Barry Silverstein - Motivating Employees : Bringing Out the Best in Your People

How do you motivate people? How do you get them excited about doing a great job? How can you inspire them to work harder? How can you recognize signs of de-motivation? Or, if you move into a new job and inherit a de-motivated staff, what tactics can you use to turn individuals around? How do you fire someone who refuses to cooperate? How do you keep your staff motivated and moving forward if your company is undergoing major change?

In this book, we distill the wisdom of some of the best minds in the field of management to tell you how to do a better job at motivating your people and creating an energized, motivated workplace that supports the goals of your company. The language is simple and the design colorful to make the information easy to grasp.

Quizzes help you assess your knowledge of motivational issues. Case files show how companies have tackled tough motivation problems. Sidebars give you a big-picture look at motivational challenges and highlight innovative, out-of-the-box solutions worth considering. Quotes from business leaders will inspire you as you face your own challenges. Finally, in case you want to dig deeper into the motivational issues, we recommend some of the most important business books available. The authors of these books both influence and reflect todays thinking about managing people, motivating them, and related issues. Understanding the ideas they cover will inspire you as a manager.

Even if you dont dip into these volumes, the knowledge you gain from studying the pages of this book will equip you to deal firmly, effectively, and insightfully with the motivation issues you face every dayto help you make a difference to your company and in the lives of the people who support you.

T HE E DITORS

M ost people in business would agree that the best employees are motivated ones. Motivated employees are the individuals who take the initiative, who want to do good work, who move up the ranks, and who are generally the most likely to succeed.

Employees who are motivated are loyal and dedicated and become ambassadors of good will for their companies. In fact, its widely accepted that companies with motivated employees have lower turnover and tend to outpace their competitors in sales and profits. The more motivated your workforce is, the higher your organizations productivity will be.

Motivating employees, then, is recognizing that employees are essential to the companys ability to succeed. It is about building a corporate culture of people who want to be exceptional at their jobs and who are proud of where they work. Motivating employees is not about giving people something they do not deserve or showering them with benefits and rewards so they will work longer hours or accept poor working conditions.

Although it is important to keep motivated employees motivated, the larger challenge for managers is finding out what motivates the other employees. Motivation is a very personal thing. What motivates some employees wont motivate others. Yet there are certain motivators with such wide appeal that most everyone responds positively.

This book will look at many of these motivators. Well also discuss what it takes to be a motivational manager, how to keep employee motivation from falling, and why motivational leadership is essential.

As you consider how to motivate your employees, a basic understanding of the psychology of motivation is helpful.

The foundation of modern thinking about motivation is Abraham Maslows hierarchy of needs, introduced in 1943 and still used by psychologists, business managers, marketers, and others to understand what motivates people. Maslow theorized that after humans have met their basic physiological needs, they want to satisfy successively higher social and spiritual needs. Maslow identified four levels of needs above the most basic needs for food, sleep, and sex. Maslows hierarchy is often shown as a pyramid, with the basic needs at the base, and the need for self-actualization at the tip of the pyramid.

MASLOW'S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS