JOHN SIMONETT

Seminar Presentation on Staff Motivation

Ramada International Hotels and Resorts

International Brand Conference, Geneva: 7th – 9th October

Brief (as per Daniel Danneman)

  1. Ways to motivate staff during meetings, in every day dealings and on the job
  2. “Employees as Customers” approach when dealing with staff
  3. The importance of Celebrating Success – which successes are worth/not worth celebrating? How do you create “quick successes”?
  4. Making motivation a part of Leadership culture

1): Group warm up and energizer activity

2) Introduction:

Who/Why/What

3) What is Motivation?

Brief Theoretical considerations:

At it’s most simple level Motivation can be defined as “The force that makes us do things to meet our needs” however – needs vary from person to person …..

alternative views to consider:

The Traditional View: Carrot vs the Stick (no longer relevant) – this might work to motivate a donkey – but treat people like donkeys and they will behave like donkeys…..

The Management Guru’s View:

“We know nothing about motivation – we can only write books about it”

Peter Drucker – Father of Modern Management Thinking

An honest admission of the complexity of the subject of Staff Motivation!

Illustrating the problems of trying to analyse and quantify the process.

The Psychologist’s view: Motivational Theory: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

(following a brief summary) Main conclusions:

- we care for little else until a need is met

-when basic needs are met we are motivated to move to the next level

-A satisfied need ceases to motivate

-Salary and remuneration are often perceived as the main reasons for staff motivation: however this is not the case - in practice we are more likely to be motivated by

  • social and professional recognition of our peers
  • self esteem and self fulfilment

Needs depending on Extrinsic factors are easier to satisfy:

Job security, salary/bonus, quality of management, working conditions, job variety, Holidays, Physical Environment, Promotional opportunities

Then needs based on the Intrinsic Factors: Values, Skills development, Self esteem

WORK meets Primary needs: Income, Community, Prestige

The last need modern society is moving towards a need for self esteem. Traditional Business methods are poorly equipped to meet this need – in fact self esteem often runs counter to this need.

SELF ESTEEM is not met by Prestige and Privilege (which are more symbolic than substantial) – but is built when someone is seen to be Worthy of making choices and by having the opportunity to express potential – i.e. genuine empowerment.

Some employees are showing the needs of SELF ACTUALISERS – wanting their work to have MEANING and PURPOSE … and a change of management style is required

Approaching a better understanding of Motivation: Consider

The Sports Coach’s View:

“Treat a person as he or she is and they will remain as they are. Treat them as they could be and they will become as they should be” Jimmy Johnson NFL Coach

leading to perhaps the fundamental truth in developing motivated people:

The best motivation is from within.

The Business Leader’s View:

“People become motivated when you guide them to the source of their own power, and when you make heroes out of employees who personify what you want to see in the organisation” Anita Roddick Founder of Body Shop

Also consider Sir John Harvey Jones’s view:

“The best people are self motivated. They do their best work when they have come to believe, through their own processes, that what they are doing is worthwhile. The free man is always better than the slave”

3) HOW TO MOTIVATE

“The secret of motivation is the Holy Grail that every business leader and manager would dearly love to find” No-one has yet found it… but we know what we are looking for

There are many motivational factors that affect an employee's motivation. The following have been identified as the common factors of motivation: (open for discussion)How we manage and encourage these characteristics may hold the key to motivating people.

Is money and financial reward the magic solution to motivation? “Partly”

Research has shown that there are many other tools to motivate staff. The most common answers from a recent survey into what people felt were important factors are:

  • Being assigned a challenging job which gave them a sense of achievement, responsibility, growth, enjoyment and promising promotion prospects
  • Their efforts were recognised and appreciated by management and the public – i.e. their success is celebrated
  • They received the trust and support of supervisors
  • They can complete the job by themselves
  • A harmonious and pleasant working environment

Characteristics of a Motivated Staff:

  • Energetic and full of initiative
  • Know, Understand, Believe and Practise the mission of the organisation
  • Want to think for themselves
  • Appreciate recognition and Challenges
  • Seek opportunities to improve their capabilities
  • Take proactive and positive actions to solve problems
  • Believe that they could contribute to make a difference – whatever their level in the organisation
  • Set their own challenging and achievable work targets

ASK delegates if they recognise these factors in their own attempts to motivate their staff. Which are relevant – which are not – what others can they suggest

Again ask for feedback

Practical Activity: The four man lift: demonstrating how negative mind set can impede completion of a seemingly impossible task, and how when removed the task seems ridiculously easy…. And also to illustrate the importance of celebrating success….

Leadership v Management

Consider :

-the difference between Leadership and Management – easy to recognise a good L but hard to define

A manager is primarily an “administrator – an organiser”

A Leader is someone “whose ideas, actions and guidance influence the behaviour of others”

In Military terms The Adjutant is the Manager – the CO is the Leader responsible for Direction and Motivation…..

Leadership Styles:

-A good leader will adopt a leadership style appropriate to the circumstance

-Being a good leader does not imply autonomous/autocratic decision making

(Teller – Seller – Participator – Delegator)

We all look for LEADERSHIP: from childhood = Parents and Teachers

In work we sometimes notice some Leaders have stopped doing what our parents did: NurturingDeveloping and Growing and have replaced it with a very narrow aspect ofParenthood/Teacherhood = Control and Discipline

-the importance of Communication Styles: PAC “Ego States”

(Parent: Scolds/Points finger/Lectures/Corrects

Adult: Factual/Rational/Makes decisions/Listens/Analyses/suggests alternatives

Child: Emotional/Sulks/whines/throws tantrums/expresses joy)

Anyone recognise these in people in your workplace?

Our PAC state varies – but we should always strive for Adult to Adult interaction. Behaviour breeds Behaviour!

The Three “E”’s of Leadership

ENERGY

EMOTION

EXAMPLE

People only change their behaviour when it is explained with passion and

commitment and modelled to show the benefits of undergoing the change. So the rules of the 3 “E”’s are:

-instead of telling people what to do – tell them what you’d like to see “happen”

-tell them why

-Don’t ask them to do anything you wouldn’t do

-Tell them with PASSION (we are creatures of emotion, sensation and intuition as much as reason…)

-Live the message

And when they do make the change happen – reward it – loudly, immediately,

publicly. Send positive messages that these are now the values that matter in your organisation.

SO: How do we motivate people at work? Broadly speaking, we can achieve this at two levels: the personal and organizational level.

The Personal Level

People are motivated because they know that their work is worthwhile or when they experience their work as meaningful. How?

There are in fact many ways to let staff experience the meaningfulness of their job:

  • Delegate tasks that challenge and stretch the skills and abilities of staff.
  • Instead of assigning part of a task, let staff be responsible for the whole task from beginning to end to produce a visible outcome.
  • Let staff understand why they are needed.
  • Let staff understand how the result of their work has a significant impact on the well being of other people, and how it contributes to the overall success of the enterprise.
  • Explain to staff the vision, mission and values of the organisation, and how their work aligns with them.
  • Promote ownership of problem solving.
  • Empower team members.
  • Involve staff in making management decisions.

Motivation comes from an act of recognition, a word of encouragement, or a sense of respect. It is the power of acknowledgement that brings enthusiasm to worthwhile work. And the good news is that every manager has an unlimited supply of such power. Use it constructively!Encourage the worst staff and praise them when they do something right.

Give TRUE congratulations - Timely, Responsive, Unconditional, Enthusiastic.

  • Celebrate what you want to see more of.
  • Cheer any progress, not just the result.
  • Tell people what a great job they've done or present them an award, and make their achievements known to the community.
  • Catch people doing things right, not just catch them doing things wrong.
  • Give positive feedback when you spot performance improvement.
  • Recognize quality performance of individual team members and thank them personally.
  • Give credit to team members for their assistance to your achievement.

The aim should be to provide a stimulating and open environment in which employees feel comfortable to make suggestions. Leaders should work with their employees to refine a rough idea or even draft a totally new suggestion for improvement. When this pervades, loyalty and commitment from employees will be achieved. Therefore, as a leader, in order to motivate your people, you personally have to be:

  • a role model for team members.
  • a motivated manager yourself.
  • brave enough to admit it when you are wrong
  • able to speak positively all the time.
  • organized yourself.
  • open-minded to suggestions and opinions.
  • attentive to team members' emotional needs, be a human leader.
  • accountable, so team members feel secure enough to take risks.

The basic principle underpinning motivation is that if staff are managed effectively, they will seek to give of their best voluntarily without the need for control through rules and sanctions - they will eventually be self-managing.

Managers sometimes slip into the habit of:

  • Always give orders and instructions, allowing no disagreement.
  • Always expect staff to give twelve hours of output for eight hours' time and pay.
  • Staff are workers - their job is only to follow orders.
  • Staff are not supposed to know the details; they are classified and need not know more than their boss' orders.
  • The essence of staff management is control - the supervisors' only responsibility is to catch wrong behaviors and to avoid their repetition by punishment and discipline.

(A bit extreme maybe – surely no modern manager thinks like this? )

Do you want your staff to work in a demotivating environment? If not, what can you do?

  • Value individuals as persons.
  • Be result-oriented, disseminate the purpose and objectives of tasks.
  • Give people work that demands their best and allow them to learn and move ahead into uncharted territory.
  • Keep team members informed of new developments.
  • Encourage problem solving instead of faultfinding.
  • Never say, "You're wrong" when you disagree with them.
  • Deal with errors constructively; be helpful at all times.
  • Be ready to coach team members.
  • Recommend inspiring training courses for team members.
  • Go to team members' place instead of asking them to come to your office all the time.
  • Encourage team members' involvement in management decisions.

Group breakouts to collate ideas , followed by discussion and feed back:

(Based on D. Danneman’s brief) Each group to take each of the aims of the brief and come up with practical examples from their own experience relating to:

- Ways to motivate staff during meetings, in every day dealings and on the job

- “Employees as Customers” approach when dealing with staff

- The importance of Celebrating Success – which successes are worth/not worth celebrating? How do you create “quick successes”?

- Making motivation a part of Leadership culture

Summary and close: plenary session to discuss/collate best ideas for possible implementation based on the above

Prepared in consultation with Daniel Danneman, Vice President Global Training, Quality Assurance & Standards, Ramada International Hotels & Resortsto align with and reinforce conference aims.

John Simonett