Motivating Managers: A Toolkit by Debbie Whitaker
How do the best managers motivate and engage their teams?
OSC’s research demonstrates that enhancing employee engagement results in measurable improvements in business results. At organisation level, using the right engagement survey is critical and taking focused actions can boost engagement.
We also know from our work that is it the immediate line manager that has the biggest impact on employee engagement. We have all worked for great – and not so great – managers. And it feels vey different. The worst managers assume team members are just like them – that they have the same motivations, the same needs. And as bad, they also assume every team member is the same. So they adopt a ‘cookie cutter’ style of management, based on their own preferences, which will never work well for the whole team.
Whilst the very best managers have ‘hard wired’ talents that make them naturally suited to the role, other managers find it more of a struggle to get the best out of people. It’s just not who they are.
But all is not lost. The ‘not so great’ managers can get better. There are a number of behaviours that people can learn and practice to help them be better managers.
Spotting Engaged Employees
It’s very obvious when a team or individuals within it are engaged and when they are ‘tuned out’. There is a very different energy and ‘buzz’. Here are some quick and simple indicators:
| Engaged Team Members | Disengaged Team Members |
| Have a common vision of where their team/department is heading | Are unclear about the department’s – and therefore their own – goals and targets |
| You can feel a ‘buzz’ when you’re around them – they are enthusiastic and motivated to act | The team feels quiet and self-contained – there is a lack of enthusiasm and impetus to act |
| Think it’s an important job | Think ‘it’s just a job’ |
| There’s a lot of discussion and sharing of work issues – not idle chat | Keep their heads down |
| Contribute lots of ideas about how things can be done even better | Don’t speak up when things are going wrong or are not being done properly |
| Are quick to get a solution to problems when they emerge | Debate problems endlessly when they emerge without getting resolution or ownership for action |
| Team members volunteer to take on extra work and/or responsibility | Keep a low profile in case they get asked to do more |
| Smile when talking about their work | Appear unexcited or cynical when talking about their work |
| Love to collaborate with each other | Don’t interact with other team members much unless necessary |
| Know each other well – their strengths and what they enjoy doing, both inside and outside of work | Don’t know much about each others’ personal lives |
| Get on and do things | Complain how busy they are |
| Take accountability for issues | Spend time talking about why things are not their fault |
| Enjoy having interaction with their boss | Keep a distance from their boss |
| Trust their boss and have lots of respect for him/her | Are suspicious of their boss and have little respect for him/her |
| Look up and acknowledge strangers when they come into the department and are welcoming | Keep their heads down and tend to ignore strangers when they come into their department |
| Are energetic in getting to the root of a problem and getting things back on track when commitments have been missed | Give excuses, explanations, rationalise or blame others when they miss commitments and deadlines |
| Try to solve work problems – either their own or customers’ – themselves | Refer or escalate issues or problems to others |
| Are quick to recognise and celebrate each others’ successes | Don’t take time out to celebrate the team’s successes |
| Support and care about each other | Show little care for each other |
| Have lots of healthy debate and challenge constructively | Undertake limited debate and challenge – they go with what the boss says |
| Lots of other people in the company want to join this team | People in the company don’t want to transfer into this team |
| Encourage their friends to join the company as they know they’d enjoy it | Warn their friends not to join the company |
| Are ambassadors – they talk with pride about their work and their company | Are critical or disparaging about their company |
| Go out of their way to help customers and other stakeholders | Lack patience or interest in customers and other stakeholders |
| Are happy to spend time at the end of the working day talking to colleagues about the day’s events | Want to get out of the office as quickly as possible at the end of the working day. They do the minimum they can |
| Are surprised how time flies at work | ‘Clock watch’ as time seems to drag |
| Take personal responsibility for and pride in their work | Pay less attention to the quality of their work and commit more errors than most |
| Try to come into work no matter what | Are absent or late more often than most |
Adopt Behaviours of High Performing Managers
We’ve studied what makes great managers do differently to other managers. By ‘great’ we mean those who achieve superior business results and high levels of engagement and customer satisfaction.
These behaviours are clustered into four themes:
- Providing focus
- Knowing the real person
- Supporting and nurturing
- Inspiring
Knowing the real person
The good news is that managers can apply specific behaviours to better motivate and engage their people. As part of OSC’s engagement services, we provide full engagement behavioural guides and practical management tools. Below are just some of the management behaviours around ‘knowing the real person’ our research has shown to be at the heart of engagement:
- Spend one-to-one time to get to know team members as individuals and not just to discuss work tasks
- Create time during one-to-ones to talk about how the employee is feeling
- Take interest in and solicit information about what is happening in the employee’s life outside work
- Identify each employee’s strengths – what they are really good at – and help them use these strengths more consciously at work. Identify each person’s ‘non-strengths’ and help them to find ways to sue their strengths to compensate, or developing coping strategies
- Observe the employee to identify what really motivates him or her. Build more of these motivators into their work or how you manage him or her
- Encourage the team to get to know each well as people – by having social events outside work, lunch together, regular team meetings
- Select team members based on their talent and natural strengths for the role – not just their experience, skills and qualifications
Try an Engagement Review Discussion
OSC provides tools to help managers to get deeper insights into the motivators and needs of individuals within their team so they can manage each person better. Under ‘knowing the real person’ above, we talked about observing a team member to work out what gives them a ‘buzz’. But there is a much quicker way – an Engagement Review Discussion.
Use our Engagement Review Discussion to understand what drives each employee’s engagement: such as their strengths and how they are using them, ensuring clarity on expected work outcomes, how they like to be managed and recognised. The critical piece is then putting these insights into action and adapting your management style to make them a reality.
Try a 30-minute discussion that gets to the heart of engagement. Some managers say they have learned more about the person through this short discussion than in the previous three years of managing him or her.
Implications for Organisations
Organisations should recruit or appoint only managers who have the ‘hard wired’ talents to manage well. However, all organisations have managers who are not the perfect fit and so to improve their skills, we recommend providing:
- Management development training on the behavious of great managers so manages can ‘up their game’.
- Engagement Review Discussion guides to managers and encourage them to use it with their teams. Simple shifts in how they manages individuals can make the world of difference to performance, productivity, retention and engagement