I have seen some impacting saying from famous people lately that resonate within me and make question how I can motivate and work with people a lot better.
The biggest difference between someone on a path to success and someone on a path to failure is:
- One administers ‘Responsibility’
- One administers ‘Blame’
- Managers light a fire under people
- Leaders light a fire in people
In our quest to motivate employees in the organisation or externally, We must all learn to improve our persuasive powers by listening as well as talking. WE nee to understand others points of view and how they feel.
Too often we look to apportion blame on others without first considering the facts and the immense damage this can do to a personality. Besides demotivation, it can be the catalyst to precipitate a personal downward spiral that may not be recovered.
A simple way to motivate people/employees is to be able to appeal to their values and beliefs. It must not be according to your thought processes, your background, or your overwhelming desires to be the boss.
It is no secret that people/employees generally prefer to succeed not fail. However, we must remember that values vary considerably due to differences in personality, culture, education, age and gender.
Listening rather than talking will enable you to have a more realistic sense of what is going on inside the other persons head and then build some common ground.
A simple way to motivate someone is to appeal to their interests. Are the motivated by achieving professional excellence or are the focussed on reward. Determine what their goals and aspirations are and then you are better positioned to outline how doing things different will help them reach their goals and yours.
Remember also, whilst the words you use are critical to good communication, research shows that they have been shown to have less impact on others than non-verbal communication such as body language and your tone of voice.
You can communicate a lot about any situation and ultimately yourself, your feelings and intentions by not even saying a single word. The expression on your face, how you make eye contact, or your body demeanour all send important messages to others.
The managers who set out to be powerful and autocratic, will be those who wonder why their business is always on a knife edge or why the have a high employee turnover rate.
All managers should adopt a policy of ‘Honesty without Fear’
