All Leaders Motivate People

The day before SOBCon 2011, Jackie Mitchell, (@Your_MsSunshine) of the Red Cross Chicago, stopped by the event site. I was explaining to Terry St. Marie, (@Starbucker) my business partner, that Jackie is that rare person who hires to a team — meaning that she interviews people to find individuals whose skill sets will add up to a stronger single unit simply by the act of teaming them together. During that conversation, Jackie mentioned how stunning it was to her to realize that the majority of the people who work for her (80% ?) don’t get paid cash for the hours they work.

Volunteers are motivated by a currency other than money.

Paid employees aren’t motivated by money either. Peter Drucker proved that money is a disincentive … rather than moving us to work more — money has the most powerful effect when it’s missing or too small.

Leaders understand that more powerful currencies attract, engage, and motivate people.

7 Solid Business Outcomes of of Comradeship, Cause, Communication, and Compassion.

If you’re looking to build a team of employees as volunteers or volunteers as employees place your investment in offering comradeship, cause, communication, and compassion. These deeper currencies will draw other leaders to build something they can’t build alone. The call of a community quest to build something strong, lasting, and meaningful is a powerful payoff in itself.

Thinking minds perform amazing feats when we are dedicated to purpose they believe in and love. We rise to our better selves when we find a group willing to invest in us and each other for a quest bigger than any one of us alone.

When an organization offers meaningful engagement of head, heart, and purpose, it reaps seven deeply solid business outcomes.

1. Self-Awareness — Remembering. The unique value is the person, his or her skills, talents, experience, and wisdom, not the job.

   Employees who see themselves as people who do a job, rather than people who are a job offer perspective, humanity, maturity, and balance that people filling a role have lost. The faster paced the situation, the more we need time for reflection, to check in, to ensure that we don’t leave behind the learnings of our failures AND our successes. We can’t remember, reenergize, and reignite what we’ve forgotten, devalued, or not taken time to realize, claim and internalize.

2. Meaning — value and values. Meaning — the “why” we work — it is the values inside our value proposition.

   Money can’t buy love … or loyalty. To invest our best in a common vision, we have to know what we offer and how our contribution has meaning. Meaning allows us to express our value and attracts other who have value to offer. Meaning gives us a reason to show up to become a part of something bigger than ourselves – the ultimate share the risk, share the benefit of a common cause, building a business that no one person can build alone.

3. Peak performance — productivity. Loving you do is a simple shift to seeing that doing good work is less stressful, more fun, more fulfilling, and more profitable.

   People who love their work bring more, invest more, do more, go further for the company and the customer.
   They’re constantly seeking faster, more efficient, better answers. They get satisfaction from satisfying coworkers and customers in ways that makes the company grow. They recognize and protect the company where that’s going on. Peak performers attract other peak performers who love

4. Communication — Value-Based Leadership. Employees who love their job find ways to communicate their values and their level of commitment in clear ways that other people can understand and trust.

   We value what we earn and what we love. As employees undercover their core values, they learn how to communicate what those values are and what they are not. That values base line helps them sort their own stories. Employees begin to see how their values build as confidence, clarity, competence, integrity, respect, and more predictable behavior, the hallmarks of leadership. That leadership inspires and attracts the other leaders who hold the same values.

5. Focus — Balanced View. Employees who view their role as integral to the business zoom out to see the customer (values) and the company (value proposition) and back in to focus their best balanced thinking to deliver for both.

   The people who conceive, design, build, and share with customers what we sell have always know what works best and delivers value. Whether the job is building a product, answering a phone, responding on Twitter, closing a deal, or moving a box in the warehouse, a meaningful view toward serving both customers and company is within every employee’s grasp. Thoughtful decisions happen where they make sense, at the right moment, and by the person at the right level. Time is saved. Costs decrease. Quality goes up.

6. Teamwork — Problem-Solving. Employees doing what they love have more patience, time, and energy for problem solving and for each other.

   Invested employees see the value of teaching newcomers the culture and helping those learning new skills. They align their goals to protect the environment which benefits them, the community in which they work, the business that is growing, and the customers they serve. The essence of teamwork is the idea of building something no one can build alone.

7. Influence – Benefits of Relationships. Leaders who love their jobs understand the value of aligning their goals to build lasting relationships.
   They reach out to coworkers, vendors, partners, customers, clients, stockholders and families and make them a part of building the business. They live collaboration without fearing mutation, knowing that their values and value proposition will guide the big decisions. They talk benefits and focus on others when they build and handle the product, when they tell the company story to the customers, and in how they talk about the company as a value in serving others. The respect of a loyal community shows in everything it does.

   They build a barn, not a coliseum, inviting everyone who picks up a tool to help them. They are mission critical to their coworkers’ and customers’ missions. That loyalty becomes its own barrier to entry. No competitor can that knock that off.

And those seven outcomes result in powerfully persuasive ROI — Market Share, Market Differentiation, and Market Value. Rolling all seven into one, nothing beats the 360 degree investment of brains, heart, energy, resources, goals, and dreams all in the same direction. Any financial firm worth its salt looks for that combination when funding a business.

So when we look to engaging a great team for our business — large or small. Focus first on finding leaders who want to build something they can’t build alone. Focus fast on finding ways to bring them fully into the experience. And fund them and their work the best you are able, knowing that money can’t buy love.

How might you build more comradeship, cause, communication, and compassion into every role you offer the people who work with you?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!