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How To Motivate Your People

Written by: Adam Sonnhalter

Article Overview: f you do just a handful of things right as a leader, you're going to have tremendous success when it comes to motivating your employees. Here's what I keep in mind: 1. Keep Goals Simple & Laser Focused 2. Consistently Communicate 3. Lead By Example 4. Find the Energy In the full article I'll share examples of what I'm working on with my Rotary Club during my year as President.

How To Motivate Your People

If you do just a handful of things right as a leader, you're going to have tremendous success when it comes to motivating your employees. Here's what I keep in mind along with an example of what I'm working on with my Rotary Club in my role as President this year: 1. Keep Goals Simple & Laser Focused: your most important role as the leader of your organization is to set out the goals for the year. The simpler and more focused the better. A handful each year at most are enough. Anything more is too overwhelming. In Rotary, I have three goals for our club this year: i)kangaroos, ii) 50, and iii)26,000. One of the interesting things about kangaroos is they can only move forward. I want our members to continue to move forward and not relive the past so much. 50 is our goal for number of total members by the end of my term. And 26,000 is the number of children under the age of 5 who die each day (that's right, it's every DAY, not week, month or year) from preventable causes. We'd like to make a significant dent in that number.

2. Consistently Communicate: you have to remind people of the goals frequently. Don't assume that because you told them once that they'll remember. A good guide is to remind people at least once a month why we're here and what we're trying to do. In Rotary, our members are reminded about our three goals this year at least once a month at our Business Meeting.

3. Lead By Example: it's important for you as the leader to lead by doing, not just telling. If all you do is bark out orders and expect people to obey, then you'll never be "part of the team." It's a lot more difficult to lead the team if you aren't a member. In Rotary, I make sure I participate in as many activities as I can and not just the ones I like or am particularly good at. What's great is that if you keep your eye on the goal, even the tasks you don't like aren't so bad! On top of that, you continue to grow as you stretch yourself out of your comfort areas and you will discover new skills. You want your team to do the same.

4. Find the Energy: your job as the leader isn't to lay out all the projects or steps to achieve your goals. That's why you have people in an organization. Instead, your role it to support those projects that help advance your goals, no matter where the idea comes from. If you support projects that your people like, as long as they fit into your framework of a laser focus, then chances are you'll reach your goals much faster and with less wasted effort. You'll also have very motivated people because they'll be working on projects that they've introduced. In Rotary, I'm supporting all projects that help further our three goals for this year and we're making tremendous progress on each as a result. And I really haven't thought of any of the projects! I just laid out the goals.

Just think about it for a second. If you have to think of everything from the goals of the organization to each individual step along the way to achieve the goals, what good are your people? Chances are they'll start to ask themselves that very question and when they realize they aren't good for your organization, they'll leave.

If you're constantly laying out the steps to achieve the goals, you'll be spending a lot of your time to motivate your team to do the things you want them to do vs. enable and assist them to do the things they want to do. Your job as a leader is to serve your people so they can do what they love to do. Not so they can do what you want them to do, which for too many business owners is to make the business owner a lot of money! Who the heck wants to do that?

Unless, of course, I'm making about as much or more than anyone else doing what I do, and I love what I do. If those two things were true, why would anyone leave your organization unless it was totally out of their control (e.g. physical move, family conflict)? And you can't truly "love what you do" if you're being told all the time what to do. So that just about covers motivating your people, doesn't it?

Again, think about it for a few seconds. Think about one of your favorite things to do. It may be reading a certain type of book. Or working in your garden or in your wood shop. Maybe playing basketball or fooling around with the latest technology gadget. Whatever it is, my point is that you're going to put forth your best effort to do it. So that takes care of "motivation."

Once you, as a leader, understand and accept that YOU CANNOT MOTIVATE ANYONE, then you'll start to have more motivated people in your organization. Now what you'll be focused on instead is making sure your people are doing what they want to do to help your organization achieve the goals you've laid out!

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