Now let’s examine how management philosophy can motivate
employees. To do that we examine Maslow’s famous “Hierarchy” of needs. Maslow
defines motivation as feeling desire, want, yearning or that something is
lacking. (see p.22 of Toward a Psychology
of Being by Abraham Maslow) Maslow defined five levels of needs in his
hierarchy.
Physiological (air, water, etc.)
>Safety>Belongingness>Self-Esteem>Self Actualization
Maslow argues that:
1. To realize a need on
the right all the needs to the left of it must be satisfied first.
2. Workers that are
moving to the right are happier and more productive compared to workers that
are not moving, or moving to the left.
For each of the needs there can be organizational or management
problems that the effective leader can often solve. A few examples illustrate
this point.
Need Problem A Solution
Physiological needs Job stress Stress management
Safety Not knowing what’s MBO, fix unsafe
expected, fear, anxiety conditions
Belongingness Anxiety, cynicism, Participative
despair, stress management
Self-esteem Meaningless work Change job assigned,
job enrichment
Self-actualization Boredom, lack of
Empowerment,
opportunity career development
Maslow’s second contention shows us that our objective as
managers is to enable our workers to satisfy their need for self-actualization.
If we achieve this they are happier and motivated to be the most productive
that they can be. This would be relatively easy if all we had to do was to
empower them or show them that their careers are important to the organization
and being managed fairly. Maslow’s first contention shows why it isn’t that
easy. Managers have to satisfy workers other four needs before they are enabled
to realize self-actualization. Let’s briefly examine some things managers can
do to satisfy the needs of their staff.
Physiological needs-
Most basic physiological needs like air, water, food are satisfied outside of
the manager’s influence but there are others that managers must address to
achieve motivated workers. Today many workers are multitasked, worked long
hours and constantly pushed to do more with less. These working conditions can
lead to stress or just plain overwork. To minimize such effects it is necessary
for the manager to put extra emphasis on demonstrating fairness to all staff
members, communicating clearly why the job environment is the way it is and
what management is doing to improve the environment. Ignoring workers concerns
leads to stressed workers, disgruntled workers and the best employees seeking
other job opportunities. All of these effects result in lower organizational
effectiveness due to under productive workers.
Most workers are willing to work extra time or extra hard if
they understand the management is being fair, that there is good reason for the
need to work extra hard or long and that management is doing what is necessary
to correct the problems leading to the need for such working conditions.
Corrections may mean adding new equipment, improving work processes, adding
temporary or permanent staff, subcontracting work or a similar means of
reducing workload. Managers that accept that such working conditions are just
part of today’s work environment and believe they don’t have to do anything
about it will find that their best employees eventually leave so that they are
left with a less productive staff. Effective leaders search for creative ways
to improve working conditions and keep their staff fully informed.
Managers that don’t take care of obvious job problems create
unsatisfied physiological needs in all workers, not just the workers with the
problems. Sometimes a worker needs to be disciplined or even fired. Managers
that do not take prompt and fair action when disciplinary action is called for
lose the respect of all workers and cause lower productivity due to the
unsatisfied need for an environment that treats workers fairly. Putting up with
bad workers isn’t fair to the good workers.
An organization’s policies can cause unsatisfied physiological
needs if the policies are aimed at the 5 percent of employees that abuse rules
rather than at the 95 percent that follow rules. Effective policies are covered
in more depth in a later lecture.
Safety- Safety is an
often overlooked need. There are at least two dimensions to the need for
safety. There is physical and psychological safety and both are important in
organizations. There are legal, ethical and sound business reasons to ensure
the physical safety of all workers. About the worst thing that can happen to a
manager is having to tell the family of a worker that the worker was injured,
disabled or killed at work. If your reaction to the previous statement is
“that’s not me job, other people take care of those things” then you need to
think more deeply about it. Even if your organization has a health, safety or
health and safety department it is still the manager’s responsibility to make
sure that his or her workers are informed, are encouraged to report any safety
or health concerns and follow the safety guidelines of the organization. Health
and safety personnel cannot eliminate hazards and reduce injuries without the
active cooperation of managers and workers. If your reaction is that physical
safety issues relate to factories or mines but not to an office environment you
need to rethink again. Office environments are the source of many repetitive
stress injuries, back problems, exposure to electrical hazards and fingers
caught in copier machines. It’s your responsibility to make sure your workers
are not at risk of such injuries. Again, this is done by ensuring that the
environment is safe, that workers are informed, are properly trained and feel
comfortable reporting any safety or health concerns.
Psychological safety is more complex. It is easier to
understand if you think of it as fear. Workers that have fear are not at their
most productive because they spend time and energy thinking about the sources
of their fear rather than their work. Fear is so important there is an entire
lecture on fear later. Here I address fear resulting from insecurity about job
loss, promotion, annual reviews, acquisitions and mergers, layoffs, new
assignments, new managers etc. Almost anything that causes or might cause
instability can result in insecurity. Lack of knowledge about an organization’s
goals and plans also leads to insecurity. The effective leader satisfies this
need with open, frequent and factual communication with the workers. If the
leader practices good communications and has an “open door” policy so that
workers can come to the leader with their concerns than the leader minimizes workers’
insecurities. It is often impossible to eliminate insecurities but effective
communications and an open door policy can reduce insecurity so that it has
minimum effect on job performance.
Belongingness-
Humans are social. They need to be part of a group. Therefore workers need to
feel that they are a valued member of their organization. This means that they
have some input into the organization’s activities and are treated fairly by
the organization. The cliché “no input, no buy in” is critical to effective
leadership. Leaders should make the decisions but effective leaders seek the
opinions of their workers and consider the workers’ opinions before making
decisions. If workers are convinced their views were heard and considered then
most buy in to decisions even if the decisions aren't what they wanted.
There are lots of positive “team building” actions that
contribute to satisfying the belongingness need. Group lunches, after work
drinks, weekend golf outings and similar activities can be positive if they are
inclusive of the entire group. If not then they lead to hurt feeling on the
part of those left out. It takes few positive actions to satisfy the
belongingness need but one negative takes many positives to correct. The
effective leader thinks through team building actions carefully to ensure they
are inclusive and positive.
Rewarding workers is a dangerous activity. Group awards are
usually positive. Individual rewards, especially money based awards, risk
alienating more people than they motivate. Workers evaluate rewards with a
sensitive scale and if they perceive there is any unfairness they are offended
and demotivated. In general personal recognition is more effective than money
awards as long as it is inclusive of all who contributed to whatever is being
rewarded.
Some managers believe they can improve productivity by
encouraging competition between workers. The highest productivity results from
cooperation and teamwork among workers. Competition often inhibits cooperation
and can lead to workers undermining each other and thereby limiting the effectiveness
of the organization.
Competition and monetary rewards are not always
counterproductive. An example from my experience of effective competition and
monetary reward involved training workers in health and safety requirements for
their jobs. The manager of Health and Safety gave worker teams a list of health
and safety questions relating to their job. Teams that were able to answer
every question correctly were eligible for a drawing. The drawing was held at
monthly all hands meetings and the winning team received about $5 per worker.
Teams would go to great lengths to get answers to complex questions, including
contacting state health officials. It wasn’t the $5 reward that motivated these
workers. Rather it was the pride in their team being eligible for the public
drawing. Note that in this example there was cooperation and teamwork within
the teams and the teams believed the competition was fair.
Self-esteem- Workers
with high self-esteem are more productive than workers with low self-esteem
because they do not waste their energies worrying about their perceived
inadequacies. Workers with high self-esteem tend to direct more of their
energies toward their work thus they can be more creative and more productive
than low self-esteem workers. Achieving high self-esteem in individuals is the
result of recruiting people whose education, experience and interest match the
job requirements, providing them any special training necessary to do the job
properly, explaining clearly what is expected of the worker and interacting
with them frequently so that both the worker and manager have a good
understanding of how well the work is getting done.
If a worker is performing at or above expectations the manager
should let the worker know with encouraging comments. If there are problems
with the quality or quantity of work the manager should focus on the work
process and discuss with the worker what can be done to make the job easier or
to eliminate process problems. Eighty percent of the time the problems are with
the work process rather than with the worker. This means that if the worker is
criticized for poor performance four times out of five the manager is wrong and
the worker’s self-esteem is lowered as well as possibly reducing the workers
feelings of belongingness and safety.
If the manager and the worker interact frequently then the
manager can eventually correctly determine those situations where the work
processes are ok but the worker isn’t right for the job. In this event the
manager should take responsibility for putting the worker in the wrong job and
set out to find a better job fit for the worker. Effective leaders know that if
a job isn’t being done right the fault is theirs. They have picked the wrong
worker, not adequately trained the worker, not adequately explained the job or
the job process is defective. Other workers know this and lose confidence in
managers that blame workers for poor job performance.
Managers that wait for the annual review to discuss job
performance with workers are ineffective managers. Effective managers interact
informally with workers on a daily or at least weekly basis and make it a point
to have more formal discussions on a monthly or at least quarterly basis. It is
wise to have the more formal discussions over lunch or breakfast so that the
confrontational aspect of the dreaded annual review is removed. If you are
lucky enough to have control over the annual review process then eliminate it
and replace it with less formal monthly or quarterly discussions. In my forty
years of experience I have found no value in annual reviews. Both managers and
employees hate them and there is no value in the documentation collected in the
personnel files. Every time I have had to fire a worker I have found it
necessary to build and document the case after the decision to fire has been
made because there has never been anything useful in the worker’s personnel
file.
Do not conclude from my experience with worker’s personnel
files that the answer is to make sure files contain documentation of any
disciplinary actions and other negative stuff that can be used against workers
if necessary. Such actions destroy psychological safety and ensure demotivated
workers. If it is within your authority make sure workers files contain only
information required to comply with labor laws and make sure your workers know
there will never be negative stuff in their files. Discipline up to and
including firing can be handled effectively without such files.
You are likely familiar with the phase “management by walking
around”. Effective managers use this technique to interact informally with
workers. Five or ten minutes with a worker two or three times a week is usually
enough to keep up with what the worker is doing and to identify any problems
that require additional management attention. To be effective these brief
interactions must focus on the worker’s tasks, i.e. what the worker is doing
and how well the task’s processes are working (the quality and timeliness of
the task output). It’s ok to briefly ask about social issues but don’t let this
time be spent discussing the previous night’s sporting event or some other
social activity.
The work of up to 20 subordinates can be monitored in this
manner and still leave 20 hours per week to work on fixing problems and
executing the other tasks that are the manager’s job. Most managers have only
five to ten direct reports and can usually keep up with their direct reports’
work by spending only an hour or two each day. If the manager finds there isn’t
enough time to spend five or ten minutes two or three times per week with each
employee then enough of the managers other tasks should be delegated in order
to free up adequate time for this critical activity.
I know that in today’s flat and lean organizations there are
managers with far more than 20 direct reports who are also expected to be
workers as well as managers. If you are one of those managers you are forced
into a triage approach. Limit the time spent with each of the 80% of workers
that are doing fine to weekly checks so that you still have time to check with
each of the other 20% two or three times per week.
If you are in an environment where you are required to conduct
formal annual reviews you must still interact informally enough with your
workers that you and they know before the review what the results are. If the
review has any surprises for an employee then you have not been doing your job
and the employee’s self-esteem need is less fulfilled than it could be.
If you find
that the pace of blog posts isn’t compatible with the pace you would like to maintain in studying this
material you can buy the book “The
Manager’s Guide for Effective Leadership” at:
or hard
copy or for nook at:
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copy or E-book at:
