Join motivation expert David Facer for a complimentary webinar and online chat beginning today at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (12:00 noon Eastern).
In a special presentation on Motivation as a skill: Strategies for managers and employees, Facer will be sharing some of the research underlying Blanchard’s new Optimal Motivation program and workshops. Participants will explore real-world examples and learn pragmatic strategies that can help managers and individual employees make progress in important areas such as engagement, innovation, and employee well-being. The webinar is free and seats are still available if you would like to join over 1,000 people expected to participate.
Immediately after the webinar, David will be answering follow-up questions here at LeaderChat for about 30 minutes. To participate in the follow-up discussion, use these simple instructions.
Instructions for Participating in the Online Chat
- Click on the LEAVE A COMMENT link above
- Type in your question
- Push SUBMIT COMMENT
It’s as easy as that! David will answer as many questions as possible in the order they are received. Be sure to press F5 to refresh your screen occasionally to see the latest responses.
We hope you can join us later today for this special complimentary event courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies. Click here for more information on participating.
How about, how does an employee self motivate when dealing with a very demotivational environment?
Hi Rhonda. Thanks for your question. One very powerful strategy is to look for ways to be creative without needing any new resources and no additional authority. Very often there are things you can do all by yourself!
Thanks David. And thanks for the great webinar – with training budgets limping along, these are very much appreciated.
My pleasure, Rhonda.
Great presentation – very similar to the book Drive – and very many great points.
That said – I have seen the “entitlement complex” develop at times when giving autonomy and the work/life blur happening to where employee personal issues become corporate issues.
I think there’s an accountability that has to stay consistent for this all to work. Absent that, it could stray.
Just one perspective… 🙂
Hi Chris. Of course the extreme of “entitlement complex” is a risk. I wonder, in your experience, has it become the general, overall situation for the majority of employees or was it a bit more of a rarity or outlier for a small number of people?
Can you provide some leading questions in order to discuss the motivational issues. Enjoyed the Webinar – many thanks, Mary
Hi Mary, I try to minimize mention of the fuller one- and 1.5-day Optimal Motivation programs, but here it makes sense. We spent a lot of time working with individuals on their language and helping them practice what we call Motivational Outlook Conversations. If it makes sense to you, it might be helpful to explore the full program.
Short of that, try dialing down any use of controlling language, veiled threats, and languaged used to “convince” someone that something you want them to do is good for them. Better to begin with asking them how they see the request fitting in with their personal goals, work goals, and larger sense of purpose. That would make a good start of it!
I really enjoyed this webinar. It seems like common sense yet not common practice. It’s helpful to think differently as a leader and when in moments of coaching other leaders.
Is there a book on Motivation as a skill?
I agree with your comment regarding this seeming like it is common sense. I get frustrated because we do not put it into practice enough. There are so many issues that arrise in business that if taken this approach wouldn’t be as big of an issue or an issue at all.
Absolutely, Amy. I have often thought we all will just come around to believing what our Grandmothers always said! Our work, of course, is to be the ones to put this knowledge into real practice all the time.
May I be so bold to announce that a book is in the works and that people like you will be among the first to know about it when it comes out. Also, David, Drea Zigarmi, and I have written articles and will continue to publish white papers available through Blanchard on the topic. David and I are also blog contributors, so please take advantage of that, too. Thanks for asking :)! Susan Fowler
Great. I look forward to getting the book once it comes out. Please say hi to Drea Zigarmi for me. I had the priviledge of working with him when he facilitated Situational Leadership II at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada. It was an experience which helped me grow significantly and i have appreciated ever since.
I will pass your message on to Drea–he lives for feedback such as yours. It satisfies his need for Relatedness and Competence!!
Susan – Thank you!!! Every where I work now, I bring to life Situational Leadership and create opportunities for others to learn and lead this way.
How would you suggest fostering this type of environement when you are not a top manager? I see many ways in which the company I work for would benefit from this type of management/motivation but don’t feel I am in a position to promote that change.
Hi Shari. I’d say just pay attention to your own motivational outlook. Clean that up so it is rich with the best practice behaviors and use an absolute minimum of the negative (worst boss) behaviors with yourself–and certainly with others. Like a fresh drop of water in the pool…it has an impact. It may not transform the water right away, but it is meaningful, important, and you’ll feel better for contributing it.
Thank you for today’s presentation. REally useful for a project I am currently working on, to help supervisors to enhance the performance of their people. One question I have…how do you distinguish between motivation and engagement? We talk a lot about employee engagement in our org, and the levers of engagement. But this feels different…yet I need a way to describe that difference to others. What are your thoughts? Thanks
Hi Clare. What do you sense are the differences? I’m curious–if you can put some words to it…
WEll, we talk about the engagement drivers being people, work, environment, rewards, policies and one more that is not coming to me instantly. We ask our people to rank these in order of importance for them personally, and then to rate how well they are met for them on a 1-10 scale. Then we talk about what we (supervisor and individual) can do to push the score up further. So there are some trasactional things we can do.
Motivation seems more transformational to me, somehow. It’s getting at people’s deeper needs. If I think about Maslow’s heirarchy of needs, it’s almost as though the engagement drivers are closer to the bottom, and then the self-actualization piece is the real motivation.
How do you see it?
David and I are here now–please type in your question and we will answer as many questions as we can over the next 20 minutes.
I’m curious – When polled, did most folks on the call indicate that they don’t feel the need to enhance their empathy and caring because they feel they do enough of this already, or because they feel it’s just not that important?
Jerry – My response was reflective of the fact that this is already a strength for us…
Great Dana–and Jerry–if you’re already satisfying the basic psychological need for relatedness well, keep it up. Like a high performing employee, what you want to do is maintain your performance. No need to ask or expect “more.”
Jerry – I feel that this is something that I already focus on.
Thanks, Dana & Shari. I would be interested in learning what David has found to be the case across all audiences… I feel these are skills missing from many leaders’ interpersonal skill sets.
Sometimes it’s as simple as asking how their day is going… or being sympathetic to personal concerns taking up their brain space – do you think this is lacking in leader skill sets because of a fear of becoming too personal?
I think that most managers/people care, it just gets lost in all the day to day and “mission” of the company. I wonder if those people that feel they have strong interpersonal skills but tend to heavily focus on “mission” are able to step back and see this as a weekness…just a thought
demonstrating empathy and caring is deeply important to me. At first, I consciously found ways to demonstrate this, now it comes much more naturally as it’s moved from something I need to think about in my head to how I feel in my heart. I know what it felt like to work in an environment which showed very little caring and I’ve vowed to never work in or be responsible for contributing to an environment like that again.
Fantastic, Amy. Powerful intentions you have set and you can be confident that others notice, so without even “trying” you are having a positive influence in the wider culture and organization.
I feel that a sesne of entitlement often has a negative impact on engagement… What actions do you think leaders could take to create an environment where entitlement expectations are lessened so that engagement can thrive?
The most powerful thing a leader can do to lesson the sense of entitlement in others is model the behavior of humility and community in her or himself.
Model the way. Start there.
At a more systematic level, how well do your organizational values encourage a more selfless way of working? How do the overt and unstated norms support better sharing, teamwork, and reciprocity? How do you foster a sense and the behavior of mutuality?
Oh, Mary’s question is great about what kinds of questions to use in the “Conduct Motivational Outlook Conversations”
Towards the end of the presentation you were discussing “soft managers”. What I heard was how sometimes managers may be too results driven that we can apply too much pressure to attain results that we actually should reduce the “pressure” and that can lead to better productivity and motivation. Did I comprehend that correctly?
Hi Matthew. Yes, you did get it fully. In so many 360 assessments I coach leaders around I see that they rely on pressure to “get things done.” They are so often stunned to learn that that pressure is actually received very negatively by their direct reports and other stakeholders. Think of it this way, to stay with the animal metaphor, like the great horseman leaders of Native American tribes will tell you, a horse will respond to your whip and run fast. But it will run fast over longer periods of time and be much healthier over the long term if it comes to want to run on its own.
Great information and presentation today! Thank you.
Thank you, Don. Glad you joined!
What is the best approach to take with team members that do not have the same level of sharing, teamwork and reciprocity as other team members?
I agree with Don–great presentation. I hope others from my organization attended!
Hi Soul Sistuh! MUAH.
Gail I’m curious, has the group dome MBTI or some other tool that would help reveal people’s preferences and style? I’ve found that introversion is often mistaken for “no initiative”
It’s true, Don. Introversion is often misunderstood. MBTI is a good tool. DISC is another one–of course you’re spoiled for choice in tools for learning more about our individual pesonalities.
Thanks for the comment, Don. the group has not participated in any team building methods, yet. It’s actually not on introversion issue, it’s more of an autonomy issue where some of the group does ‘their own thing’ without the rest of the group.
Hi Claire. I agree with you and in fact, years ago, while at HP I led a team developed a model based on Maslow. I think some sort of model is needed for people to see where they are as leaders and what the specific steps and changes are they need to make.
Thanks everyone for participating, asking your questions, and sharing your insights, skills, and wisdom with all of us. To “keep this thread going into the future”, head over to Webinars@KenBlanchard.com and send us your questions. We will do our best to share our insights promptly. Thank you again, and best wishes to you and everyone you care about.
Hi, David!
Thank you for the presentation! Can you share with us some ideas about how an employee can keep the work life balance and still to be highly effective? I see many people losing their motivation all of a sudden just because they’ve been too dedicated to their work.
Lol – I think I worked there!