How to Motivate Others
A series of 100 ways to motivate others
This article is inspired by “ 100 ways to motivate others” by Steve Chandler.
I’m sure that we all want to be successful. If you are one of those who want so, you should surround yourself by the right people. That will help you more than you expect. It’s not easy to succeed on your own. You need some support from others and you need motivation.
People around you have a huge impact on you. If you are surrounded by successful mates, they will help and encourage you to achieve your goals. On the other side, if you are surrounded by lazy and disappointed people, they will destroy your ability to make the first step in your journey. In fact I didn’t mean that you should leave the people around you because they are not successful enough; ABSOLUTELY NO! But you can change the environment you live in. You can motivate others and you will gain benefits. It will reduce the number of lazy and unproductive co-worker or friends around you.
“If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.” Jean Harlow
So now we are on the same page. We all want to achieve success, but to achieve that we need more motivation in our life.
Motivating people is the key to your success at work, at home and in the future because no one can reach great goals alone. We all need the support of others.
If I were a super hero, I’d wish my super power be the ability to motivate everyone around me. Try to think of how many problems would be solved if you succeed in motivating people towards their goals. You will be surrounded by motivated and successful people. You won’t be upset any more because of your lazy co-workers.
Most people start trying to motivate others by giving them a lengthy speech, but this rarely works because it won’t work with the people who are not caring about your speech.
Most people we meet usually use the way which doesn’t work, because most people try to motivate others by moving their own anxiety onto them.
Parents do this with their kids, so managers and leaders propagate it in the workplace.
They get anxious about the poor performance, and then they move that anxiety onto their people. Now everybody is tense and anxious!
When you transfer your anxiety into people, you will also motivate them but only motivate them to get away from you as quickly as possible.
Most managers don’t use an effective way to motivate their employees and get them engaged during work.
Unfortunately, they kill their employees motivation.
You, as a manager, have the power to change employees attitude and motivate them.
Most of the following mistakes are easy to the managers to avoid. So don’t do the following in order not to kill their inside cheering spirit:-
1. Micromanage
- By Micromanaging, you make the employee feel useless, and this is an absolute way to demotivate employees.
2. Focusing ONLY on Mistakes
- You should focus on the wins too, not only the mistakes your team accomplished. This will ensure that they are always staying motivated. It would be good if you did it with “Sandwich Theory”, you can put the negative comments or mistakes within the good ones, it will achieve what you want, the employee will be aware know his mistake but in a good way
3. You Dismiss Ideas
- Make your employees feel like they have a voice in the decision-making process of the company. This behavior will make employees feel more like they’re part of the company.
4. You Don’t Keep Your Word
- A promise is sacred. When you promise your employees to do something, or even, not to do something, you better keep your word.
5. You Measure Employee Success in the Wrong Way
- It’s like measuring the quality of an essay by the number of words. Absolutely it’s unfair for them and it will make them feel like they would never succeed.
6. You Set Unrealistic Deadlines
- They need to feel that their work volume is appreciated well. It might destroy their motivation because they will feel like they will never catch the deadline.
7. You Pick Favorites
- It’s a double-edged weapon because when it motivates some employees it’s also demotivate the others who have not been selected as favorites. Everyone should be your favorite.
But the good news is that it is never too late to correct those mistakes in your work environment.
In the next posts, I will explain the “100 ways to motivate others” which the book discussed, even they are not completely applicable, there are actually 101 ways and I will explain all of them.
