Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation | Hacker News Reader

Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation

hbswk.hbs.edu

84 pointscaustic15 comments

One of the things I was taught was that when leading/managing a team, the six things (in order of importance) you should focus on for ensuring a high performing satisfied team are:

1. Clarity - ensure your team understands the end goal and what they are trying to achieve

2. Standards - ensure standards are set (standard for quality of work, behaviour etc)

3. Responsibility - give employees responsibility, trust and hold them accountable for their actions

4. Flexibility - give employees control over their work day, don't spoonfeed or straitjacket them

5. Recognition & Rewards - positive feedback etc

6. Teaming - ensure a team spirit is developed

As someone who has managed technial teams from 4 to 90 people, I've found these 6 factors are a pretty good guide. Most people focus on #5 and #6 when discussing how to have a productive team, but you seldom see #1 to #4 mentioned - they may be self-evident, but I've seen more teams suffer from the first four factors being absent or neglected than not.

They're not mentioned or enumerated because it's not popular to provide those things. When people get in positions that are ostensibly powerful, they more often than not cherish their position of power, and things that seem to trivialize that power, like hands-off delegation or allowing real flexibility, are not seen as pleasing, even if they produce better results in the long run. In many cases, even if you have someone in control of a certain group who is not threatened by proper management, his boss or his boss's boss will find such a style of governance ridiculous and think that the good manager is slacking off all day because he's not nitpicking or ordering around his employees, because the boss or the boss's boss is one of the people described earlier.

I once worked for a great manager who was canned after eight months because his boss couldn't understand non-egocentric management techniques.

Management consultants don't sell this advice because management consultants don't make money by producing good managers, they make money by making their clients happy and getting referrals, and advice like 3 and 4 does not please very many "powerful" people.

Yup - sadly I have to agree with you - and unfortunately with no support from senior management, all that encourages is PHB behaviour.

However, part of being a good manager (although they seldom teach managers how to do this) is being able to manage the boss/senior management/execs so that those people develop the confidence to allow the manager to exercise their 'non-egocentric management style' - it's a lot of work and damn hard if the senior managers don't have faith in this, but it can be done.

In my experience, my bosses do trust me because every time I delegate responsibility to my team and they complete the task successfully, I make a point of saying 'I told you so'. But I've had to put my own reputation on the line many times backing my team to do the job without my micro-management. And I the reason I have confidence in my team is because I spend a lot of time coaching my team leads and senior techs who in turn coach the rest of the team.

Ultimately, IMHO, the key to a good manager is one who spends time with their team and has the strength to carve out time in their daily routine to do so. It isn't an easy task and sadly often goes unsupported and unrecognised.

Edit: Oh and the way I carve out time for my team - I let any phone call that is not from a recognised number (and even some that do) go through to voicemail. My staff are always amazed when they are talking with me that I will ignore a ringing phone (even if it's from my boss) and focus on them. My argument is that even if a system has gone down, there are plenty of 'escalation' contacts to try - the manager should not be the micro-managing escalation bottleneck - especially when they are engaged in face to face conversations. To me, it's basic respect - but I also find that by following this policy, people gain confidence in the rest of the team to handle escalations and I gain so much valuable time which I then invest back in my team.

True, but I think the most important part is missing: challenge and growth. My first boss had mantra: Grow or Go.

There is a misunderstanding that only top performers want to grow. Actually, all team members want to grow, but in different areas and at different pace.

In other words, good manager must always ensure that team members are challenged and they have feeling of actual growth and accomplishments.

I believe that "growth" is the most neglected part. And I think it is most neglected part because majority of companies have only two "growth paths": management and individual contributors while majority of people don't nicely fit into these categories.

I've found #1 absolutely essential for my motivation on both a personal and professional level. When I don't understand where I'm going or what I'm trying to do I just procrastinate (and often get depressed). I've found it a really difficult lesson to learn, how to sit down and break tasks down into parts that I can actually accomplish.

Any suggestions to bring this up to the bosses without them taking it personally?

Maybe find some different bosses.

Whether or not they take it personally or not, the bigger problem is that it is very unlikely that any article will prompt a change in style from a dysfunctional/de-motivational boss . Much easier to just get what you can out of the job (eg resume bullet points) and then leave.

Even if they memorize these rules by heart it doesn't change the fact that many companies are setup to marginalize workers to be easily replaceable. Chances are your opinions really don't matter at all. I've worked with enough people who take this approach to realize it ends up being insulting more than anything else. I actually prefer a realistic employer/employee relationship instead of making a whole act out of being a "good manager" which changes absolutely nothing in the end. Chances are the "good manager" has their hands tied from above. Don't get me wrong -- there's value to having a pleasant constructive relationship but this management style tends to lead to a lot of bad two-faced exchanges and wastes a lot of time in my experience.

There isn't a magic bullet to 'fix' a boss who doesn't understand how to manage staff. The best you can do is lead by 'reverse example' and suggestions.

ie keep asking your boss for the long term goal/strategy plan, give constructive suggestions to your boss (Boss, it would really help if you could define what our long term goal is ...) etc. You can also lead by reverse example - if you boss fails to set an agenda/goal, then go ahead and define one yourself and publicise it ... your boss will either agree with it, or if he disagrees, will hopefully come up with his own - either way, you have the long term goal. Other things you can do is coach (constructively) your team mates, recognise the work they do etc.

When reading through the article, employees should realise that their 'motivation' is not dependent solely on the boss - almost all of what the article describes can and should be practised by employees as well.

None from me, but make sure your resume/CV is current before doing so (especially if you're a wheel that can be replaced).

Bosses generally think all employees are replaceable. F..king false in software industry!

If main developers go away you are busted, dear boss. I busted mine some months ago. And now I am boss of myself and very happy of it :)

I'm constantly emailing articles that I find interesting to my boss. He doesn't take personally because it's not ONE article to HIM.

Sometimes I email the whole team, sometimes two or three people, sometimes just him. Sometimes I want him to learn something, but instead I ask on my email, based on his extensive experience in general areas of life and stuff, what he thinks about the article. Sometimes I say "hey boss I've been reading articles about management tonight here's a dump of them", sometimes I say "hey boss remember last week when we mentioned X, well here's more, what do you think?".

Actually that's a pretty good strategy, asking "what do you think, please share your wisdom and enlighten me", or "a friend passed me this article saying it's good but I'm not sure yet, what do you think". You get the idea. This is good because the boss likes to be seen as a reference, a bastion of smartness, but it's bad because he might see you as someone who doesn't know stuff, and worse, someone who constantly admits that (some realpolitikal companies don't like this behaviour).

Anyway, just always send stuff.

Share ownership with employees.

Sometimes they try to do so, but in a bad way.

You share the risk staying on their sinking boat, but easy money goes to them only. They win, you lose, always.

My best advice to you all: leave your employee job and start your own business.

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