Essential Management – Motivation, motivation, motivation

Howard Raynor argues that it?s the small things that can help keep a team motivated.

When I was 20, I used to believe that if the people I worked with were liberated by management, they would be free to do their best work. I felt that the current project was all, that if we could just cut the red tape and interference, then mutual responsibility focused on a collective goal would produce outcomes that a command and control management system simply could not achieve. It seemed to me that pay was part of the story but that in arts organisations it could never account for why we were doing what we were doing.

By the time I was in my thirties I believed that professional managers are expected to do their job; good ideas and good quality leadership were part and parcel of good professional performance; interest in the work and team attitude were part of what management were for. It took me until my forties to realise that motivation is not wholly intrinsic to each member of the team.

Motivation has some interesting facets that are not usually explained by standard accounts of Maslow and his pyramid of human needs. If you want to understand motivation in widescreen black and white just type ?Maslow?s hierarchy of needs? into Google. It is vital stuff but it doesn?t help with what to do. There are more publications out there that are more directly helpful ? the ideas from some of which I have tried to capture here.

Recognition

Thanks and team respect are part of the standard for leadership, and they are a requirement for the everyday success of the team. Pride in our own work and teamwork are also a vital part of success. The role of the leader in motivation is to ensure that good performance is recognised and reinforced, not annually through appraisal or by default, but by proactive recognition each and every day. This approach manifests itself every day in assigning worthwhile tasks, recognising individual and collective achievement, developing new challenges, building expertise, promoting positive attitudes and being clear about when the team is winning and learning.

To achieve a motivated team and organisation this positive perspective needs to be supported by a healthy regard for demotivating factors. Cutting out interference, building trust (which means doing what you said you were going to do), being brutal with mindless bureaucracy, directly addressing negative attitudes and ignorance; all these must remain on the daily agenda. Indifference to an organisation?s goals can be as lethal to success as overworking, another common problem in our sector. Failure is an event rather than a state of mind, in the same way that success is a state of mind and depends on the agreed goals. As I look at the second half of a career in the arts, and as the visitor economy beckons, it is clear that indifference towards the team or their adventures are the real killers in the game of success.

Definition

There is a misconception that motivation is something to do with pay awards and appraisal ? my experience is that it is nothing of the sort. Motivation is about defining tasks and responsibilities for people, listening to them, fixing time to meet with team members, holding regular team meetings, operating a policy of offering dignity and respect for all staff, asking advice from your team, and providing more one-to-one sessions, more face-to-face meeting and less email. It also sometimes means pain for the manager through delegating interesting work and, just as tough, providing effective feedback.

Get the environment right, and training starts to be increasingly effective. Not only does training improve employability and help with the career-path crazy paving but it also provides skill development for the team, personal development for the individual and, in exceptional cases, a learning resource for others. Sounds too difficult? Try not doing it and you will soon find that stagnation or chaos are just round the corner.

Keep it up

In addition to the team and training approach there is a powerful and simple reinforcement system that keeps motivation and morale up, and that helps us all on the performance front. It is also effective because everyone can do it no matter what their role. It would not be a Howard Raynor article without reference to incremental improvement, so here is the Kaizen motivation approach:

? When someone in your team is doing something right, specifically thank them.
? When you make a tiny breakthrough, tell people it is a breakthrough: small steps are just as important as huge ones.
? Next time you make a big breakthrough, hold a party and bring flowers. Give the flowers to someone who deserves them. However, remember that big improvements are small improvements, only more risky.
? Next time someone in your team covers you on something you missed, take six seconds to make a small fuss of them.
? Next time someone comes up with a halfway useful suggestion, thank them and encourage them to take it a fraction further.

Develop the most imaginative list possible of small things you can do to encourage individuals. It could include extending lunch by 15 minutes today, buying lunch for the said star, taking them to lunch, giving them tickets for a show, letting them subscribe to a new publication for the office, giving them a card on their desk for tomorrow morning, asking for their opinion and acting on their advice. These are all motivational tools that cost practically nothing and change the day for the recipient.

Develop a further list of tiny steps that are smaller still, like making eye contact or stopping what you are doing when someone asks you a question. Another way for managers to really surprise the team is to look at annual appraisal forms half way through the year and action something you agreed that you would do. Just watch for the look of surprise when you do this!

Teamwork

The top-down motivation model can work: it looks like leadership. However, creating motivation in the team is not just a top-down exercise. Knock-out success in highly motivated teams comes when the whole team tunes in to recognising small wins and giving attention to people when they get things right or raise their game. If you can imagine fifty people being positive, immediate and certain with their feedback, can you imagine how that organisation feels to work for?

Motivation is not a veneer that gets stuck on the top of the organisation: motivation is about the wood itself ? we are all part of it, we are mutually dependent. If you can only influence your department then that is where to start; think small and be persistent.

Howard Raynor is Chief Executive for The Bridgewater Hall.
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