Key motivators for your team? You may be surprised to learn....

What do you think really motivates your team members?

600 managers from dozens of companies were asked to rank five factors on employee motivation –

1. recognition
2. incentives
3. interpersonal support
4. support for making progress
5. clear goals

The managers’ number one was “recognition for good work (either public or private)”. But they were way off the mark.

Teresa Amabile from Harvard Business School and Steven Kramer, and independent researcher and writer undertook a multi-year, study of hundreds of knowledge workers in a wide variety of settings. They found that recognition was the factor that participants ranked last, and that the top motivator of performance is progress.

In her diary a worker wrote: I felt relieved and happy because this was a minor milestone for me.

2 questions:

1. How does this affect you as a leader? The best thing about this is that the key motivation is largely within your control. As leaders we have great influence over events that can facilitate or undermine progress. Amabile and Kramer reinforce that we must scrupulously avoid impeding progress by “changing goals autocratically, being indecisive or holding up resources”. Unfortunately, the effect of negative events on emotions and motivation is generally greater than the positive ones. The participants generally noted that a demotivating setback was the most prominent event in the team member’s worst day.

2. How can you proactively create the perception and the reality of progress? 

Take care to clarify overall goal

Ensure efforts are properly supported

Refrain from creating time pressures so intense that minor glitches are perceived as crises, rather than learning opportunities 

Cultivate a culture of helpfulness

Facilitate progress in a more direct way: Roll up your sleeves and pitch in.

Celebrate incremental progress. Of course recognition can and does motivate your team, but if your people aren’t moving forward, then there’s nothing to recognize. Recognition can’t necessarily happen everyday, but progress can.

Reference: HBR January-February 2010/ Amabile & Kramer

Breakthrough ides for 2010” What really motivates workers – Understanding the power of progress