work demotivation. 9 mistakes you should avoid
Do you have a company? Do you lead teams? Are you a national football coach? If so, by now you will know that the motivation of your people is one of your main tasks. Are you clear on how to do it right?
Sometimes we can act with the best of intentions, thinking that we are fulfilling our mission, but we will never be free to make mistakes that can cause the opposite effect to the desired and cause the work demotivation that we wanted to avoid.
In this post, we are going to know some of the mistakes that can make your team not want anything to go to work every morning. Let’s get started!
– Thinking that motivation techniques are universal.
You used the same words with O’Neil as with McMillan. The exact same ones. And while O’Neil went out of your office whistling, McMillan has shed a heartfelt tear rolling down his cheek. What happened?
Each person is different, and what works wonders with one person can have a negative effect on another. There are workers who have a strong character and motivate themselves by working under pressure (such as O’Neil); others, however, may be more sensitive and will collapse if they feel hurried (poor McMillan…).
Also, remember that although we have a more or less defined character, people also change according to their mood. Therefore, you will have to find the right motivational techniques, not only for each person, but also for each moment, and use them with intelligence, common sense and respect.
– Being obsessed with motivation.
Do you really not find it excessive to break into the office every half hour, with a megaphone in your hand, shouting the motivational phrases you just found in Google Images? And you’re surprised that your office is empty and everyone has moved to another building?
Don’t be a pain. Sometimes, less is more. It is not necessary to spend all day thinking about motivating others. Leave your people alone and intervene only when necessary.
– Setting unattainable goals or too far-fetched.
All right, you probably think you’ll manage to sell 100 million sweaters for Spanish water dogs in 2025, but O’Neil may not be thinking about spending as much time at your company to check it out.
If you’re going to set incentives for goals that have been met, set targets that are close in time and can be met. Otherwise, it will be like pie in the sky; nobody will take them seriously and they will have no positive effect.
– Believing that one can always be more motivated.
Motivation is not a bathtub that you can fill by pouring more and more water. That’s not how it works. If a person already feels motivated and is doing their job well, you don’t need to insist anymore, thinking that if you motivate them twice as much, they will perform twice as well (and if you motivate them 10 times more, do you think they will work 10 times more?) If you are too much of a nuisance, you can turn motivation into surfeit and get the opposite of what you want.
– Always falling into pessimism.
Your favorite motivation technique is to show up at the office dressed like a Grim Reaper, scythe included? All right, it might even be fun, but if you wear the costume even to report dismissals, it can be more than disturbing. Positive words can have quasi-miraculous effects. Haven’t you ever heard of the Pygmalion effect?
– Being disrespectful.
This mistake should not even be on the list – it is an absolute obviousness – but it is not wrong to remember it because there are some people who still do not have it clear. Shouting, insulting and over-pressing is not motivating, it’s just rude.
– Wanting your motivation techniques to work instantly and with everyone at the same time.
In life, everything requires some time, and motivation is not an exception. Some people will react immediately to your incentives. Others will need to change their way of working, and that will take time. Have a little patience and see if things get better or not. But don’t just sit in front of them staring into their eyes. That too, is quite disturbing.
– Being too obsessive about motivation.
Have you been up all night thinking about ways to make McMillan work better? You gave him a premium quality Iberian ham and it didn’t work? Have you bought balloons and hired clowns to tell jokes and do tricks, and he’s still apathetic? Haven’t you ever thought that maybe he’s having trouble with something that isn’t work-related?
Believe it or not, people have lives outside the workplace and sometimes things happen that can affect them. As a leader, you have a responsibility to keep your people motivated, but there will be things you can’t – and shouldn’t – try to fix. If a member of your team is going through a bad personal time, be understanding and don’t harass them.
– Not tracking if and how motivation is working.
You have decided to take certain actions to motivate your employees, but you have no idea if they are having any effect at all. Do you think you can have control over what’s going on like that? If you don’t measure in some way how the motivational techniques you’ve implemented are working, you may find that they’re not only not working, they’re causing the opposite effects, and you wouldn’t be noticing it. So, think twice and evaluate the effectiveness of your actions.
Now that you know of some mistakes that can lead to work demotivation, you should know that giving your people good technological tools to facilitate their work will be another way to prevent them from feeling apathetic. One of them is Integria IMS.
What? You don’t know Integria IMS? Integria IMS is a software that has tools such as an incident management system, an inventory or a project manager. Find out what Integria IMS has to offer.
Or ask us what you want to know about Integria IMS, here.
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