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Why you can’t motivate your team – and what you can do instead

Motivation is a challenge every manager meets sooner or later. In charities, councils and other organisations working for social good, it can be easy to take your team’s motivation for granted. People chose this work because they care, so surely they’re motivated?

Often we don’t think about motivation at all until something goes wrong. Targets slip. Teams clash. Mistakes creep in. A much-loved and valued colleague hands in their notice.

You might find yourself wondering why someone who signed up to a cause they believe in seems so flat. Or why your senior officer’s accuracy has dropped off a cliff, when they used to be the most diligent member of the team. It’s like they don’t care any more. How can you get your people engaged and motivated again?

The answer starts with a surprising idea: you can’t motivate anyone. But you can do a lot to help.

Motivation isn’t something you can do to someone

It sounds odd. Isn’t motivating staff part of a manager’s job? Not quite. Motivation comes from inside a person. What you can shape is the environment around them.

Frederick Herzberg, one of the best-known thinkers on motivation, put it well. Your job isn’t to run around hand-cranking everyone’s generator. It’s to help people install their own.

So while you can’t motivate your team, you can help unlock the motivation that’s already there. Two classic thinkers, Abraham Maslow and Frederick Herzberg, help explain how.

Maslow: our needs come in layers

Psychologist Abraham Maslow suggested we’re motivated by five kinds of need, roughly in this order: physical needs like food, rest and warmth; security and safety; belonging; esteem and recognition; and self-fulfilment (growing, learning and reaching our potential). You may already know this as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Four ideas from his work are especially useful for managers.

Lower needs come first. People rarely focus on growth while their security feels shaky. During a restructure, worry about job security will shape someone’s behaviour far more than the promise of a team away day.

A met need stops motivating. Once someone feels they belong, extra socials or more team meetings won’t spark much. They’re likely looking for the next thing: development, progression or recognition of their work.

Threatened needs come back. A confident, high-performing manager may never think about job security. That is, until redundancies are announced. Then it’s all they can think about.

Higher needs are a path to growth. When people get the chance to achieve, earn respect and learn, they tend to become more independent, flexible and responsible. Hold those chances back and it’s hard to expect people to handle change well.

So when someone seems demotivated, ask yourself:

• Which need isn’t being met?
• Can I remove what’s getting in the way?
• Can I help them reach for the next level?

Herzberg: what satisfies us isn’t the opposite of what frustrates us

Frederick Herzberg built on Maslow’s ideas and tested them in workplaces around the world. He found that the things that make people satisfied at work are different from the things that make them dissatisfied.

He called the first group motivators. These are about the work itself: achievement, recognition, responsibility, progression and doing work that matters. They line up with Maslow’s higher needs.

He called the second group hygiene factors. These are about the conditions around the work: pay, policies, admin, supervision, working conditions and relationships with colleagues. When these feel unfair, people get frustrated. When they’re right, the frustration eases. But that alone won’t inspire anyone.

In other words, fair pay and decent conditions can stop people feeling fed up. They won’t make them fired up. Without goals, feedback and chances to develop, people may still do their job. But they’re less likely to use their initiative or adapt to change.

Putting it into practice

So what does this mean for you and your team?

Start with Maslow. Where are your team’s needs being met, and where aren’t they? Some of the basics may be in your gift to fix: a quieter space to work, a more realistic workload, or clear and honest updates during a period of uncertainty.

Then look through Herzberg’s lens. If a team seems flat, check the hygiene factors first. Are there unfair processes or everyday niggles you can sort out? Once those are in hand, turn to the motivators:

• Are you recognising good work, specifically and often?
• Does everyone have clear, achievable goals?
• Are there chances to learn and take on new responsibilities, even when promotion isn’t on the table?

That last question matters in our sector, where budgets are tight and routes to promotion can be limited. Growth doesn’t have to mean a new job title. Leading a project, mentoring a new starter or representing the team at a partner meeting can all meet that need to develop and be recognised.

Want to take this further?

Take a look at our management training programmes and find the level that works for you. Perhaps you’re preparing yourself (or colleagues) to step up to management, or you’re in your first managerial role, or you’ve been at it for decades. Learning, practising and refreshing your people management skills is never something you’ll regret investing in.

And if you’d like to help managers across your organisation get better at unlocking motivation, we can run in-house training tailored to your teams. Call us on 074 3690 3103 to find out more or contact us online.

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