Motivating Your Team From Top to Bottom

“At the end of the day, you own your motivation.”

It’s an age-old topic: how to keep people inspired and doing their best.

Motivation is definitely one of those words that gets tossed out a lot, and there is a lot of hype around having to motivate our people. Employee happiness means more productivity, etc. 

Side note. If productivity is your only motivation behind motivating your people, you’ll never be able to do it.

The reality of motivating people is we need to make sure we’re also not demotivating people. Most people already have a fire, motivation, goals. And with many organizations, it’s just as much about not throwing water on it as it is about helping to find ways to fuel it. 

Another question to consider, and I fall in the middle on this, is…

Can one human motivate another?

I believe there are short spurts where you can get someone hyped or to the next level. You can get them excited about something, but motivating and inspiring a person is much different than getting them excited. 

I do believe we impact each other and can get each other fired up, but on the flip side, what I’ve seen in my career is that even if you can get someone fired up in spurts, it’s hard to keep that spark going if the fire isn’t already there.

So what I’m going to talk about today, going from top to bottom, are ways to help fuel motivation to the best of our ability.

1. 1. Execs and VPs – Make sure there is a clear north star
   2. Directors and Managers – Find goals that naturally play to their motivations
   3. Frontline – You don’t have to take your lot in life

Recap: Motivating Your Team From Top to Bottom

The important bits:

• • 2:03 – Can one human motivate another? I’m somewhere in the middle.
  • 4:40 – My job at the executive level is to make sure the company has a clear north star.
  • 5:50 – When people know what the north star is, it allows you to ensure you have the right type of people who are aligned.
  • 8:40 – The reality is, the way the vision is consumed in an organization is from the interactions and reactions of the frontline managers and directors.
  • 9:25 – There’s an underlying motivation to money.
  • 11:00 – Motivations change over time.
  • 12:00 – Not only do I need to know how they’re motivated, but I need to know their north star.
  • 13:05 – Help your people find goals that naturally play into their motivations.
  • 15:21 – You don’t have to take your lot in life.
  • 17:05 – Don’t ever leave a company you’re happy with without at least asking if there is something else.
  • 22:20 – At the end of the day, you own your motivation.
  • 23:25 – You have much more control in your work life than you might think, but you have to be able to have the conversation.

Exec and VPs – Make sure there is a clear north star

Motivation can come in many different forms, and one of the big ones that I’ve seen actually do a good job of driving motivation is just clear expectations and clear vision.

Does your company have a clear north star (a three-five year direction at least) that is clear to you and clear to the organization? If you have this clear direction, it makes it easier for people to run independently. 

It also allows you to ensure that you have the right type of people all aligned together.

What do I mean by this?

Let’s say you’ve got Sales and Marketing, and they’re trying to collaborate. This is where, in my opinion, the term “grind” comes from or a form of grind. You got Sales over here grinding in one direction, then Marketing over here grinding in another, and Product’s also doing their own thing. This can create frustrations and demotivation.

Instead, if everybody knows what the north star is, then everyone can run in the same direction, and hopefully, compensation is tied to it, and people feel tied to what they’re doing.

Lastly, I point out that it’s also essential to be transparent about the north star, especially if you’re pivoting directions. I’ve found that sometimes change in a business can be a natural progression for some groups but not for others, creating misalignment when you thought everyone was on the same page.

Directors and Managers – Find goals that naturally play to their motivations

Directors and managers are crucial to top-down motivation and ensuring people have a clear vision and understanding of the company’s north star. 

The reality is, the way the vision is consumed in an organization is from the interactions and reactions of the frontline directors and managers.

And my number one/two pieces of advice at this level is just to ask your people 

1. 1. How they’re motivated: 
   2. What motivates them?

And sometimes, it’s a coaching conversation.

I’ll give you an example. Sometimes, you’ll ask how, and people will say money. It’s not just money. It’s what money represents, such as trying to buy a house, getting married, having their first child, etc. Money is usually a means to an end, not a true intrinsic motivator. 

That’s part one and how they’re motivated.

A second part is what motivates them. What gets them fired up every day? If you ask and they basically describe their current role, you again need to dig deeper.

You have to find their north star and create goals that naturally align with them. If we continue to set goals that people aren’t really aligned to, they’ll be “motivated” for a short period of time but then start to get burnt out. 

We must go a level and a level deeper. And you may find that there is a better role suited for them.

This is an excellent segue to the next section, but before we move on, I’ll also leave you with this – motivations change over time.

Life changes. So continue to check in and have these conversations with your people.

Frontline – You don’t have to take your lot in life

Last, but certainly not least, my frontline people. Throughout my career, at Skaled, as a VP and frontline manager, even friends with companies and what they’ve seen, many times, people don’t leave a company because of culture.

Many people will align with their company as a whole and enjoy the people they work with but realize they don’t want to do the role that they’re in. It’s pretty remarkable how I’ve worked with some people who can be very transparent and say, “Look, Jake, here’s where my head’s at. I don’t want to do this anymore,” and they’ve actually stayed with the company because we had an open conversation about what they did want to do, and we created a transition plan. On the flip side, it’s one of the saddest things when someone leaves, and if they had just raised their hand, we could have had that open conversation to get them where they wanted to be.

This isn’t always the case. Depending on your company, there are limits to the opportunities they can offer you, but it’s worth the ask. Have that conversation with your leader, and don’t accept a role if it’s not what you want to do and it’s not going to get you to the next stage in your career.

Now, to have these conversations, and this is the tough part, you have to actually know what motivates you.

Getting stuck doing what you think you should be doing because of societal norms, spouses, parents, or because you’ve been in a role for a couple years and you think you should be motivated to move up instead of over.

This is the tough part because if you don’t know what motivates you, no matter what your leader does or tries to do, it’ll never be enough.

So find what it truly is that will get you up every morning, find a way to align it to your day-to-day, and if it doesn’t, have that tough conversation with your leader about possibly transitioning to a new role.

At the end of the day, you own your motivation

Whether you’re an exec, VP, director, manager, or just starting out, at the end of the day, you own your motivation.

This is why this is such an interesting topic for me. There are ways to help motivate your team and align their own north star to the company’s, and part of the fun is helping them to uncover and realize it, but you can only do so much.

So whether you’re reading this to learn how to motivate or understand your own, it all starts with the individual and their own fire.

As a leader, it’s your job to help stoke it and not throw water on it. As an individual, it’s your job to light it and keep it going. 

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