First Things First
The first tenet of motivating workers is that they can only motivate themselves. Your job as a manager, then, is to provide a work environment that encourages, recognizes, and rewards the behavior you want and the performance expectations you’ve set. You also need to practice what you preach.
“Good leadership is getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it,” says John Mehrmann, president of Executive Blueprints, a business practices consultant in Aliso Viejo, Calif. “A manager motivates his staff by getting them committed to the tasks that need to be done, not by forcing them.”
Inspiring that behavior is a process. It begins with honing in on what the business needs in terms of personnel per the customer base, product mix, sales volume, and spelling out expectations and standards. Then, you provide your employees with the tools to enable success–and lead by example.
Many dealers already have pared down their payrolls and may conduct more layoffs, so the challenge is to allocate who’s left to fit the business and be very specific about their jobs (a written job description helps) and performance goals. However, that’s often a recipe for overburdening a pared-down staff, so calculated investments in training and technology to streamline the workload is essential–and motivating. “Our job as managers is to support and grow the good values and motivation that an employee already brings to us,” says Tony Shepley, president of Shepley Wood Products, a three-location dealer in Hyannis, Mass.
Experts advocate a combination of regular inside training sessions about your products and services, outside research of the market and competition as well as general professional training classes, and industry seminars and networking opportunities to engage and motivate your team.
Setting goals is also essential, says Mehrmann. “It’s the job of a manager to make success possible,” he says, a method that extends from stating clear and measurable goals and expectations to empowering associates to make decisions–and mistakes without reprimand–while removing roadblocks. “Without that, incentives and rewards won’t work.”
Another step to motivating workers is knowing what they value–be it salary, benefits, or something less tangible like job security or greater responsibility–and determining that value on a case-by-case basis.
“People are motivated by their unmet needs, and those needs differ from person to person,” says Ron Smith, a business management consultant and author in Knoxville, Tenn. “Find out what’s in it for them.” Often, Smith says, managers wrongly assume that what they value is the same as what employees value. So, for each employee, identify and prioritize a list of needs, from salary and benefits to participating in decisions, opportunities for growth, and company loyalty, among others (see “Maintainers vs. Motivators,” opposite page). Confirm and refine the list with each employee. This process not only instills motivation in itself by making it a collaborative process, it also sets a course for maintaining that motivation as needs are considered and met. “If managers misinterpret what is important to their employees, they’ll choose methods of motivation that are entirely off base,” says Smith.
Also included in the starter set of motivational methods is leading by example. “Managers who are positive create high-performance expectations,” says Smith. From simple actions such as arriving at work on time and treating customers respectfully to seeking out additional management training to finetune your skills, set the example for others to follow.
