
Employee motivation ideas for managers and leaders - notatechie
https://www.peoplebox.ai/blog/10-ways-to-use-one-on-one-meetings-to-motivate-employees/
======
nathan_compton
If you let something other than more money motivate you to work harder, you're
a sucker. If you are working in the private sector, the transaction is pretty
clear: they give you money, you give them labor. If, by some psychological
trick, they get you to give them more labor for the same amount of money, then
I think you've been had.

~~~
tra3
That’s a very depressing take. Are there any scenarios where it’s not true?

What if I’m enjoying what I’m doing? What if I like my coworkers?

~~~
kawfey
Some of my coworkers brought up the story of NASA's renegade "Pirate Paradigm"
that upset the status quo and busted through bureaucratic barriers before
Agile was in vogue. [0] It's a true story of a group of young engineers that
created a new system for mission control that would enable missions for years
to come, while the thought of it was lambasted by management.

But one quote that popped out to me was:

> By taking action that challenged the established culture of their
> organization, the Pirates innovated new mission control capabilities for
> NASA, resulting in the group’s first project, Real-Time Data Systems (RTDS),
> __which took a year’s worth of off-hours time to create. __

> >>>Which took a year's worth of off-hours time to create.

So the team performed this groundbreaking work with no extra pay, on top of
their other duties. This was construed to be inspirational among my coworkers
who brought it up. I can see it. It is really awesome, and I bet those
engineers felt like they were on top of the world.

But to me, this is almost crazy to think that - in today's world - working for
a large business the size of NASA that you wouldn't be fairly compensated
while doing such immensely valuable work far above your personal scope of duty
- even if you have the best coworkers or love your work. Sure, in several
industries this happens all the time (especially startups, where founders
perform immense amounts of work with no pay with the hope of hitting gold),
but in the big corporate, government, and defense contracting worlds this is
not only discouraged, but often disallowed.

[0] [https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-a-group-of-nasa-
rene...](https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-a-group-of-nasa-renegades-
transformed-mission-control/)

~~~
tra3
What a great counter example. Very inspiring, thank you for bringing it up.

I'm having a tough time elucidating and expressing my feelings on this
subject. I've gone through burnout, which was largely self inflicted tbh, with
silent approval of management.. I feel like the parent poster, but I don't
want to. I guess I'm struggling with the notion that employee-employer
relationship is zero sum. Hobbies don't typically yield direct monetary
benefits, yet I still partake. I dont't think this is going anywhere, I'm just
thinking out loud.

------
A4ET8a8uTh0
I do not want to sound too cynical, but whenever I see those articles, to me
it conveys the message of 'how do we not pay people more, but still extract
more work out of them'. The article is about the same. It even seems to follow
the same format making me question whether it was written by a human. And I am
saying that just having gone through positive psychology section in my MBA
class.

Employee motivation is an important subject, but the underlying goal seems to
have perverted that subject.

~~~
notatechie
So motivation and productivity are interlinked I feel. If the economy is
booming, and you have done a good job, it will be regarded. I had a manager
who always said, don't ask for promotion, let your work promote you. I think
he was right.

~~~
borroka
When I was working in academia, I had an advisor who used to tell me: "just do
good work and you will find a TT position". Never found one, despite the
objectively good work I published. Not even an interview. Tremendously bad
advice that came from a place of laziness. As a manager, I like it when my
reports ask for reasonable promotions or greater work responsibilities: it
shows confidence, self-reflection, pro-activeness. All traits I value quite a
bit.

~~~
A4ET8a8uTh0
I agree. I had my share of rather bad advisors. I hate to admit it, but my mom
had better advice about it since it directly related to human nature. Better
work won't do the trick if the right person does not know about it.

------
searchableguy
Honestly, I wonder how many people apply these articles literally and make the
employee feel even more uncomfortable because clearly, the manager doesn't
give shit about them. He is just following the article and if you tell them
the truth, they are gonna fire you or put you on some performance hook

~~~
itronitron
Well, at least 16M fewer people can apply the ideas in the article this month
than last month. The timing of the article seems a little off.

~~~
notatechie
i agree

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cvaidya1986
What I have seen work best is enabling people to work on the stuff they are
excited about or learn and empower them to set meetings, talk to stakeholders
to make things happen like an entrepreneur and they will shine! Also, try to
keep the bs out of their way and get them the resources they need so they can
expand into whoever they want to become.

------
groby_b
Here's the thing - this isn't bad advice, but it's the CS equivalent of "Hello
world" in Python or Basic.

We don't need software to manage people. We need training for our managers.
These tips are all things you should know before you ever get handed
management responsibilities.

~~~
dangus
> These tips are all things you should know before you ever get handed
> management responsibilities.

In this way I think this is highly valuable. Many managers don’t get _any_
training before being handed the keys.

~~~
jordache
>Many managers don’t get any training before being handed the keys.

This!

------
gajus
I have just built an app that is meant to build motivation by getting the
remote teams to know each other better. aboutsnack.com

~~~
notatechie
sounds like a great idea!

------
mettamage
Here are some employee motivation ideas that I know that work:

Self-determination theory by Deci and Ryan lumps everything into three
components:

\- The ability to make decisions / agency over what you do (they call this
autonomy)

\- Feeling connected with other people (relatedness)

\- Being able to get better and to start at the right level (they call this
competence)

Any idea that you can think of that relates to CAR (Competence, Autonomy,
Relatedness) will most likely work.

Here are a few:

\- Relatedness: Say you want to learn mathematics. Find a study group for 2
hours per week! Don't like your study group? Find a study group until you like
one. Can't find someone, then at least get your social media straight: find
mathematicians you like on YouTube, Twitter and the like. Email them, ask them
questions, who cares they're busy? Consume their content (isn't 3Blue1Brown
motivating? ;-) ) and see if you can engage more with them.

\- Competence: You're too long stuck at a problem and you feel demotivated.
Well the theory predicts that, so you need to find a way to see your progress.
Either do this by getting easier problems to solve or get better feedback
mechanisms. One way to do that is to reflect after the fact (when you solved
the problem) how it is possible to be stuck for so long. Then the next time
you get stuck, you can include this meta-process and reflect on it again, over
time you'll see yourself get better with this reflection. So now you get
feedback from two things that are relating to each other!

\- Autonomy: Do you feel forced to do something? Try to see if you can find a
choice within the activity. I did this while studying, I chose to study "how
to study as fast as possible", suddenly I found any topic fascinating. This is
why managers forcing a certain work style down employees their throats are
hurting their intrinsic motivation. Allowing employees to find out about their
own ways of working yields higher autonomy.

I'm always noticing that when I'm unmotivated that I'm sorely lacking in one
of these three aspects, and in most cases it's relatedness as I have no one to
bounce my ideas around with.

So ask yourself when you're really unmotivated, are you low on competence,
autonomy or relatedness? I'm curious to hear if you feel high on all three
(email is in the profile). I never experienced it.

Anyways, those are my tips to motivate anyone really.

------
gowld
This is junk content marketing, most likely copied from past HN discussions.

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mettamage
Edit: I was right, this article is simply a content marketing piece.

My full analysis is below:

Let's look at their list.

1\. Ask them ‘how motivated are you’ before the meeting

Only possible in organizations with amazingly high trust. If people have an
inkling of a fear to lose their jobs, this won't work. Otherwise it would work
because it will add some self-reflection to the both of you. I think the
employee should also ask it back to the manager! The reason: being self
reflective on each other's motivation allows you to understand it and
influence it for being more productive in a way that you feel happy about.

2\. Start with a check-in about their general well-being

This a variant of #1, this shouldn't be a different point.

3\. Provide personalized feedback

This also has the "requires super non-toxic" working culture requirement. The
idea works though, I think self-determination theory explains it quite will in
their "competence" part.

4\. Discuss the performance blockers and challenges

should be lumped together with 3, it's part of feedback or the feedback is
part of this discussion.

5\. Follow up on previous action items

This improves reliability. I think this works in both toxic and non-toxic
cultures.

6\. Discuss career growth

Anecdata: in my case I left a job because they offered me the position of
backend developer after being a freelance full-stack developer for 3 months. I
like full-stack and front-end if you can't figure that out after 3 months,
then you haven't been paying attention and you don't care about me. In
hindsight I was right.

7\. Be their mentor

This is also the fastest way to demotivate someone if the mentor doesn't fit
or is a bad mentor. I have both had good and bad mentors in my life. As with
anything social, it's an amplifier, what the sign of that amplifier is depends
on the relationship you have with those people.

8\. Make them feel valued

#5 should be in this one as well.

9\. Accountability matters

Yea this is called healthy collaboration (FYI: they mean the manager must be
accountable). It's good to say it though! Despite it being so simple, one
could forget it. A non-toxic work culture is required.

10\. Recognition is important

Well yes, rewarding fairly is super important. Not only is it important for
extrinsic motivation but if you're crossing the sense of justice with an
employee, then you're screwing with intrinsic motivation as well! I wonder why
the article didn't say that. We all know that if someone feels not being
fairly judged they start to rebel either covertly or overtly. I had this a lot
in high school and I'm sure it wouldn't be any different in the workplace,
especially when I read all the HN comments that contain the phrase "butts on
seats".

\-----

In conclusion: this article is mediocre. By skimming it I pointed to some
structural issues it had. Moreover, most tips require a non-toxic work
environment.

This should be actively stated as such! Because I think in some cases it's
simply not possible, some places are so financially tight that based on that
you can simply deduce it's going to be a lot of stress to work there for
anyone.

Nevertheless, I think tip #5 while basic is really valuable since it's a tip
that could always be implemented to quite a high degree. Moreover, the tips
themselves are important to be stated and none of the tips were wrong. In my
opinion, a subtle wrong tip would be: always smile to your employee! They need
to feel your positivity. <\-- That's wrong because while positivity is
important, so is vulnerability at times and this tip destroys it. They never
erred like that.

And despite giving it perhaps such a "harsh" conclusion, I do still think the
article has value. I simply don't think there's any unique value that someone
like Simon Sinek wouldn't be able to give you in a more clear and coherent
manner.

After reading this, I feel like I could've written a better article and I
suspect this is simply a piece of content marketing for the company.

If so, then I dare the people of peoplebox.ai to hire me. I dare to put the
money where my mouth is. I think I could do better. (I think a lot of people
on HN could do better for that matter. But I think it'd be actually fun :P)

------
frompdx
The title to this post caught my eye because I have always found it amusing
that so many companies have a class of employees who have the job of dreaming
up ways to squeeze more work out of employees. Or at least, that is how some
people tend to operate in that role. I find the advice in the article to be
generic, creepy, and patronizing.

Patronizing:

> As a manager, you are in charge of handling millennials’ emotions and
> ensuring that they are motivated to contribute their best effort to the
> organization.

So, millennials can't handle their own emotions or be managers themselves?
Gen-Xers and Boomers promoted to management by virtue of the fact that they
are not millennials? Why even make this about millennials?

Creepy:

> An employee’s happiness quotient depends upon 4 factors – supervisor,
> recognition, job, company. Ask them to rate these factors on a scale to 10
> and if their score is less than 28, you have a disengaged and unmotivated
> employee.

Pro tip: Play mind games with your employees to find out if they are motivated
or not and then keep a score of the results that you can use to track their
motivation score behind their back.

Seriously, don't do this at all. This is terrible advice. Best case scenario
is the employee is oblivious to the objective and worse case is this becomes a
new metric to game. Human metrics will be gamed. It is inevitable. This type
of shenanigan will make people resent you.

Generic:

> A simple question about their health and personal life will help them find a
> connection with you. A light-hearted banter would help them in understanding
> you better.

This sounds like advice you would give an alien who is about to meet a human
for the first time. That is to say, this is obvious advice.

> Discuss the performance blockers and challenges

More obvious and generic advice.

> Start with a check-in about their general well-being

Extend common platitudes to your employees. Ground breaking.

This is a marketing piece meant to sell software for tracking one on one
meetings. However, in case any managers are reading and think this sounds like
great advice, here is some alternative advice.

I have had managers who inspired me to do my best work, managers who inspired
me to walk out the door, and managers who did not inspire me at all. I have
been a good leader and a bad leader. When I was a bad leader I thought human
metrics mattered and that I could control outcomes by using the metrics guide
my decision making. This caused friction and resentment. When I was a good
leader, I was genuine with the people I was working with and the rest flowed
effortlessly. The managers I appreciated the most were also genuine. Genuine
is a state of being and there is no formula to create that state. If there
was, it would not longer be genuine. It would be synthetic.

