How important is motivation in the finishing and coating industry?
It’s a life-sustaining strategy that can give your business an enormous competitive advantage! In other words, it’s vital.
This Part 1 of a 3-Part series
Jim CastigliaMotivated employees are productive, effective, and efficient. They’re fully engaged, bringing their hearts, minds, and spirits to the work they do. They’re more disciplined, take the initiative, work faster, communicate better, manage better, show up more, seek to reduce waste and increase sales and profits, exhibit better attitudes, adhere to and uphold the values of your organization, solve problems, and take more responsibility.
Plus, they’re more fun and appreciative. For these reasons, having highly motivated employees should be one of your most important objectives.
How to Motivate
The No. 1 motivating factor you can control as a leader is your ability to create an inspiring vision of an exciting future, one that attracts great people who want to be part of something special. So the first check is, do you have a clear (written) company vision? Secondly, has that vision been shared with your people?
Organizations with a powerful vision attract people; they rarely need to recruit or settle for mediocre employees. Consider those who seek to become Navy SEALs or part of the Army’s Delta Force, as well as other special operations groups.
Commander Mark Divine, U.S. Navy SEALs (retired), author of The WAY of the SEAL — Think Like an Elite Warrior to Lead and Succeed, tells the story of working on Wall Street after grad school as a CPA and MBA. Work became a daily grind. One morning while out on a run, he saw a Navy recruiting office poster for the SEALs that said, “Be Someone Special.” That call to be special resonated and led Mark to quit his job on Wall Street, join the Navy, and fast-track a career in the SEAL program, graduating as “Honor Man” (class MVP) of his BUD/S class. He spent nine years on active duty and 11 years as a Reserve SEAL Officer, being deployed to the Middle East and Iraq.
He had a profound sense that being an accountant for a large New York firm was out of step with his inner and true “drumbeat,” as he describes it.
(Re)Introducing Maslow
You may have heard of Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs,” where U.S. psychologist and behavioral scientist Abraham Maslow made a significant contribution to workplace motivation theory.
His book, Motivation, and Personality, was first published in 1954. He grouped human needs into classes and arranged them to form a hierarchy:
- Survival or Physiological needs: the most primitive needs comprising the need for food, water, shelter, warmth, and sleep.
- Security or safety needs: initially, these needs were a desire to be free of physical danger; now, it’s mainly social and financial needs like job security and a living wage.
- Social needs: needs for belonging and acceptance; to be part of a group, like a sports fan, member of a religious group, or a member of various intellectual societies.
- Ego-status needs: the need to be held in esteem by others and one’s self; needs satisfied by power, prestige, and self-confidence.
- Self-actualization needs the need to maximize one’s skills and talents; to achieve self-realization, self-expression, and self-fulfillment.
Maslow believed that the freedom to speak, the freedom to express oneself in other ways, to defend oneself, justice, fairness, and honesty were prerequisites for satisfying needs.
He believed that people were dynamic in satisfying their needs. For example, creative people are often driven by a desire for self-actualization and give that need precedence over others. He also thought that once a need was satisfied, it was no longer a motivator.
Maslow influenced later psychologists like Harvard’s Chris Argyris, as well as Robert Blake and Jane Mouton, who created the Managerial Grid model, a concept balancing concern for people with concern for tasks.
Actions to Take
So, start by considering the needs of your top team. Are their needs recognized and being met? Note that these needs can be achieved outside of work too.
Leaders help all their employees satisfy their needs at different levels. What strategies are you using to incorporate this into your organization and make it a competitive advantage?
The next part of this series on motivation will introduce you to other founding fathers of motivation theory. You’ll gain powerful perspectives on motivation and how to optimize this strategy in your company.
Jim Castiglia is the founder of Business Street Fighter Consulting and supports entrepreneurial business owners in their desire to grow and maximize the value of their business. He can be reached by email at JimC@BSF.consulting or by phone at 919.263.1256. Visit www.BSF.consulting
