Posted on Aug 20, 2014

Improving Your Leadership: 10 Ways To Motivate Others

“Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.” – John C Maxwell

Leaders know how to motivate others. While the ability to motivate might seem almost instinctive for some, this is a skill that can be learned by everyone.

As a differentiating value, Motivation means an incentive or reason for action.

Steve Chandler and Scott Richardson produced an e-book called 100 Ways to Motivate Others. In an older post, I selected ten of these and highlighted how great leaders motivate others. Here is an additional 10 ways, adapted to show how effective leaders motivate others.

10 Ways to Motivate Others

Be the Cause, Not the Effect. Effective leaders cause things to happen. They spend little effort in responding to what’s happening to them and instead focus their energy on making things happen. When others see you as a cause instead of an effect, they will begin to think and act in the same way.
Never Refer to Senior Management as ‘They’. Everybody reports to somebody. So what is gained by criticizing them? Effective leaders never distance themselves from their superiors. The more you use the word “we” instead of “they” you build trust, encourage teamwork, and promote respect.
Keep Giving Feedback. The cruelest form of punishment in prison is solitary confinement. Yet many managers do this to others every day, by either giving a few patronizing words or worst of all ignoring them. Without outside feedback – positive or negative – the human mind manufactures its own feedback, most often based on the worst fears. To be an effective leader, do your homework, know what’s going on, and give continuous feedback (good or bad) to everyone around you.
Get Input From Your People. Effective leaders seek creative input from their followers. In addition to being useful to the task at hand, it’s also highly motivational for everyone involved. But the quality of your motivational skill is directly related to the quality of your questions. How can you better engage your team more often? What needs to change so your people feel they are making a difference? What are some ways you can inspire your team to get excited about the mission?
Accelerate Change. Effective leaders help others prepare for change and move through the four stages of change: from objection to resistance to exploration to buy-in. The faster you get people to buy-in the greater the impact from leveraging the change. Yes, you might even find you enjoy changing before you have to!
Know Your Owners and Victims. Owners are people who take full responsibility for their happiness. They simply need to be appreciated. Victims blame others or circumstances and are hard to deal with. But they can change. Effective leaders encourage ownership, nourish it when they see it, and even celebrate it. If you are realistic, honest, and upbeat, you can help victims see opportunities and possibilities and learn to become owners.
Leverage the Role of Thought. People are motivated when they think motivated thoughts. It’s not circumstances that determine how we feel. It’s our thoughts. Effective leaders help others think different thoughts – positive thoughts. As Marilyn vos Savant stated: “Feeling is what you get for thinking the way you do.”
Tell the Truth Quickly. Effective leaders share a common habit: they tell the truth faster than others do. Telling the truth identifies and dispels lies. And a common lie most people struggle with is a belief in limitations – their own and with others. The sooner you can help someone else see the truth of what is possible, what they can do, and the good they can accomplish, the sooner that person will be motivated to take action that makes a difference.
Don’t Confuse Stressing Out With Caring. Many managers get stressed out over not reaching their goals and then try to use this negative energy to fire up the team. This doesn’t work. It just makes everyone tense which hurts performance. Instead, effective leaders care about their team. When you care about others, you are relaxed and focused, which helps everyone perform better.
Manage Agreements, Not People. It’s a mistake to play amateur psychotherapist or try to manage people’s emotions and personalities. An effective leader is compassionate, and always seeks to understand the feelings of others. But they do not try to manage those feelings. Instead, they create agreements with team members, setting clear expectations for both parties. They then enter into those agreements on an adult-to-adult basis, always operating with respect.