Motivation: My favorite indicator for management success

I’ve spent a lot of years interviewing and hiring candidates for management positions at both high and lower levels of the organization.  During that time I’ve tried a lot of different methods and looked over a lot of indicators for what it is that tends to make an individual successful as a manager.

My favorite?  Intrinsic motivation.  I’ve come to believe that the candidates that I see who are intrinsically motivated to do this work because they like the work, or they enjoy the type of people they get to work with, or they appreciate the customers with whom they get to interact — those are my favorite candidates.  Intrinsically motivated individuals rarely get messed up if we haven’t trained them right — they’ll read a book, look up a colleague, or take a class. Intrinsically motivated individuals tend not to get freaked out that the manager hasn’t given them enough feedback — they’ll seek it out from the clients, co-workers, or the manager himself.  An intrinsically motivated person will often not get too upset if he finds out somebody else is getting paid more for similar work — he’ll demonstrate better performance or recognize that what he’s receiving is fair pay for the work, and work that he enjoys.  She’s motivated by the the work, even if she is upset at the boss right now, because of her intrinsic motivation.

Extrinsically motivated individuals, in my experience, need something else keeping them “going” toward the right kind of performance in this job.  Incentive plans, feedback, bigger jobs or more power, all of these are things that in my thoughts help them overcome the fact that to them it’s just a job.  They tend to be motivated only by the WIIFM concept – “what’s in it for me”, and they really believe that everybody else is solely driven by that, too.   Sorry, this kind of lack of commitment to the overall organization’s success (instead of solely my own success) kind of rubs me the wrong way, and I believe it has no business in a managerial or leadership role.

I believe it rubs employees the wrong way, too.  People tend to like following an individual because it’s the right thing to do, or the organization will succeed for doing these things, or they are enjoying being part of a winning strategy.   Employees don’t like following an individual just so he or she can get promoted or get more money at their expense.

How to I look for intrinsic motivators?  Funny, it comes out in so many ways during an interview.   People who volunteer in community organizations because it’s the right thing to do, or “I remember when I was in that situation and I want to help somebody else”.  Or, why did you choose that particular major in college?  Was it to contribute to society (intrinsic) or make more money (extrinsic)?  How does he treat the Administrative Assistant outside the Manager’s office?  Does he treat her nice because it’s the right thing to do (intrinsic) or not so nice because he figures she can’t do anything for him anyway (extrinsic).  (Yeah, ok, sometimes they know we look at that stuff so he’s smart enough to play along.  But you may be amazed at how many treat her like dirt anyway, and I never hire one of them.)  Why did you join the military?  Couldn’t get a job anywhere else (who knows, might be extrinsic, dig deeper) or I wanted to serve and commit to a noble cause (intrinsic)?

Sadly, some organizations really like the extrinsically motivated person, because they’ll often do whatever the boss wants them to do, even if it’s borderline unethical, in hopes of getting that next raise or promotion.  Some bosses like that.  I never have, because in my mind a person who’s unethical about this can be unethical about just about anything.  Especially in HR, if you’ve got no ethics, you’ve got nothing.   

Just like any indicator during an interview, looking for just intrinsic motivation isn’t perfect…. there may be other failure factors.  But it’s my favorite, for me it’s the most telling, and I don’t believe it’s ever steered me wrong.  HR professionals, if you agree with me, make sure you’re looking at this and develop your own body of knowledge around how to get at it.  It won’t steer you wrong, either.

Jump into the Performance Appraisal dialogue!!

Sometimes I think I’m just too practical to be as strategic as I want to be.   Strategically, I think in a perfect world that managers can provide the kind of feedback that keeps even the most needy Millenial going, to coach and counsel every member of a team to the highest performance standard, to avoid that uncomfortable, awful, diabolical performance appraisal conversation ending each fiscal year that tries to sum up the entire employee year in 10 minutes.  So, I’ve said it, I hate performance appraisals.  But, I admit, the practical part of me doesn’t know a better system that actually works.

In my world, managers are outstanding at providing feedback to employees who are like them, who cozy up to them, who clearly will eventually be on a peer track to them.  Then there’s everyone else.  Those are the people I worry about, because without the performance appraisal the two of them might never have the coaching conversation, or the growth conversation.

There are clearly flaws in the performance appraisal system.  No matter how rare it is that managers and employees set up good objectives for the following year, the world changes throughout that year and some keep those objectives current better than others.  Of course, many employees have no objectives, or they are so broad you can drive a truck through them, and then at year end the flowery ‘year end results’ documents come through with over-edited opinion of how great the year was (of course this is written by the employee!) and the manager doesn’t believe any of it anyway.   He or she has his opinion, and besides, there has to be a forced ranking so as a manager I’m comparing lions and tigers and I have to make up my own criteria based on who I like, anyway.  It’s fraught with problems, and weaknesses, and for all those managers who hate it more than I do, it’s a process to suffer through a few short weeks at the end of the fiscal year.

Like it or not, employees know what ratings other employees receive (or they think they do).  When they feel that the slug of an employee in the next cubicle got the same raise as their high-performing self, and especially if the performance appraisal system drives merit raises as most do, the process actually becomes a retention issue for higher performing employees.  Yet there are a lot of managers that think they should give everyone roughly the same appraisal / raise out of ‘fairness’ and they will actually drive this retention issue.  Then who quits?  The high performer.  Who stays?  The slug next door.  Who wins?  Nobody.  But the manager still is lulled into believing it’s fair.

I wish I had a better system, and I’m interested if anyone out there would like to offer up practical ideas of systems that work.   Most of the enticing ideas I’ve heard so far sound good, but I’m not yet convinced that they will actually work in a real-world environment. People need honest, straight-up feedback, and some will get it, yet some will not.  It’s the worst feeling in the world when an HR exec has to hear that an employee has become a train wreck because things were said and believed about the employee but nobody told him.  Sometimes you come upon the situation and the damage is already way past saving.  Personally, I really don’t believe the PA solves this issue either, but it can at least be a signal to an employee that things aren’t as right as they should be, which should at least enable the employee to come back later and initiate the tough conversation that the manager should have the guts to start (but didn’t).

I don’t plan to write at all today about the promotability discussion, because that one is pretty scary, and in my opinion should have no place driving a discussion about the raise in the paycheck.  (Performance and promotability are summarily two different things.  Period. )  I’ve had little luck over the years getting calibration among management groups about what promotability actually is, and I’ve found even myself bending the definition on a regular basis.   We’ll talk about it, including the fabled 9-blocks, another day.

Talk to me.  Have you experienced or implemented a system that can get rid of the traditional performance appraisal and still provides the feedback and development that employees need?  What do you do about merit increases (scrap those too, a meritorious discussion)?