Your staff members are the key to your success, and motivation affects employee performance that ultimately affects the departmental, divisional and organizational objectives. Only satisfied employees lead to satisfied customer.
• Motivated Employees Make Your Job Easier
To be a successful manager/supervisor, you must first understand that you cannot motivate anyone; you can only create an environment that encourages and promotes the employees’ self-motivation. Motivation is getting people to do what you want them to do because THEY WANT to do it. The challenge is to give them a reason to want to do it because doing it will satisfy a need they have. You have to tune in to their needs, motives and reasons, not yours.
Secondly, you must also know what kind of behavior you want the staff to demonstrate. In other words, what do you want the employee to do differently ? For example: Do you want your staff to be punctual, more committed to work; co-ordinate with others in a friendly manner; meet deadlines; assume more responsibilities etc. You must first be clear about your objectives and expectations before you can communicate them to your staff.
• You Are the Motivator
The most important thing to keep in mind is that you are the most critical component in the motivation process. Your actions set the tone, trend and tempo of the process. Many managers / supervisors embrace a ‘carrot-and-the-stick’ approach to motivate their staff. These practices take the form of incentive programs, promises of promotions, rewards and bonuses. Some others employ the symbolic ‘whip or club’ by emphasizing the negative results of their behavior. For example, a manager might say: If you do not start coming to work on time, you’ll be fired ‘ or ‘You will never get ahead if you continue to make these kinds of mistakes’. All these methods are just short-term and create no permanent behavior change.
Executives whose management style is dictatorial,
