Motivation?

Motivation – so much has been written about this subject.  What more can you learn?  

The reality is you can’t motivate someone else, you can only motivate yourself.  The most you can do as a leader is create an environment which holds the possibility for motivating others.  

There are six elements that have to be present in your environment to maximize the motivation of your staff.  Do these exist in your organization?

1. “Brightness of the future.”  Every employee needs to understand where the credit union is headed, that it will be a better place.  What exciting things are coming and does everyone know what those are?

2. Knowing what they do matters.  From the mailroom to your executives, each employee needs to understand how their contribution fits into the whole.  Does everyone know that their efforts mean something and why their efforts are vital?  

3. The bigger picture or cause.  This one should be easy.  How is the organization making the world a better place?  Don’t assume your employees read your marketing material, they need to hear this message over and over again.

4. Pride and appreciation.  Create a culture of acknowledgment and appreciation.  You’ll know you’ve done this if you hear employees from all levels thanking each other.  Acknowledgment and appreciation come from everyone, bottom up, top down and peer to peer.

5. Ability to grow and learn.  Too expensive?  Get creative.  Staff members have talents they would like to share – give them the opportunity to create a class.  Bring in someone for a full day to develop a group, rather than one person at a time.  The per person cost goes way down.  Help them grow.

Note:  Personal development is as important as specific professional development.  It shows you care about developing better people creating better employees.  Idea:  Bring in a professional organizer to show what workflow is all about!

6. The safety to make mistakes.  No one makes a mistake on purpose.  Is it a system problem, training issue or environment issue?  Promote mistakes – no, understand mistakes – that’s part of business.  Eliminate the fear and replace it with a learning opportunity.  When mistakes happen, follow by “what can we do to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

Now is the time to ask yourself, for each of the elements above, what evidence do I have that these exist in your organization?  Can you document these elements?  On a scale of 1 to 5, how do you rate the organization?  How does your staff rate the company on these elements?

Make sure the implementation of these elements is effective and is getting through to everyone.  Clear, constant communication is the key.  You want talented great people vs. average in your organization.  Make sure you have an environment that supports them!

What are you doing now that inspires your group, is worth talking about, and adds value for others?  You are the inspiration!

Leave your comments below.  Let’s learn from each other!

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