229: Motivate your Employees with AMP

He really just got me - he knew that travel was my love language and it was the ultimate thing he could do to motivate me at that pointINTRO:Hey, thanks for tuning in to the Corporate Yogi podcast, I’m your host Julie Zuzek. This pod is YOUR dedicated time for growth, developing practical tools to use with your team and other relationships and to learning deeply about who you are and what makes you tick! Because you are a brilliant and powerful being, I want you to invest more time reflecting on WHO are being, not just WHAT you are doing. Doing is awesome, but BEING, well that is where the magic happens and what makes you truly feel fulfilled. You’re going to love this episode on employee motivation and how to apply this to your team. So here’s a look at what you’re going to learn today1 – In the first segment I’ll explain the biggest mistake leaders make2 – Then in the second segment I’ll explain the AMP model3 – And in the last segment I’ll share the motivation model I share with all my clientsSo get out of your head, into your heart and let’s dive right in, shall we. SEGMENT 1One of the most common requests I get from leaders is that they want their teams to work harder. They don’t want to make any changes themselves or do anything different. But they want their employees to be more engaged. I hear it all the time, “Julie I don’t want to do any of that touchy feely stuff or change anything, but I want my team to deliver more.” I find this really strange, because A – I love the touchy feely stuff. And as a leader part of your responsibility is to be involved with your team, so how can you possibly get them to change their behviour without you being involved in some way? As a leader it’s always important to be authentic, and never ask your team to do anything you wouldn’t do. But this isn’t the big mistake that we see leaders make. The big mistake is trying to motivate their employees with financial incentives. You see, many studies have proven that employees don’t actually respond to financial incentives, and it can actually have the opposite impact we want it to. The London School of Economics found that financial incentives can actually demotivate employees and have the opposite impact we want them to have. Let’s see how this played out with Amanda. She had very aggressive career goals and had many conversations with her boss about building out a team and getting to the next level to be a manager. Whenever she brought it up with her manager, he was very dismissive about the whole thing. He said he’d get back to her by the next promotion cycle. This was really important to her, she trusted him and just assumed that because he made that promise, that he would follow through on it. This my friends is a heartbreaking mistake I see over and over again. Assuming that promotions will just happen bc we want them or we deserve them. I wish we lived in a world where promotions were just handed out to people who were deserving of them, wanted them and were ready for them but sadly we don’t live in that world. There are a few organizations I’ve come across where HR initiates this, but it’s very rare. If you want a promotion, it’s up to you to initiate it and make it happen. Long story short, when it came time for Amanda to be promoted, she actually wasn’t included in the promotion cycle, and she was very disappointed. Recognizing this, her boss put a proposal forward to top up her salary and stock options. And although she was really flattered, she was really disappointed, bc it wasn’t money she was after, it was about furthering her career. So Amanda said she appreciated the salary increase, but it really wasn’t what she was after. She tried many times over 2 months to have this conversation with her boss, but he didn’t make himself available to meet or make it a priority. In the meantime, while Amanda’s boss had his head in the sand, Amanda received a call...