KEY POINTS:
What motivates a person to consistently outperform is a question that has spawned plenty of theories - and multimillion-dollar businesses that aim to boost the performance of sportsmen, business owners and managers, among others.
In 1968, Harvard Business School published a seminal paper
titled One More Time: How Do you Motivate Employees? by psychologist Frederick Herzberg. Herzberg developed the two-factor theory (also known as motivation-hygiene theory) which states that within the workplace, one set of factors motivates employees and keeps them engaged, while another set of factors cause employees to be dissatisfied and makes them want to leave.
Herzberg's view was that employees are motivated by a sense of achievement, recognition, challenging work, responsibility, advancement and growth (in that order). But workers get unhappy with poor company policies, their supervisors, work conditions, salary and relationships with their peers, among other things.
For retired human resources consultant Hugh Bucknall, who spent over 30 years advising multinationals across the Asia Pacific region on talent management issues, motivating senior staff is very similar to motivating athletes. "The only differences are found in the scale, intensity and preparedness to invest in a wider range of tools to increase the payback. And similar to elite athletes, every star has his needs and aspirations. Consequently, coaches and business leaders need a repertoire of motivation tools to apply at different stages of the game." He adds that, universally, a good boss is a strong motivator to stay, and a poor boss is primarily why a staff member resigns. "The mantra is: 'People join a good company and leave a bad boss'.
"Conversely, pay is not the strong motivator that is commonly assumed. But the pay is a strong demotivator when it is not pitched correctly."
Ian McCrea is the founder of software company Orion Healthcare. For this company, growing by an average of 35 per cent over the past three to four years, finding a range of diverse but highly skilled employees to support that growth is a major concern. He agrees with Herzberg that employees are motivated by challenging and interesting work. His senior team is highly motivated by the challenge of creating something better for clients.
For McCrea, the greater challenge is providing work-life balance and giving employees the latitude to develop a bit of their creative side in their work.
For larger companies, organisational development and learning are critical to keep employees happy. But in many small firms there is no fixed budget for staff training. At the University of Auckland Business School's Corporate Programme, companies pay for purpose-built employee development programmes. The unit has worked with clients such as Fairfax Media, Meridian Energy, TVNZ and Public Trust. Director Dr Kevin Morris says that over the past five years, organisations have become more sophisticated in how they approach "learning" or "development".
"There is sense that 'learning' is critical to an organisation. One question is how committed you are in putting resources to do this. The other question is, can you afford not to be doing it?"
While the jury is out on whether sending senior management to training can help induce high performance, more companies invest in programmes that can help build a sustainable and loyal workforce.
RogenSi is an international consulting house that helps companies build high-performing leaders and employees. Auckland-based partner Rosemary Hume says good leadership is something that can be taught. One of the frameworks used by RogenSi is built around a study done by Australia-based executive coach Dr Cory Middleton, who researched 30 world champions to understand the building blocks for their high performance.
Middleton's "Mental Toughness Wheel" has four key spokes: focus, the ability to cope, self-belief and motivation. Each of the spokes has different elements that drive a person's personal best.
Hume says many organisations now realise that mindsets can be trained. In the current economic environment, a tough mindset can help build winning behaviour. Hence, it is all about extracting behavioural changes so that in the face of adversity a leader or manager will draw upon internal strength and use responses that can help them rise above the challenges and excel, she says.