What makes a person in a company do great work? From my point of view there is two types of motivation: extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
The first one is very simple and can generally be achieved in two ways. Either you grossly overpay your workers or you intimidate them. If the financials of your company allow that, you can make bad working conditions bearable via the financial aspect. If your company is in financial trouble or is treating their employees unfairly, which commonly goes hand in hand with the extrinsic approach, then you intimidate your employees with the prospect of negative consequences. You will make pressure on them to do whatever you ask them to do. You will tell them that you will retaliate in case they disagree with you and don’t do what you ordered. You will make them fear changing jobs, since you will give them a bad reference to other companies. You will even overreach into illegal territory to impose your will upon them.
This is how you create a work environment where 20% or more of your work force leaves the company in 1 year. Most of the time these people are the most talented ones, since they can see through your bad strategy. What remains are the boot lickers – the people who always do whatever you want and smile to the shit you do. The smart people fought for a good work environment and fair treatment. This is of course against company agenda, since in your company one needs to be best friends with leadership to be promoted to a high rank. Only rarely does it happen that someone gets promoted because they did a good job and that only happens when there is immense pressure on leadership.
Intrinsic motivation happens indirectly. It’s a belief system that occurs when you have a healthy work life. That entails a good work life balance, being nice to your employees, solving their problems, giving them exciting things to work on and present opportunities to advance their careers. Ideally all of that is coupled to a grand vision and strategy that the people can identify with. Something that is well thought out and doesn’t change too often. All of this can be summarized as “servant leadership”.
People who are intrinsically motivated are much more likely to stay, because they trust you and your company and feel comfortable in the work environment. You might think that treating your employees nicely will lead these employees to exploit the situation and work less. If you had that thought, that shows me your insecurity. Trust me, intrinsically motivated people will do more work for you than it says in their contracts, because work for them will become fun. These employees will also stay healthy, both physically and mentally and that means they will produce greater results. You don’t need to shout at them that they should do overtime and deliver something on an unfair deadline. If you can gain your employees trust, they will work with you, not for you. They will see your problems as their own and work with you to solve them as soon as possible and as best as possible. And they will see your successes as theirs as well.
Creating a healthy work environment also involves hiring the right people. One bad apple can poison the rest. And before you misunderstand, bad apple does not mean someone who speaks up against leadership, no! Bad apples are the people who are working only for themselves and not for the people. They are the ones who just look to fill their own pockets and blind you with uber-confidence. You need to be really careful and correct these hiring-mistakes before it’s too late.
People who speak up should be cherished by the company. You interpret speaking up as something that is against the company. Quite the contrary. Speaking up shows that the employee cares about the company so much, that they risk their job to make the workplace better. Think about this deeply. If you cannot understand this, then your company is doomed.
I want to write more about these employees – the ones who speak up, the ones who will not accept the status quo. But that’s for another article. Until then, bye for now!