You started your business, bought your business, or earned your way to being the leader of your business.
You’ve worked hard and sacrificed plenty to get to where you’re at with the company.
You have a strong passion for your business – not only about where it has come from to get to this point but also about where it’s headed in the future. You have a crystal-clear vision of this future and the big goals and prices that will have to be paid to get there.
You breathe, eat, and sleep this each and every day and it shows in your passion and work ethic on a daily basis.
So why don’t all of your employees have the same level of passion for the business as you do?
How can it be that you seem to be more motivated than your people to hit company goals? Why is it that you keep having the same conversation over and over again with your people and you’re not seeing changes in their actions? Why is it that they are consistently missing their goals and seem to be ok with it? What can you do about it?
These questions are ones I hear from a large number of business leaders and managers during our training sessions, and they have no idea what to do to tackle the problem. They say to me, “If I just give them more money, that will get them motivated and going!” or “I just need to be tougher on my people and hold them more accountable – that’ll do it!”
The problem with using that approach to solve this problem is that it is missing a couple of key ingredients. Its missing figuring out what it is that truly motivates each of their people and how they’re motivated.
Why your motivations differ?
First off, your people haven’t spent the long days and late nights working tirelessly to close sales, deliver products and services on time and to the client requirements, and wondering if there will be enough money to keep the business going for another month, or perhaps 6 months, or a year.
They haven’t heard the same amount of "no"s and faced the rejections you have when asking for new business, securing capital, hiring new employees that went to work at a bigger, well-known competitor, etc.
They haven’t had the sleepless nights wondering to themselves, “What do I do next?”, “Will the company make it?”, and “Did I make a bad choice in starting/buying/leading this business and what happens if I fail?”
What motivates YOUR people?
The company leaders I talk to are often assuming that it’s money that motivates their people (for some people it is, for a lot of people it isn’t) and that just getting tougher on their people will light the fire under them that’s needed. They’re missing the fact that they haven’t uncovered the personal goals, reasons, and passions that compel their people to do whatever it takes to exceed their goals for the company. These business leaders and managers believe that their people are motivated by the same things that they are and they’re missing that it’s about their people’s motivations, not theirs.
To start to turn the tide on this and figure out how to get your people motivated to overachieve, focus on the following items with your people:
- Find out from them what their personal goals are and why – and what drives them to reach these goals.
- Help them connect how achieving the company goals you have agreed to with them will help them reach their personal goals.
- Set a plan with them on how to achieve the goals - and the metrics needed in order to determine if they are on-track to meet the goals and where to readjust if necessary.
- Agree with them on a plan and system for holding them accountable to doing the necessary items on a daily basis to reach their goals. (And make sure you are holding yourself accountable to agreed-to items with them to set the example.)
- Put in checkpoints along the way and celebrate the successes while helping them remove roadblocks they run into.
Do you need help figuring out how to effectively motivate and unlock the passion in your people so that they’re exceeding their personal and sales goals? If so, set up a time to talk with one of Lushin leadership training experts.
