Motivation is CONSEQUENCE, not a step

Attention please: this text isn´t gramatically revised

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Remember: when you are a leader there is anything more important than have your team motivated, but be carefull when you start to think what comes first.

I was reading an article written by Jim Collins and then  I realized that the motivation is not something that a leader can give to his team as a salary increase or distribute as a list of tasks. Motivation doesn´t grow in a team just because the leader thinks it´s important. But, in the other hand, the task of motivating the people is 100% a “leader task”.

It´s seems confuse, but I can explain (or try to).

- We use to think that the leader is the responsible for motivating the team. - Correct

- We also think that the good leader is someone who can motivate the team by himself, or, in other words, someone who will give a good example and then motivate the other ones to do the same. Incorrect (in my point view).

As Jim Collins said, the motivation emerges when you have the right team, in the correct place, without influence of the wrong ones. It´s like a bus. When there is something bad with a team you have to look to the people as they were bus passengers. After that, try to analyse the situation:

- Do you have the right people inside de bus?

- Is there someone who you think should get in?

- IS THERE SOMEONE WHO YOU THINK SHOULD LEAVE THE BUS?

It´s not necessary to say what you should do after understand the situation. The good ones must be inside the bus, in the correct places, and the bad ones should leave the bus before it starts again. I´m not saying that the “bad ones should die in hell”, but just thinking about them as some people who can´t contribute do the business success anymore.

I believe that when you have this situation, when all the “passengers” know they are together because they are the best and going to the same direction, the motivation emerges by itself. Furthermore, in this case you don´t even need a charismatic leader. You just need a good “bus driver”, who can keep one eye on the road and the other one on the passengers, knowing that he needs to be ready to make a stop to let someone in or, if it´s necessary, let someone go out.

The “stress strategy”

Attention please: this text needs to be revised

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A few days ago I read an interview in which the professor Mario Sergio Cortella was talking about the way the companies try to estimulate their employees to work harder. As he said, the main strategy consist in stress the workers and make them work in the limit every time, in a kind of “tense state”. In other words, consists in give the employee an amount of tasks that are almost impossible to conclude.

The companies think that working in this way they put everyone focused in the results, avoiding some free time that could divert the goal visualization.

My idea, however, is completely different and goes against this kind of thought.

I think that the stress should be use when the company needs everyone focused in the same objective, but it´s impossible to work in this situation all the time. For example: when the organization is having some problem and she still doesn´t realize how to solve it it´s important to alarm everyone because, as I said, it´s a different situation and the company needs to find good ideas to solve the case as soon as possible.

In the other hand, when the company decides that keep everyone in alert is going to be her strategy to “work faster and better” she is deciding to kill the opportunity to create a good work enviroment to their employees and, more than that, she is throwing out all the good ideas that could arise from her workers if they have the opportunity to think about the business instead of just be thinking about how they will find time to deliver all the tasks in which they were assigned.

I´m not trying to say that the companies should give less work to their employees. I´m just trying to say that the “stress strategy” must be used when the company really needs an extra dose of energy, and not all the time as they are thinking. In the short term they can have good results, but these results will become turnover in the long term and, as everyone knows (or should know), there is no way to create a good business culture if you can´t keep the talents working for you and prove to your employees that they are part of the organization and their efforts are what give  power to the company keep growing.

Managing expectations

A few days ago a friend of mine told me that he´s a little concerned about his professional situation. Eight months ago, he started working as a salesman in a construction products company, but he knows he´s not completely ready to this job, mainly because he is still lerning about the products, clients and the region where he´s working.

This situation results in a lot of work, but just a few coins in his pocket, and that is what makes my friend think about quiting his challenge.

“I know I am learning and I need to improve my experience to earn more money, but I don´t think I´ll be able to to do that… the situation needs to change”

Apparently, this is a normal problem that people who start a new project need to face: when the results don´t come we start to think that we are not able to do that job, forgetting that the success path is usually longer than we expect.

In this kind of situation it´s necessary a different kind of hability that allow us to manage the expectations and keep searching the goal. In this case especifically, my friend needs to understand that the money is not the only measure to evaluate his progress and, most important than that, he needs to cativate the clients who want to know who he is and if he is able to receive their confidence. This takes time…

Time is an enemy of expectations. We want everything now, without questioning if we deserve the prize which we are expecting, or, in other words, if we are able to say: “I am doing my job correctly and it´s time to receive the results of my efforts”. I think this is happening to my friend now: at this time he´s not able to say if he´s good or not in his job, because he is still leaving the seeds on the land, but he really would like to be receiving a good money which would allow him to say: “I´m doing my job properly”.

The only thing I could say to my friend at that time was to keep working hard and searching the goal. I tryed to help him to understand that he needs a target to chase. When he understand what he is looking for and what he needs to do to catch it, he will start to reach the success he is looking for.

The importance of Acting

I´ve probably said this before, but I really admire people who can act instead of just thinking. I friend of mine told me once that the professional market no longer accepts people who can´t wake up in the morning ready to take the reins of a situation and what´s necessary to solve it. Of course I am not talking about crossing the business ethical lines, but about trying to understand really quickly what you need to do in a particular situation and do it as soon as possible.

This kind of hability is more important because, instead of doing nothing, you start acting in a reasonable plan, pointing small and simple solutions to start to solve the problem while you don´t have the complete solution for it. What is really important to understand is that we are not allowed to waste time with questions that don´t matter, or, in other words, we need to focus on the core of the situation and try to realize what would be the effective action that could solve the problem (instead of trying to imagine a thousand ways to solve the problem without taking any action).

This can be a really simple idea, but using it in our routine is a little more complicated. It seems that people prefer to imagine a beautiful solution to a problem instead of looking for something simple and effective. That could save time, energy and put the company back on track.

A different post

These days I was thinking about what I could do with this blog. I mean, the last year I wrote about 80 posts which received a good response, but this is not enough to a place like this. This blog is not as famous as the other ones, and mainly because of this I don´t really care if there are a lot people around here reading my texts. I really like when someone came to me and talk about some idea that I expressed here, but this kind of thing doesn´t happen so frequently so I keep using this tool to improve my ability to organize my ideas and express what I think about usual things that happen around me.

Today, I realized that I could use this blog in a different way. I am keeping studying English and from now I will start to write my posts (not all of them) in a second language. I have to tell that this is not a promise. I´m not going to put a “goal”, but I will try to improve my foreign language here as well.

So, that´s enough for now. I need to say that probably I will make a lot of mistakes and when this happen I really want that you tell me so I can fix it and keep learning.

See you son guys. I will try to think about the subject of the first real English post.

Have a good week! We keep in touch!