The key to motivation
So you're a manager and some team members are not performing equal to their potential. What do you do?
| I will tell you right up front. The root cause of poor performance is the unanswered WHY. Every individual who is not running at "max speed" is somehow struggling with the WHY. We see this everywhere! Here's an example to illustrate: |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
In one of the world's largest and most successful companies I was recently asked to turn around a sales team of 26 Account Managers from poor to peak performance. One young man clearly stood out. In spite of his being inexperienced and new on the job his performance was out of the ordinary.
During our coaching session I asked him: "Why are you here"? It was as I expected. Unlike any of the others, as soon as we tapped into WHY, he could hardly stop talking. He knew! He told me about his desire to learn how to sell, about his failures in the past, about his feeling frustrated about his life and about how he wanted to make a serious change. Most of all, he wanted to be reunited with his family.
The sum of all these WHY's gave him the reasons he needed to perform on the job. They drove him to performance. Nobody had to push him. He was pulling himself.
When we know WHY our entire being shifts from "content" to what I like to call "desperate dissatisfaction". Reflecting on WHY helps us realise a number of important dissatisfactions, all of which can be grouped into three areas:
- Distrusted - WHAT
- Disabled - WHO
- Discouraged - HOW
Next time I'll comment on each of the above dissatisfactions.
Yes, motivation may be a challenging task, but no more do you need to wonder about where to start: Go one-on-one and begin the process of exploring WHY.
Comments
Log in or create a user account to comment.