Ah, management consulting & the sports metaphor, it’s finally my turn:

Each manager is faced with a major challenge when motivating employees: he/she has their own lens on the world which prescribes what motivates them. What satisfies one person isn’t he same as what satisfies another, and the manager has to usually learn the hard way what other people find ‘satisfying’ about their work. Great managers learn to stop using their own lens early, and discover the lenses of others.

To provide an idea of the scope of the challenge, here is an incomplete(!) list of things that people can find satisfying about their work (for those I’ve missed, I encourage comments!):

1. Personal financial gains
2. A measurable increase in status (title, rank, parking spot, corner office)
3. A feeling of security
4. Beating the competition, or your peers
5. Producing quality work
6. Success at impacting the behaviour of others
7. Helping other people learn
8. Analyzing a pile of data to find relationships
9. Producing new ideas
10. Taking charge
11. Being the centre of attention
12. Making order out of chaos
13. Keeping everything organized
14. Identifying the potential pitfalls of a new activity
15. Holding an audience captivated
16. Taking something that is broken and fixing it
17. Finding something good, and making it great
18. Understanding how your work fits into the ‘big picture’
19. Solving challenging problems
20. Avoiding challenging problems
21. <If bored, and get the point there are ‘a lot’, skip ahead>
22. Turning discussion into action
23. Singling out those that deserve credit
24. Being the calm in the storm
25. Producing a large quantity of work
26. Finding the most efficient path
27. Foretelling the future
28. Avoiding the mistakes of the past
29. Resolving conflict
30. Avoiding conflict
31. Making people feel included
32. Enforcing the rules
33. Finding the ‘short-cut’
34. Making the rules
35. Reaching out to someone in trouble
36. Being trusted with great responsibility
37. Nurturing tradition
38. Turning a stranger into a friend
39. Building a deeper relationship with another
40. Working independently
41. Working in a team
42. A perfect performance
43. Making a connection with others
44. Providing a significant contribution to the business
45. Performing work that fits with your core values/beliefs
46. Being perceived as a ‘jack-of-all-trades’
47. Reaching new levels of competence in your field
48. Always being given the opportunity to learn
49. Getting to work with friends
50. Making a contribution to society
51. Finding out what makes someone tick
52. Collecting things or information that will be useful in the future
53. Being the most knowledgeable person in the room
54. Being the least knowledgeable person in the room
55. Lively debate of ideas
56. Lots of time alone to think
57. Discovering something new
58. Energizing people/creating enthusiasm
59. Protecting others

And to make this even more complex, every person finds more than one of these satisfying to different degrees, and none of these are ‘wrong’. Does this sound like insurmountable complexity for you? This might be a reason why experts in the field say “only one of every ten managers unleashes human potential intuitively”.

So what to do for those of us who don’t do this intuitively?

I suggest asking a lot of questions and writing the responses down. When you see an employee actively engaged in an activity, ask them what gets them excited about it, what do they find particularly satisfying? For those that are disengaged, ask them what activities in their past they found really rewarding, and why?

Being a great manager requires a deep understanding of the human assets you are responsible for. Much like the coach of a team, you need to know what people are good at, but also how they are motivated to higher performance.

A great example came to my attention by Sandra Bullock’s Oscar-worthy performance in the movie ‘The Blind Side‘. This movie is a rags-to-riches plot based on the true story of Michael Oher, a black street kid who gets adopted by a rich white family in high school, and ends up making it all the way to the NFL (1st round pick). Michael had all the physical attributes of a star ‘offensive tackle’ –protector of the quarterback–, but was missing the motivation. His coach described the 6’5″+ 300+ lb as a ‘teddy bear’ and said ‘well, at least we will look impressive getting off the bus’, referring to his massive size compared to the other players in his high school. Unfortunately, like many managers without ‘instincts’, the coach hadn’t keyed in on what really motivated Micheal.

Leigh Anne Tuohy, the mother of the adoptive family (Bullock’s character), had figured this out: Michael was extremely motivated by protecting others (‘protective instincts’ per the movie). Once Leigh Anne framed Michael’s protective instincts towards their family in the context of the football game, suggesting key positions represented family members, Micheal was able to unleash his talents on the many unfortunate defensive players that made attempts to sack the quarterback. While Hollywood can often be criticized for oversimplifying real events, you can’t debate that for someone motivated by ‘protecting others’, Michael should derive great job satisfaction from a high level of performance as an offensive tackle!

Do you have offensive tackles playing wide receiver?