Authored by Marius Preda in Careers and Employment
Published on 12-21-2008

Motivating yourself to becoming more productive, to have a better attitude and to be efficient is one thing but inspiring others to like your ideas and act on them is totally another ball game. But you are right. It does start from you. Here are a few basic ideas to unleash the hidden treasures within your employees.

Give recognition

One of the best ways to motivate someone under you is by merely saying a good word of approval and praise. When you see an employee do an extraordinary work, make sure you praise him for that. When you praise, don’t eat your words like you didn’t mean it but instead be loud about it. Let other people hear you praise another worker doing a great job! Write a letter and post it you everybody sees it. When we say that they are doing a good job, it makes them want to even work harder and continue doing a good job.

Let people reap their due rewards

People love results. If you desire to motivate people to even greater levels reward them with results, the fruits of their labor. Show them a vision of the finished product, the big picture. Let them know how their contribution fits into the over all picture. Let them be part of movement that creates significance. This will inspire them to work harder not for you but for themselves because they are buying into the vision casted. Give them the incentive that is due them whether it’s a cash bonus, one week holiday, an incentive trip or maybe a promised promotion.

Believe in them

All people want to believe that they are important. People want to know that they matter. Let them know that you care. Let people know that you believe in them. Give your people the right to be themselves. If he’s a little odd, let him be. Don’t insist that he do everything you and like everything you like. Let them relax around you. The fault finding style of motivation always sees where others fall short will not be crowded with cooperative and motivated employees. Instead choose to accept people as who they are and believe in them and in what they bring to the table.

Criticism must be made in closed rooms

Even if your attentions are pure and you have the right spirit about criticizing, remember its how your employee feels that counts in the end. Even the mildest form of criticism made in the presence of others is likely to be resented by the other person. Justified or not, he lost face before his co-employees. So never correct to embarrass but instead do it privately. This way you are protecting his ego. As you talk with him, emphasis should not be on the mistake but rather on the solution to correct the mistake and avoid future repetition.

Truly there are hundreds of tactics in motivating employees to better production, to better attitude and to better efficiency but absolutely the ones that matter the most are the simplest ones which are often not obvious.