The needs, drives and wants of each individual are what motivate behavior. This means that needs, drives and wants are what activate, direct and sustain behavior in each individual.
Although we can generalize about the kinds of needs that motivate behavior, we find an individual’s motivating factors more difficult to understand. The team leader must understand what motivates people. Even more, the team leader must understand what motivates the particular individuals on their team. That means team leaders must get to know the people who work with them. Only then can team leaders create the kind of work environment that makes it possible for team members to satisfy many of their needs on the job.
How to Motivate Your Team Without Carrots or Sticks
Recently Liz Ryan wrote a highly relevant and pointed article about effective ways to truly motivate employees in the October 26, 2014 issue of Forbes Magazine. An expert is below:
True motivation must come from within an organization. Traditional motivational tactics that utilize punishment and reward are outdated, and according to some, detrimental. Some experts say that in order to truly get employees motivated to do great things at work, leadership doesn’t need to apply positive or negative external forces. All management really needs to do is remove the barriers that make it difficult for their employees to move forward. In this view, deciding that an employee is simply unmotivated can be disingenuous. Instead, management should focus on the factors keeping a particular employee from bringing his or her full self to work.
These factors may be hard to identify, but if leadership is too scared, or too proud, to ask the employee what those factors are, true motivation can never be achieved. The quickest way for a manager to motivate his or her employees is to drop the idea that leadership has all the answers. The best way to have a truly motivated team is to hire smart people, and equip them with the tools necessary to do what they were hired to do. Employee motivation continued
