Would your team say that you truly motivate and inspire them to achieve more? Do you communicate from a place of abundance, a shared goal and vision or push them to perform through scarcity and fear? Do you focus on what is happening and reinforce what they’re doing well or what isn’t happening and where they’re failing? To create the type of culture and team you want, here’s how to motivate your people through pleasure rather than consequence.
Complete Video Content Script:
“According to Keith Rosen, author of the globally acclaimed book, Coaching Salespeople Into Sales Champions, managers, even with good intentions, continue to push and be far too directive with their people -more often pointing out what’s wrong; that is, their weaknesses or the areas they need to fix to improve performance and the cost of not doing so. They believe this approach is the way to best support and motivate their team in order to drive positive changes.
Most managers, as a consequence of working in result driven, metrics dominated, fix it, cultures, have their binoculars on backwards. That is, they’re minimizing the individual successes and what their reports are doing well, while magnifying the person’s, problems, weaknesses and failures. And if that’s the case, then how does the person ever know what positive behaviors you want them to reinforce? In other words, they know what you don’t want them to do, but do they really know what successful behaviors you want them to continually engage in? Once you turn your binoculars around, this shift in thinking then results in a shift in your dialogue and how you come across – which ultimately transforms your environment from a fear driven culture to creating the positive culture and behavior you want. Motivating through fear and intimidation only motivates the person to push to avoid something they don’t want–like losing their job or being put on a performance improvement plan.
Being pulled towards what they do want, is more magnetic. You’re pulled towards your personal vision, values and goals which then becomes your guiding light or north star. Pushing also tends to be an exclusionary way of thinking–focusing only on what’s missing. For example, when we say things such as, if you don’t hit your numbers, then you won’t get that bonus – or worse – have a job!” This approach focuses on negative consequences. Conversely, when we shift our dialogue to, “If you do improve your sales process and presentation skills, then you will be able to hit your goal of being the top rep on the team – or buying that new car or house that you want – or achieving the income goal you want” – or whatever is most important to that person based on what they’ve shared with you, which is the positive outcome they really want!
If people are governed by the fear of a negative consequence, being punished or of losing their job if they don’t perform, then how do you think this affects their attitude, their career and their performance? The world’s best managers have learned that it’s far more effective to motivate their team through pleasure rather than consequence. When managers “get” this, questions such as, “Why didn’t you hit your quota?”, transform into, “How will you adjust your strategy and approach to hit your goals moving forward?” And think about this problem focused question – “Why didn’t you close that deal?” If you stop and think about it, this question gives your direct reports the license to provide you with a myriad of excuses that justify why they won’t achieve something! Instead, you can ask, “How CAN you achieve the results you want the next time you’re in that situation?” As you can see, this is a more solution oriented question.
Motivating through pleasure and your people’s individual goals, rather than negative consequences is just another essential step to building your own team of Sales Champions by honoring the new ABC’s of leadership…Always Be Coaching!”
