Marten Runow, Performia International Founder says the following about motivation:
Motivation is both simple and complex. When it’s done correctly, it is very simple. When it’s done wrong, it can be problematic.
We have all experienced times in our lives when we were less motivated, when we were very tired of doing the same thing, when we dreaded every move.
Working with no or very low levels of energy (motivation) is frustrating, and in the third release of our Teams Magazine, we will look more closely at the issue of motivation.
First of all, motivation comes from within the individual. When you are totally motivated there is almost nothing that will stop you from achieving your goals no matter how ambitious they are.
In terms of production, we can easily see the difference between, for example, a highly motivated salesperson who loves interacting with clients and getting results compared to one who finds talking to people quite uninteresting.
As a sales manager, this situation becomes, to quite some degree, your problem. As part of this issue, we interviewed a very skilled production manager, Mr. Peter Ringer from the Czech Republic, who shares his extensive experience and success in motivating staff.
“IT IS THE MANAGER’S JOB TO MOTIVATE EMPLOYEES”
This is another giant myth. Tools for motivation, bonus systems, team-building sessions, and loyalty rewards, are all efforts to replace internal motivation with external motivation.
At first glance, external motivation works. But the success is short-lived, and soon new and more interesting strategies have to be found. In the end, all these strategies will not change the lack of internal motivation, which will remain insufficient or non-existent.
It is therefore quite evident that the solution is not the ability of managers to use motivational tools, but rather their ability to hire employees with existing internal motivation and then to support them (but not solely) with external motivational tools.
Do you want a more motivated team? Spend less time and energy on embellishing your motivational strategies, and instead invest in identifying and recruiting candidates who are internally motivated.
That is the optimum game that all parties would like to play – managers, employees, and ultimately also your customers.