Motivating the Management Team

Managers influence and motivate their people and their organizations. The question is, how? We need not concern ourselves about the small percentage of people who are self-motivated. These people somehow find something positive in every action even though it leads to temporary detours or failures. They have no difficulty recovering from those supposed failures that often open new avenues for exploration.

There are two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. People who are intrinsically motivated receive satisfaction from developing their own capabilities through self-discovery and self-development. Personal growth dominates their actions. They have an ever-present desire for originating or participating in new experiences. Rewards for performance are not a major issue. Extrinsic motivation includes all the tangibles like compensation, advancement, fringe benefits, challenging work assignments, special perks, and any other symbols or actions that differentiated the contributions of individual workers.

There are no "yes" or "no" answers to motivating a group. Well-motivated team members have a certain something that attracts others. They have an ability to set the mood. They're not the rah rah people, but are simply people who have the ability to bring others along. Managers need to recognize that motivating the group involves taking advantage of all the talent available. People respond differently based on their personal needs for job satisfaction. Abraham Maslow, Frederick Herzberg, and Douglas McGregor set forth some guiding principles that you need to consider.

Maslow presented a hierarchy of needs that states that the lower level needs must be provided before the higher level needs become important. Maslow's hierarchy of needs involves meeting:

• Physiological needs, which include basic life-sustaining elements like food, water, air, environmental, and so on.

• Safety needs, which include feelings of security, being free from danger and threats, good health, and stability.

• Social needs, which include acceptance by others, respect from others, a sense of belonging, and community affiliation.

• Self-esteem needs, which are fulfilled by recognition and respect from colleagues and by voiced approval from others.

• Self-actualization needs, which relate to finding self-fulfillment opportunities on which to build a career.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs provides a general guideline of how personal needs are met but as always there are inconsistencies. The driven person often achieves major breakthroughs even when the basic requirements of survival such as food are not available. The higher level needs may be totally disregarded because of a particular drive to accomplish some objective. The list ranges from people like Madame Curie, the discoverer of radium, who lived on radishes and worked in an intolerable environment, to today's entrepreneurs, who sacrifice comfort and security and mortgage all their assets and often come close to mortgaging their families to realize their goals. However, it is important that you be aware of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You're really looking for people whose self-esteem needs are fulfilled through accomplishments and not some self-esteem building program. You're looking for self-actualized people who find self-fulfillment opportunities on which to build a career. It's difficult to build a team with people who focus only on their physiological, safety, and social needs.

Frederick Herzberg's research considered the differences between what he referred to as hygiene factors and motivation. He found that peoples' attitudes toward aspects of their jobs that are generally considered motivators basically contributed to job satisfaction and not motivation. He referred to these as hygiene factors, which included company policies, supervision, interpersonal relations, working conditions, and salary and benefits. Their absence caused dissatisfaction but their presence did not increase motivation. Herzberg's motivators included achievement, recognition, work itself, responsibility, and advancement.

It's difficult to argue with Herzberg's conclusions. From years of experience and contact with hundreds of managers, I've found that motivation depends on the people within a team who have the energy and enthusiasm to move the team to greater accomplishment because the work is challenging. Yes, they want the recognition and added responsibility, but the means toward achieving that end involves challenging work. Herzberg's motivation may be summarized as follows: forget praise, forget punishment, forget cash; make their jobs more interesting instead.

In 1956, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation made a grant to Douglas McGregor and Alex Bavelas to explore the issue of whether successful managers were born or made. This effort was an attempt to substantiate the thesis that the human side of enterprise is about how management perceives its role of controlling the human resources that determine the character of the organization. The authors decided that the key question for managers is: "What are the key assumptions (implicit as well as explicit) about the best way to manage people?"

This research effort yielded the concepts of the Theory X and Theory Y managers. Theory X managers assume that the average human being has an inherent dislike for work and will avoid it if possible, and that most people must be coerced, controlled, directed, and threatened to put forth adequate effort. Average human beings prefer to be directed, wish to avoid responsibility, have relatively little ambition, and want security above all other benefits. You have probably met some of these people in your professional work life and possibly among your social contacts. There is a body of evidence to support Theory X. Theory X as a managerial strategy doesn't work with professionals as a rule, but I have seen these principles applied successfully with several super-competent scientific researchers. It does appear that some very highly skilled professionals need to be controlled because they lack ambition and often do not know just how to get started. They often fail to know how to work and become involved in pursuing non-essential details.

Theory Y, as you may surmise, is at the other end of this control-and-freedom continuum. Theory Y is based on the principles that:

1. The expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play and rest. [Comment: It's not quite the same as play and rest.]

2. External control and threat of punishment are not the only means of bringing about effort toward organizational objectives. [Comment: Agree, but punishment may be necessary and productive at times, if applied judiciously.]

3. Commitment to objectives depends on the rewards associated with achievement. [Comment: Yes and no; commitment is often given freely without any rewards.]

4. The average human being learns not only to accept but to seek responsibility. [Comment: It's all about accepting personal responsibility for one's future.]

5. The possibility to exercise a relatively high degree of imagination, ingenuity, and creativity in the solution of organizational problems is widely distributed in the population. [Comment: Employees may possess these competencies, but they need the will and determination to pursue them to a conclusion.]

6. Under conditions of modern industrial life, the intellectual capabilities of the average human being are significantly underutilized. [Comment: This represents a significant loss to organizations and to their people—people under-utilization is a career death sentence.]

Theory X and Y have never really been proven but we can rationalize them with some degree of logic. Theory X is based on direction and control; Theory Y is based on integration where members of the organization can achieve their own goals by directing their efforts toward the success of the organization. The question usually asked—Are you a Theory X or Theory Y manager?—doesn't make any sense. While many managers fall at the extreme ends of this continuum, competent managers fall someplace on that continuum and exhibit the characteristics of X and Y depending on the situation.

Motivation begins by recognizing that people have different needs. The increased diversity of the workforce has brought the issue of individual differences into sharper focus. We know that providing for individual differences determines performance. However, managers cannot agree to provide for all those individual differences. The organization does not exist solely to fulfill personal needs. It does have a self-interest in meeting those needs to the extent possible, but not by taking away personal responsibility. As a manager you decide just how far you'll go to accommodate those differences. You motivate by challenging all members to exceed performance targets by clearing away obstacles and taking part in the action. Don't micromanage, but get involved.