Managing People - Motivation
Rethinking Motivation

Rethinking Motivation

Yet the average workplace is about midway between the extremes of high threat and high opportunity, as shown in the figure. The personal stakes are relatively low. The threats are nothing like those imposed by a mugger or a sweatshop boss. Unless your company is faced with a major disaster, there is no way you can create survival threats sufficient to sustain a very high level of motivation, even if you wanted to. And you don’t. We all know motivation by threat is a dead-end strategy, and we are naturally more attracted to the opportunity side of the motivation curve than the threat side.

Yet it is also an unfortunate truth that most supervisors make casual use of threats, forgetting that they do not have, or want, the coercive power to motivate by fear alone. Threats, of course, move people toward the survival side of the motivation curve, which moves them away from the opportunity side. So threats tend to move people away from the high motivation of genuine opportunities. Yet they generally fail to move them up the survival side of the motivation curve sufficiently to create high fear-based motivation. So threats are generally counterproductive. In fact, we can state as a general rule that, in any civilized workplace:

Threats are always demotivating.

Do you use threats in a misguided effort to motivate your employees? Of course not! Threats are not nice, and you see yourself as a fundamentally nice person (and I bet you are right). Most managers say they never or rarely use threats.

But most employees say their supervisors do hold threats over them on a routine basis. Most employees feel that their bosses use their power to withhold opportunities and rewards and on occasion to actively punish and do harm. In my work, I’ve interviewed and surveyed thousands of employees in all sorts of organizations, big and small, and I’m willing to bet that your employees are convinced that you use threats to try to coerce them into doing what you want.

And if your employees think you use threats, then you do. What matters in motivating (or trying to motivate) people is what they perceive. Their understanding of the situation drives their behavior, so your understanding of the situation is really quite irrelevant.

You need to “get into their heads” and understand how they see you so you can manage the impression you make, not just your intentions! Ken Blanchard, a wonderful trainer who says his goal is “to take the B.S. out of behavioral science,” often tells audiences that “motivation is a six inch job. It all comes down to the space between your ears.” Then he holds his hands up to his ears to demonstrate that it’s what people hear and what they think of it that matters. Anything outside the space between the ears is superfluous!

And the truth is that most people hear the following comments and actions as threats:

Annual performance reviews in which the supervisor tells them what they did wrong, and also how much of a raise they will or won’t get. The link between the manager’s judgment of long-past events and the manager’s control over compensation is powerful in employees’ minds, so formal performance reviews are actually the worst place to review performance. Many managers sense this and tend to overreport performance so as to minimize the “damage” their people feel from the reviews. Then companies say they have a problem because managers won’t report employee performance accurately enough. Well, believe me, it’s a much bigger problem than that. And it’s called threat-based management.

Cash rewards and incentives in which managers have control over the allocation of the rewards, whether based on individual supervisor judgment or committee. Often employees focus on who didn’t get the rewards (the majority don’t after all). And they may feel there is a veiled threat of withholding rewards from those who don’t “kiss ass” and “suck up to” their supervisors. It is sad but true that employees will often view a well-intentioned reward program in this contrary and negative light.

Bonus programs often degenerate into threat-based motivation, too. When employees see it as a case of “If you don’t do X, you won’t get a bonus,” then it’s a threat, not a reward. And that is what happens all too often because employees come to see bonuses as their due, not as something out of the ordinary. And when management withholds something you feel you are due, that pushes you down and away from the positive side of the motivation curve.

Supervisors sometimes say things like, “If you don’t get this project on track by the end of the month, I don’t know what I’m going to say to the V.P. You know they’re looking for ways to cut the payroll.” But is this a genuine sharing of vital information, or just a veiled threat of downsizing? Most employees will take it as a threat and feel angry or resentful rather than motivated.

Whenever decisions are “handed down” from on high, those affected by them tend to see them as attacks. Lacking access to the dialog behind the decisions, they immediately worry about the personal impact of those decisions. Arbitrary, apparently random, and heartless changes reduce one’s sense of control and create resistance and fear. The result is the exact opposite of the optimism and hopefulness that characterizes the truly motivated individual. Every time somebody makes a decree, everybody else feels threatened by their raw use of power. And the result is demotivating instead of motivating, as are threats in general.

When a supervisor loses his or her temper at a “difficult” employee, he or she usually resorts to direct personal threats. “This will go in your file.” “I’m keeping track of the number of days you’ve been late this month.” “That’s grounds for dismissal.” These are direct personal threats, of course, and even the supervisor giving them perceives them as threatening and negative. So if we see them that way, and we know the employee does, it shouldn’t be hard to kick the habit. But does that mean you have to be a pushover? Not a bit of it. The ultimate sign of strength is to make no threats and to take firm, appropriate action only when necessary. If someone really messes up, just make the proper note of it for his or her file. But never threaten to do so! Then, if your positive approach to motivation brings your employee around, you can make a note of that improvement for his or her file, too.

So please rethink your own behavior as a supervisor in order to ferret out any unintentional or intentional uses of threats. Threats don’t motivate. Opportunities do. Move them toward the positive side of the motivation curve, not the negative side please! All threats do is create distrust and fear.