Is It Us or Is It Them?

"I'm dissatisfied with my employees."
“Why?”
“They just don’t seem to be motivated. I guess they don’t care how we do.”
“Why don’t you try some new incentives? I’ve got a new catalog of employee rewards.”
Stop!  

The problem is that people usually answer that “why?” question without giving if sufficient careful thought. Which leads to programs designed to change your people’s attitudes, motivation, and values. But these are hard things to change, and they are seldom at the root of the problem anyway. The first place a manager should look whenever employees underperform is in the mirror.

It’s hard to take that honest closeup look at yourself, I admit. But the good news is that, once you do, the “fixes” are usually far easier and more effective. Because:

It’s considerably easier to change yourself than to change everyone else!

Whenever you find yourself asking why employees don’t seem to be motivated, take the time to explore the reasons fully. There are always at least two types of answers to that question, so check that you have covered the following two groups of answers, not just one.

Them Answers vs. Us Answers
The first group, the one we typically give, is answers that have to do with Them. The second group, the one we usually overlook, is answers that have to do with Us.

But the Us group generally is at the root of Them problems. For instance (to make it very simple), if one of the things about us is that we are not nice to them, then they will have a negative attitude toward us. But programs designed to work on their negative attitude will fail because that is not the real problem; it’s just a symptom of our behavior.

It’s amazing the things we don’t know about ourselves! And once we break our own bad attitudes, their own bad behaviour will usually disappear without much effort on our part.

So when managers say their people have a motivation problem, they are probably “blaming the victim” as the old (and true) saying goes. Their natural use of Them answers may be blinding them to some simple Us answers.

Before you say, “My employees have a motivation problem,” stop and think whether it is really them. Could it be you who has a problem? And if it is, then you have the less comfortable but far easier task of changing your own behavior, instead of theirs. Remember, when it comes to motivating and managing people, it is generally far easier and more effective to Change your own behavior instead of theirs! 

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