02.12.06
Motivation and incentive
I tend to believe for a person to do something, there must be either a motivation or an incentive. Of course, motivation is basically a long term incentive.
I do not know who told me this one (or I derived subconsciously through reading and observing). I always believe there is no such thing as no time. Only no motivation.
So how in general do we motivate? As a facilitator leader, we can motivate by honesty and fairness. By being honest and fair, people feel the leadership as being responsive. By responsive, I mean that people have a good feel of what they are going to get at the end of the day based on the effort they put in. The more effort they put in, the more reward they get. We are usually not fair because we do not treat everyone as equal. Obviously, a management opinion may be more influential than an operator’s opinion.
As a coaching leader, we can motivate by creating a sense of achievement. We do not put people to do impossible tasks. Neither do we put people to do over simplistic tasks. We put people to challenges that are surmountable. We provide the support both physical and mental for the people to pass the threshold and overcome the obstacle. Each time, you want the people to feel a sense of achievement. You want people to gone down wrong paths and experience mistakes. You want people to self-discover the right solution.
On a separate note, we cannot motivate if we cannot empathise. Everyone has their model of what’s rewarding and what’s not. They are not going to tell the leader what is that model and maybe, sometimes, it is not clear even to themselves. But as leaders, we must constantly strive to understand their model. Only by understanding the model could we motivate them. We cannot change everyone to follow our model of rewards. We can only hope to fulfill as close as possible to their model of reward.