Just about every board-game is developed around a simple principle. We love a sense of progress and are bothered by setbacks. We get a kick out ascending a ladder and are frustrated by having to slide down a snake. Dr Anna Tarrant from whom I took the illustration has used this principle quite creatively in her teaching method.
How can we use this idea to motivate teams? In 1968 Frederick Herzberg wrote: “people are most satisfied with their jobs (and therefore most motivated) when those jobs give them the opportunity to experience achievement.” In May 2011 Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer published an article in Harvard Business Review showing how the alchemy of emotions, motivations and perceptions making up our inner work-life drives performance. Their 15 year study covered 26 project teams, 238 individuals in seven companies. People, they found, are more creative and productive when their inner work lives are positive. And one of the most powerful triggers for a positive interior dynamic is Progress! High pressure and fear destroy this sense of the positive.
In his “Five conditions for Leadership” model, J Richard Hackman showed how you can motivate teams by designing internal motivation into the work you give your teams by making the work meaningful, giving the teams autonomy and by providing immediate feedback on progress. 
- Meaningful: Simply working hard and achieving a task is not enough. The work must really matter to you for you to experience it as meaningful. This is why it is so energising for your staff to meet your clients and to see how your products and services impact the lives people who purchase them.
- Autonomy: Autonomy gives teams room to excel … but autonomous teams gone bad are very bad indeed. Hackman describes how the crew of Skylab 3, when they grew tired of being micro managed, once asserted their autonomy by turning off their radio and refusing to speak with Mission Control.
- Feedback: An analysis of nearly 12 000 daily diary entries, in the Amabile and Kramer study, showed the high impact progress has on our inner work life. Everyday progress, even a small win, can make all the difference in how you and your employees feel and perform. Setbacks have the opposite effect, able to trigger a “worst day” response.
All of this has implications for you as a manager. All the care you have taken to motivate teams may be lost in a single rant. The motivation of your staff is just as important as the quality of the strategy you develop. And low morale will devastate even the best laid plans. Micromanagers destroy morale by:
- Inhibiting autonomy.
- Frequently asking subordinates about their work without providing any real help.
- Assigning personal blame when problems arise, leading subordinates to hide problems rather than to honestly discuss how to surmount them.
- Hoarding information to use as a secret weapon. This elicits feelings of being patronised, which reduces motivation and delivery.
A manager can affect the experience and therefore the inner work life of staff in four ways. The manager can be:
- A Catalyst, setting up conditions that directly support work, including help from a person or group, setting clear goals, allowing autonomy, providing sufficient resources and time helping with the work, openly learning from problems and processes, and allowing a free exchange of ideas.
- An Inhibitor: Creating conditions that fail to support or actively hinder work,
- Nourishing: Carrying out acts of interpersonal support such as shows of respect and words of encouragement and emotional comfort.
- Toxic: Acting in an undermining way, such as disregarding emotions, and interpersonal conflict.
So how can you apply this understanding to motivate teams? The most powerful thing you can do is to reflect on your actions as a manager on a daily basis. Consider your behaviours and the conditions you have set up. Enter each day with a plan of action of how you will provide catalysts and nourishers for your staff and how you can remove obstacles and toxins that result in setbacks. You may also wish to consider the following approaches:
- Stay in touch with every day activities in your team. Be non-judgemental and your team will willingly update you on setbacks, progress and plans.
- Establish a positive climate. Focus on one event at a time. When things go wrong, stop, acknowledge the problem. With the inputs from your staff focus on what is working and the resources in the team to develop and implement solutions against a coordinated plan of action.
- Prepare your support plan for the day by reflecting on recent events. Each day, anticipate what type of intervention, a catalyst or the removal of an inhibitor; a nourisher or some antidote to a toxin, would have the most impact on team members’ inner work lives and progress.
- Become a resource for your team rather than a micro-manager. Check in with employees and do not check up on them. The appropriate level of check-in is covered in this posting on Delegation.
You don’t need to be able to read the psyche of staff to motivate teams. You can build motivation by implementing conditions that provide catalysts and remove inhibitors. This positive environment will allow for good performance. By providing nourishing input and removing toxic behaviour from your work environment you will enable a positive inner work life in your staff which will increase their internal motivation. Internal motivation and good performance will in turn lead to consistent progress. And progress, as we have shown, will create a positive inner work life and will stimulate performance. A virtuous cycle. Now what leader would not want that?
