your
work group.

 Under-appreciated efforts

The employees who feel they are under appreciated are those who may be having difficulty meeting the demands
of their work assignments or the expectations you have of them. These employees are usually agreeable to
assuming responsibility for more tasks and seem able to handle the increased workload. However, these
employees tend to suffer from burnout due to the stress of their workload.

When you have employees who do not respond to motivational efforts because they feel they are being under
appreciated, evaluate the expectations you have for them. Remember that just because you have employees who
seem to function well under pressure, you should not exert excessive pressure on them. You will lose hard-
working employees if they suffer for long from the extra hours they may be required to spend to meet your
expectations.

 Under-developed skills

You may discover that the motivational efforts you are making are ineffective because you have employees who
are under-developed. Employees who are under-developed have not been adequately trained for their jobs or are
expected to perform a job using skills they have not yet mastered.

When you have employees who are under-developed, you should arrange for them to be properly trained in the
skills required to complete their work. You might consider working with under-developed employees and
designing a performance improvement plan that includes opportunities to gain the skills required to perform their
work.