Ep 57: Motivation
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Camille Rapacz: Well, good morning, George.
George Drapeau: Good morning, Camille.
Camille Rapacz: Are you feeling especially motivated today?
George Drapeau: I'm feeling so motivated. It's, I don't even wanna talk about how motivated I'm, because I think it would scare the audience away.
Camille Rapacz: Oh, okay. Well, I mean, we might need some tips on why it is you are so freaking motivated I mean, there's no work for me to do if you're already motivated. All right. Well good job George. Checking out.
George Drapeau: See ya.
Camille Rapacz: My work here is done.
Camille: / Welcome to The Belief Shift. The show that explores. What you really need to know about building a successful business.
I'm your host, Camille Rapacz: business coach and consultant who spent too much of her career working in corporate business performance.
George: And I'm George Drapeau: your co-host and her brother. I'm a leader in the tech world bringing my corporate perspective, but mostly my curiosity.
Camille: Together, we're exploring beliefs about success and how to achieve it. But mostly we're bringing practical solutions so you and your business can thrive.
/
George Drapeau: We're gonna talk about motivation today?
Camille Rapacz: We're gonna talk about motivation today because Okay. You know, kind of important, I was thinking about this in the context of our episode where we talked about leadership, personal leadership, leading yourself. Yeah. And I was thinking about motivation in leadership and then it made me curious. Have you noticed since you, so you've recently, how long have you been in your new, new job?
George Drapeau: I'm in week seven. In finishing week seven.
Camille Rapacz: Oh wow. So not long. I am curious how your levels of motivation have changed since you've started the new job?
George Drapeau: Yeah. I mean, it's off the charts. I mean, I'm already a pretty self-motivated guy. Things have to get pretty bad for me to be demotivated. It's pretty, pretty bad. But I have noticed a step change in my motivational level since starting the new company. I mean, it's just great. I'm excited. I'm, I'm a black lab every day at work.
I'm happy to meet everybody. I love the new job. I'm so psyched and it's coming out when I talk to the team that I've inherited about what we're doing, I just had an all hands with my team last week. I. And I gave them a readout on my first month. Not 'cause I wanted to make it about me, but, 'cause I thought it'd be important that you've got this new guy coming in.
Has he done anything? What's he learned? So I told him what I saw, super enthusiastic. 'cause that's just what I saw and what I'm planning on doing. The, you know, this quarter, what I'm gonna focus on. So they have an idea of where I'm thinking, but I'm, everything was really excited about what I was saying.
I'm totally super motivated. Even the problems we have when we have big problems to solve, I'm totally psyched to tackle 'em. I'm totally psyched. It's great.
Camille Rapacz: That's awesome. I mean, I think when you make a job change, if you make the right job change, that's what happens. Right? You kind of can renew your motivation just because there's so many rewarding things for you to do.
I love that your transition has got motivation in it 'cause I wanna dig into, why is that? I mean, it's kind of the obvious, like, hey, it's something shiny and new, but there's more to it.
So have you heard of Herzberg's two-factor theory of motivation? Are you familiar with this?
George Drapeau: I have not. No.
[00:03:13] Theory of Motivation
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Camille Rapacz: You've probably heard about it, but maybe not known that this is the origin of this idea, because I think it does get talked about quite a bit and it's basically the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
So I wanna talk about those two types of motivation and how they impact how we lead ourselves and how we lead others. Okay. That's the game today. Are you in? You wanna play? That sounds great.
Yeah, let's do it. How do we play our game today?
How do we play our game today? Okay, so let's just talk about what employee motivation is. And again, when I say employee, I do want people to think about this for themself as well. 'cause this applies to us as individuals, and not just to the other people that we're leading, but motivation matters because this is what drives productivity and engagement and overall business success.
Duh, we all know this, right? But motivation is kind of tricky. Some of the things we might think are actually motivating for both ourselves and for others may not necessarily be, or maybe we don't understand our own motivation very well. So we talked a lot in personal leadership, like understanding yourself is really important and understanding what motivates you is really important.
So this motivation is our personal drive to get things done, and also for getting things done through others as a leader so that we can accomplish our goals. And there's this author who he wrote a lot of books on. It's kinda like the textbook for organizational behaviors.
[00:04:46] Defining Job Satisfaction
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Camille Rapacz: And he and his book, essentials of Organizational Behaviors, his last name's Robbins, I forgot what his first name is. I'll drop it in the show notes. The, the reference to this. 'cause this guy has a lot of great material for people to tap into in terms of organizational behavior. But what he says is job satisfaction is a collection of feelings that an individual holds towards his or her job.
Now, the key here is that happy employees are not necessarily productive employees. The cause and effect is actually the reverse of our conventional wisdom. So he says, happy workers may not be productive workers, but productivity is likely to lead to satisfaction.
We think about it the other way around. We want people to be happy so that they'll do good work, but it's not necessarily the case, especially if we're driving that happiness in a superficial way. We kind of talked about before, like all the treats at work are nice, but that's not actually creating motivation. Snacks are nice, not motivators.
[00:05:43] Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
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Camille Rapacz: So Herzberg's two factor theory, is where we go deeper into this idea of this distinction between what we call intrinsic and extrinsic, or basically what we're gonna talk about them as are there's hygiene factors in this model and then there's motivation factors. So Frederick Herzberg developed this theory in 1959, but there are studies and so immediately you're like, well, does it even still apply those a long time ago?
Eons ago, especially if you consider Covid time warp that we went through. It seems like even longer ago. Yeah. But studies as recently as 2022 have shown that this theory is still valid. It still stands up.
George Drapeau: So just to review here. The big idea here is there's two different kinds of motivations. Intrinsic and extrinsic.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. And the way he talks about it, because it also makes it easier to say on a podcast because extrinsic and intrinsic, like little tongue twisters, we will talk about these as hygiene factors and motivation factors, which I think is a really great way to think about them.
So when we think about extrinsic, extrinsic, why is that word hard to say? I don't know better words. It's probably not hard to say if I'm not recording a podcast.
[00:06:54] Extrinsic Motivators or Hygiene Factors
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Camille Rapacz: So let's talk about the hygiene factors which are things like your company policy supervision, conditions at work, your salary, your relationships with peers and with subordinates. So these are just the basic fundamentals of work.
George Drapeau: Your environment around you.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. It's the structures of work. These are just kind of the defaults of these just exist. You have a supervisor, there are policies just by the nature of being a business, all these things exist. Right? Okay. So there's all these things that he calls hygiene factors.
And the way that they're described as, these are things that don't necessarily, he doesn't call them motivation factors because they don't necessarily motivate people, but when hygiene factors are done poorly, they lead to job dissatisfaction.
It's like these basics have to be managed well, and if they're not, if I work, conditions are not good. If I don't feel like my salary is fair, if I'm have a poor supervisor, I'm gonna get really dissatisfied with my job. If I have a great supervisor and I'm paid well, and the work conditions are good, I'm not dissatisfied with my job, I'm satisfied, but I'm not necessarily that motivated. The motivation level is relatively small.
So when we think about how to motivate people, certainly if you're improving working conditions, you are improving job satisfaction, but not necessarily motivation.
George Drapeau: Yeah. Interesting. So if I wanted a handbook on how to manage somebody out without firing them, look to the hygiene factors and make them all zero.
Camille Rapacz: Tank 'em all. Yeah. Just like take 'em all crummy, crummy supervisor, you know, demote them. Yeah. Or you could do it the right way and actually properly manage them out. But yeah, if. I mean, I'm pretty sure that's not good,
George Drapeau: I guess so, but I'm liking this Machiavellian, I, Machiavellian, passive aggressive way of thinking about getting people out.
I'm sorry, I had to cut your salary by 50% and you know, we put rats in your office and you, we took away your team.
Camille Rapacz: I mean, I am sure there are companies where that has happened.
George Drapeau: This is Milton in Office Space.
Camille Rapacz: Yes. Well, Milton, he totally though I mean there was no amount of hygiene factors that could keep him from leaving.
George Drapeau: That's true.
Camille Rapacz: They just got worse and worse. Worse. And he's, yeah, he just stuck it out. But yeah, that's a perfect example. Like having, you know, I'm gonna move your office to this horrible space and I'm going to, you know you're not even getting a pay. He literally wasn't getting a paycheck anymore, so he had zero salary.
So technically that guy should have gotten to the point of so much job dissatisfaction that he just exited. So this is what we're trying to avoid, right? We're trying to avoid the fact that we don't have such horrible hygiene factors that we cause people to leave. And this does happen.
There are people who leave their jobs for these reasons. We've talked about people quitting because of their boss. So if supervision is really poor, it can cause people to leave.
So it's really important to understand the hygiene factors are things that will cause people to potentially leave a job but aren't necessarily gonna motivate them to do better work.
[00:10:10] Intrinsic or Motivating Factors
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Camille Rapacz: So now let's talk about what are the motivation factors?
George Drapeau: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do that.
Camille Rapacz: So the motivation factors, this would also be the intrinsic motivators.
George Drapeau: Intrinsic. Yes.
Camille Rapacz: That's word's easier to say. So I got that one. Intrinsic motivators. So those are things that the George Black Lab Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gets really excited about. So these are things like achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, advancements, and growth. Those are examples of the motivating factors.
George Drapeau: So if I were to oversimplify things, well, I dunno, maybe this isn't fair. Hygiene factors are things that can pull you down. Motivation factors are things that can lift you up by and large.
Camille Rapacz: Yes. That is basically the right way to think about it.
So when we wanna motivate ourselves or people at work, we do need to make sure the hygiene factors are up to standards that we expect. Yeah. But then we also have to work on the motivating factors because that's what actually helps us excel.
George Drapeau: I have a question for you.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah.
[00:11:18] Our Experience with Motivation
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George Drapeau: When you look at these lists, are there any items you would add on your personal hygiene factors or personal motivation factors? Like I can think of one hygiene one for me that's not on this list. That is really important to me. Are there others that are important to you that are on this list?
Because it makes me think it's also probably a good exercise for people. Maybe you're going here, think about your own motivation factors in both directions. You are going there, aren't you?
Camille Rapacz: I'm mean, me, of course. You're well, I'm curious, so what's, what's not on this hygiene factors list that shows up for you?
George Drapeau: Learning opportunities. An environment of learning. Right. I've said this before to everybody who knows me, my number one reason for learning a, for leaving a job is when I stop learning. That's it. It's not really, I mean, I'm, I'm psyched to be learning, but like that's my steady state. My whole life is, I'm always learning, learning, learning this stuff to learn.
So when you take that away from me or when I notice that when that goes away, even more than a, a crappy boss, that's the first thing that when you take that away from me, I'm extremely demotivated. Yeah. It's a big one for me. Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: It's interesting 'cause I think I would actually put that in I would call that a motivator and not a hygiene factor because it's 'cause these motivators, lack of them, even if all the hygiene factors are stable, like those are good.
I can make a good salary, I have a good boss. But for so many of us, if our motivation isn't being met at the level we need it to be met. And we all have different levels and different reasons. Like for you it's learning. If that doesn't feel like it's where it should be, we're we're gonna wanna exit out and go to the next job.
So it's not that just a lack of hygiene factors forces people to leave a job. Lack of motivation does too, for lots of people. Not 100% of people. Some people are willing to tolerate quite a bit of lack of motivation for other reasons. But yeah, I would definitely say learning. I think of that as the growth factor, right? Of motivation if I'm not growing anymore, for some people, that's a really significant component, like you're saying to why you would wanna exit out of a job. So yeah, learning I think is a big one.
Anything that I think of sort of fits into each one of these categories for me. I think what's interesting is that motivators like the work itself is a really interesting one because that is so personal. What work do I myself want to be doing and how do I want to do it? So I'll give you an example. The way that I work now for myself, I do a lot of the same things that I did when I was working for someone inside a company.
But I do them my way with my clients and in my format I get to deliver them. I have a lot of freedom in how I deliver that for my clients that I didn't really have when I worked for a company, because yeah, they had a way that I needed to, I needed to fit inside their box of how I do it, but now I have more freedom to sort of create.
But this is really about the work itself and what, how I get to approach it. And so my motivation factor goes way up on the work itself. I have more freedom and creativity within that. So for me, I guess if you thought about a motivator that's not on those lists, that would be in there for me, it would be creativity, the freedom to be creative in my work.
George Drapeau: That scans for me. When I've told people about why, when I was at Oracle for a while after Oracle bought Sun Microsystems and was there for a year and a half, and I thought that Oracle treated us very well, treated the acquired companies very well, and had good employee policies and a lot of, some people were scared to death about being acquired by Oracle 'cause they just thought it was an evil company and it's not. However, the way they go about managing people is this very top down style where until you're pre, until you're pretty high up the management hierarchy, you're not making your own decisions at all.
You are executing other people's decisions from much higher up. And what I realized is, if I am the kind of person who doesn't really like to be told what to do a lot. I like to define my own destiny and figure things out independently, and that's, that's great. But you know, there's people I know who just want to have clear requirements put on them, and they just wanna execute.
They get satisfaction from that. They don't really wanna figure out their job, and Oracle is a great place for that. You'll be very clearly told what you need to accomplish to succeed. It'll be laid out for you. You won't worry about. Vague goals. Very clear. You just execute to that. I could see that. So very little creativity in that kind of working environment and so wouldn't work for you, wouldn't work for me.
But there's a big swath of people for whom that works. Just, just find the creativity, freaks 'em out.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, I think that's this is where I, understanding your own motivators is so important. I. So me understanding that creativity is a big motivator. I think it's also why when I was working for companies, I, I moved jobs a lot more often than you did.
It was really only in the last job that I, you know, stayed there for a really long period of time. But for a while it was every, every three to five years I would get sort of antsy about what I was doing and it's 'cause I sort of hit the wall of how creative I could be in that role and in that company, you know?
'Cause initially you can be all sorts of creative because it's all new and then it starts to really kind of grind down. So I would wanna go create somewhere else, or I'd wanna go learn something new, and so I'd move to a new job. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely was a driver in, it's one of those too, when they talk about people who are serial entrepreneurs.
Yeah, yeah. They just, they're just these creators. They're constantly in creator mode and that's how they, they operate. But some people are serial entrepreneurs they have that mindset, but they're just job hopping, kind of like I was, right. I'm just going from job to job. Yeah. Because I still have that same like I.
I can't stay here too long. I'm gonna get bored. I gotta move to the next thing.
So when it comes to the hygiene factors, we think about this as this is the foundation of employee satisfaction. And so this is, these are things that we do measure. Like if you do an employee engagement survey you're gonna measure these as, but they're also known.
Another return might be maintenance factors. So you wanna prevent dissatisfaction in your employees by having a decent salary, good job, security, working conditions, good company policies, all of that. And you want all that to be really clear.
I'm curious, George, if you've ever worked somewhere where you're like, oh yeah, this, I remember this particular company, these hygiene factors, one of them was just really off for me or and maybe it's not even your own experience, but I'd love to be able to give some examples of this. 'cause like I have one that's around just the typical one, which was supervision. Like, ugh, this isn't great. But that, I was very lucky. That rarely happened to me. I almost always had great supervisors. Great. You know, bosses that I worked for.
Do you have examples?
George Drapeau: Yeah, absolutely. I have. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, I can think of a couple of bad managers I've had, and they've created these environments that are pretty toxic. We think of one. One guy who worked at a great company, but for a bad manager who ran things like he, it was a small mafia.
When he was the chief, everybody needed to have loyalty to him. Your own thoughts didn't matter. You couldn't really disagree with him in public or private. The, the way he supervised was in absentia and then micromanagement. So he didn't have any consistency or anything. You couldn't always know what he wanted except it was just, just horrible.
We were in a time when we were about to lay off a bunch of people and then open up new jobs, and so there was no promotions, no bonuses, no advancement, none. I mean, everything was going wrong. And then we were starting to be actually detached from other people in the organization. I mean, everything you could think of that was gonna go wrong went wrong, except for the overall larger company policies.
Because those were too big for him. It was a big company. He couldn't do anything about that. But personal supervision was bad.
I could think of another, another time we acquired a company. When I was at Sun Microsystem, we acquired a company and the guy who led that company was this, boy, this high energy, smart, erratic manager who seemed to work 24 hours a day, except that he actually.
Got taken off a flight on his private jet in Europe and checked into a hospital for exhaustion. 'cause he was just running himself too hard. And I thought of him as like an absent father like he would be, you wouldn't hear from him for weeks and then all of a sudden he'd say, okay, everybody, team meeting, everybody fly to Menlo Park.
Team in Germany, team in Russia, team in in the us. Fly to Menlo Park tomorrow 'cause we're all meeting for two days. And you'd be stuck in it and you didn't know the agenda. You'd just be there captive to him for the whole time and then he'd be gone again. That was crazy.
Camille Rapacz: It's interesting on the this two factor theory study that Herzberg did, the one that sits at the top is having the, the most significant impact is actually company policy and administration, and then second is supervision, which is what you are talking about, right?
George Drapeau: Yeah, absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: I was surprised by that, that it's not the reverse. I would've thought that supervision, me too, would've been the most impactful, but no.
George Drapeau: We are right. We are right. The study is wrong. Exactly. Really do, huh? I'm trying to, I'm trying to absorb that. I mean, I have seen company environments where there's like, it's just not a very fun environment.
It's pretty boring. You just, you just kind of work and there's nothing else around it. But I don't know. For me, supervision's a pretty big one.
[00:21:20] Variation by Job Type
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Camille Rapacz: Yeah. And you, I mean, we also work in a very specific way in knowledge work, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. So you have to keep in mind that our perspectives do come from a very, a very specific way of working that may make the factors different. So also I think take for example, work conditions, that means something very different to us than it does for somebody who's working on a production line at a car company.
George Drapeau: Or meat packing plant. Sure.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. A meat packing plant or something like that where hospital, where safety is a huge deal.
George Drapeau: Yeah, fair point.
Camille Rapacz: We don't have big safety concerns, so not a lot. I think we're gonna have a, yeah, we're gonna have a little bit of a, a, a narrow perspective on this as knowledge workers, but I do think it's interesting that on this list, supervision doesn't show up. I know, sigh, we can't speak for all people, George.
George Drapeau: You know, when you scope it out that way I'm with you. I agree. When you're in a job, it has real stakes and Yeah. The Amazon distribution center worker, those stories about them just being the nature of that job and the policy about how you can get docked if you're not. Yeah, yeah, I get it. Okay. Sure. Yeah. The nicest manager isn't gonna help you out of that.
Camille Rapacz: Exactly, 'cause they're working under the same policy and they're not creating the policy. They just have to administer it. Yeah. So, and most employees understand that's what's happening. This is why people unionize, right? Because they're trying to change company policies. Yeah. And how things are administered.
And so I think that that's an important thing to note as people are thinking about building their companies, maturing their companies, do I have the right policies that really support the culture of work that I'm trying to create? Or am I creating something that is clearly just driving a better bottom line without consideration to people?
Because that's really what, when we have that, like the Amazon example, is you're clearly trying to eek out every bit of efficiency and productivity that you can, regardless of the impact on humans. Which I think is a horrible way to run a business. So if that's how you wanna run your business, you can stop listening to our podcast right now.
George Drapeau: She's kidding. I mean, listen, podcast, maybe run your business a little better.
Camille Rapacz: If you're interested in how to have a profitable business and have very productive and happy workers, then you know, hang out. 'cause that's really what we're all about.
George Drapeau: Or you know, worst case, keep running your business this way.
But listening to Camille and me, at least you'll know why your employees are leaving so often. If you wanna at least wanna know why we're gonna, this is gonna explain why. Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: At least you'll know. Oh, maybe that's why they're thinking about starting a union. Or maybe that's why my people keep turning over so much.
George Drapeau: I'm not gonna change, but now I know why.
[00:23:57] Do Good Motivators Overcome Bad Hygiene Factors
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Camille Rapacz: Alright, so let's talk about the motivation factors, okay? Because I do wanna get to the, what's the balance here of can motivation factors overcome bad hygiene factors and all that kind of stuff. So when we talk about these intrinsic motivators, achievement, recognition, the work itself, let's first talk about real world examples that you and I have.
That have been really effective motivators, either things that you've done that increase employee engagement for your team or for yourself and how that's improved performance overall.
I'll go first. So, and maybe you can just if you've had similar experiences or not, you can just add, you can add the color commentary. Okay. But this number, this number one, I think is like spot on with you, which is opportunities to learn. Yeah. So how do you do it though?
This is why I want, wanna talk about real world examples. 'cause we're like, yeah, make opportunities for people to learn. Ugh. But then companies really struggle with this, I find. Do you find this Like most companies really, how do I create learning spaces for people?
George Drapeau: We actually talked about this, about the difference between training and learning and in a learning environ, learning mindsets.
Yeah, absolutely. We've talked, I don't remember which episode. There's an episode we wanna talk about exactly this, which is one of my favorite discussions with you. People don't get the difference between training and learning mindset. We do.
Camille Rapacz: We do. Yeah. No, I think that's a really good point, because opportunities to learn doesn't just mean plopping people into a classroom, and it's one of my most frustrating things about business is that they try to solve problems with training and it's not enough. It is the lowest level intervention you can make to solve a problem. Mm-hmm. What happens now that doesn't mean training isn't valuable, but training is like the lowest level intervention and there has to be more than just the training.
So opportunities to learn can be much simpler and less expensive than training. If you think about things like bringing an employee in to sit in on a meeting or a working session that they wouldn't normally get invited to.
So, hey we're working on this special project. Why don't you come and sit in so you can learn more about this topic or this area of work that we're focusing on?
George Drapeau: Yeah, absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: And this means, this kind of gets challenged by the, you know, you want people to stay in their, but you don't want 'em to stay in their lane too tight. Like you want 'em to have a systems perspective of the company, what's happening in other perspectives.
So giving them a chance to learn in these other spaces, I think is really important. So that's an, that's a super easy way to do it, right.
George Drapeau: Yeah. This reminds me of something I've discovered is my management philosophy, and I didn't realize it until the last maybe two or three years, is I really like throwing people into the deep end of the pool.
And what I mean by that is, like you're saying, you had to bring me along to a meeting. Oftentimes I will send them, I will delegate the meeting to them instead of me going like, you go, you'll be fine. You'll figure it out. I will give them context and I'll say like, if you're in the meeting, I'm just using one example.
Put 'em in some situation that they haven't done before. If I'm confident they have the skills. If they're worried about it, I'll tell 'em, look, don't worry. You can make some mistakes. That's fine. Talk to me about it in the next review. But I'll put people in situations that they're, they're not used to into the deep end of the pool because there's been all this scaffolding around it.
You and I have talked about this too, removing fear from the team so people may think, oh, wow, I've never done this before, but I'm in a culture where it's okay to make mistakes and I'm in a culture where we're not really acting out of fear, so, oh, okay. Cool. Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: Interesting. I like that. I think that offering people that opportunity, and you said something really important, which I used to say in a lot of conversations with leaders in how I want them to show up as a leader, which is your job as a leader to create these environments where people can learn, because learning requires people to be able to make mistakes or be able to say, I don't know. Mm-hmm. Which can be really uncomfortable at work. Yeah. But to do that as a leader, I would always tell them, look, one of your primary jobs in leading an environment like this is to pump fear out of the room.
So how do I get fear out of the room and create a safe space for people to actually engage in learning? 'cause that's what's required. You have to have enough safety that people feel they can, because learning isn't this direct line. You're gonna stumble through it, right? You've gotta have space to do it.
So yeah, I, I love that, that. And that way of thinking about creating space for people to learn. Yeah.
Other things that you can do are to try and better align work with what they really enjoy or are good at. And though what they're good at is actually something I think is a really good leader will recognize that the somebody on their team is good at something that maybe they don't even recognize and will elevate it. So I've definitely had this experience of noticing a, something, some quality of a team member that they had. They were just really good at this thing, and they just didn't know they were good at it because it came so naturally to them, like, this is why they're good at it.
And when you call that out, they're like, what? And, and you value that and be, I don't even, I don't even have to work hard to do that. I'm like, I know. And that's what's so brilliant about it. So this is how we're going to leverage that at work. We're gonna use your strengths in this way. If you can find that, that's a great motivator for people.
Not all the work has to be so hard. We can use something that comes easily to you in the workplace, right? So for you connecting with people. That comes easy to you. Well put you in a job where you, that's part of the work and you can leverage it. So part of your work is really easy.
Another one that I think is harder for companies to do constantly working with them on how to create this space, and there's always resistance to it and I know why, but it's giving them time and tools to do brainstorming and critical thinking. And the reason this is hard is because it doesn't feel productive.
I'm not creating anything. I'm not producing work. I'm just thinking.
Yeah, I know it sounds so, but this is what's really happening, right? Companies are in this position mm-hmm. Of like, but I should be doing work, which means answering emails or filling in the spreadsheet.
I'm supposed to be doing that. I should be building this car on the front line. I should be serving coffee. I should be whatever the productivity looks like in your job. I should be doing that. Not sitting in a room brainstorming and thinking, how's that, that's not doing the work. But we, if when we don't do that, then we can never make the work better.
It's a huge, I mean, putting people in a room to brainstorm for just 20 minutes is the like most motivating thing. I have people consistently come out of sessions when I do breakouts to do that kind of work. It's consistently a high motivator. Yeah. So you gotta find time. It doesn't have to be a lot of time.
George Drapeau: Yeah, absolutely. You got, I got my mind working around this. I completely agree. And now I'm trying to think what, what is it about that that really supplies such motivation? Do you know? Do you have ideas?
Camille Rapacz: I do. I think what's motivating about that is that when you are invited into a space to talk about solving problems, to actually do critical thinking, you're really acknowledging like we think you have some expertise and some value to add into this conversation, into this problem solving. So I think that alone is motivating.
I think it also recognizes that there is work to be improved. So usually what you end up talking about is something that they are already experiencing on the front line. So instead of like you and me, the bosses just solving a problem, inviting our teams in to do problem solving with us.
They're the ones that are actually living that problem every day. Right? Yeah. They're the ones who are feeling the pain of that problem every day. So inviting them in to solve it is also just so it, it just demonstrates a level of respect for their knowledge and expertise and their jobs that that's really motivating. Acknowledgement is part of one of those motivators. So those are some of the reasons I think it's really helpful.
All right, so let's talk about just the challenges and the pitfalls of, of doing this, because there's always something. Okay. I mean, it sounds lovely so far, right? Yeah. I can motivate people, blah, blah, blah.
George Drapeau: Sounds great.
Camille Rapacz: I realize what I'm saying to you. Looks really straightforward and lovely on this PowerPoint I'm showing you, but the real life experience is always harder, so I think it's important to talk about. There's this balance of working on the hygiene factors and the motivators so that you have a, a real comprehensive approach to motivating people in the workplace.
But what's tricky about this is you do have to recognize that these motivators we're gonna vary among different individuals. So you have talked about this already a little bit. Learning is a big motivator for you. It is a big motivator for me too. But I would call out creativity, my ability to be creative as a big motivator.
Yeah. Yeah. So we might even just be using different language and meaning some of the same things, having some overlap. But I think that's important is to understand that, you know, I can't just treat let's say, you know, acknowledgement. And I see this happen too. Oh. If we just do a better job acknowledging people on the team, we'll increase motivation.
Well, yes, but not equally for all team members across the board.
George Drapeau: Absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: Some people absolutely will be much more motivated by that than others. And how you do it matters. Yeah. You know, when people say apologies and you know that they're just, they're, they say, I'm sorry, but they really just mean, I'm sorry that you feel bad and I have to make an apology, but it's not a genuine apology.
Yeah. Acknowledging people's good work can come across that way too. Mm-hmm. It can come across as just like platitude. So you have to be really careful that you're doing it in a way that is meaningful to them. And then I think thinking about how you're going to adapt and approach this into fitting into the culture and the needs of the organization is also very important.
So you don't wanna just adopt ways of doing things like acknowledgement, for example. Oh that worked for company A. I'm just gonna drop that into my company. You do have to think about, is this really fit with the values and the culture of this company that I'm in? Or did I just copy paste some random solution into my company?
It really doesn't fit. 'cause people will know and they'll feel it and then it starts to feel manipulative. And you don't want that. Yeah. So you have to be very careful about how you approach it. Do you have any thoughts on where you can get tripped up trying to do this?
George Drapeau: Well, the, the thing that I was thinking about as you're talking about it was we've got these criteria, but I'm, I'll make a statement that's stronger than I actually mean it. I'm not sure it matters. I'm not sure it matters that these are exactly the criteria. If you're thinking about your people and if you have time to think about what motivates and demotivates each of them, they might have different words if you ask them, and you can get a clear definition from them about what they say.
It doesn't have to be these exact words as long as you understand their factors. Yeah, again, we're talking about reflection in a way. We're getting them to reflect and helping them be able to articulate what motivates me, what detracts from motivation. That's a key component. But us as coaches can help them figure out what these factors are for themselves.
And if they don't use these words, but they have words that work for them clearly, great. I mentioned learning, you mentioned creativity. Neither of those words show up on here. They could be munged into there, but the, that's my word. That's your word.
I'm very clear about that.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. I think that's an excellent point.
And so this is a framework for us to understand there are these mm-hmm. Factors and these motivators and to make sure that you're tending to both of them, but you understand what's, what's underneath that for how employees experience that. That yes, just because I made optimal work conditions doesn't mean my employees are motivated.
To the fullest and vice versa. Just because I have, you know, the work itself is really satisfying. If they're underpaid, that's a de-motivator. So understanding all of these things, I think is just important as a balance. But yeah, the, the words the concept is what matters, right? Is motivators versus hygiene factors.
Understanding those concepts is what's important. And then being able to have that conversation with individuals to understand theirs is also what's important. So yes. Very good. Yes indeed. It's not about the exact words.
The other thing I wanted to say was I was going back to we haven't been connecting this back to our belief shifts a whole lot, and I wanted to connect this back to some belief shifts.
So one of them that I think about is just curiosity over judgment. Yeah. And so staying curious both for yourself but also for others to understand motivating factors. So don't assume that you know what they are. Don't assume that they're the same for others as what they are for you. Mm-hmm. Just, and also understanding that they can change over time.
So what might've motivated, what's probably motivating you now in your job as you're starting out new? It's probably gonna be different, you know, a year or two from now you'll have different motivating factors, what's really driving you in the work. So being aware of that I think is important. So staying curious all the time about this.
The other one it makes me think about is foundations over quick fixes. So don't just try to jam in like there's lots of solutions. I'm making air quotes, nobody can see me, but I'm doing the air quote solutions out there for how to increase motivation in your team or do team building, you know, all these kinds of things.
They're not always great for your team. So don't just grab a quick fix and try to throw that into your business. Really build a foundation, which means build the right culture inside your company and know that it can take time to really understand and get the lasting benefits from this. So you've gotta build the foundation and sustain a foundation that's actually gonna be effective.
And those quick fixes are quick, but they're not lasting and often can do more damage long term than they do good.
All right, so let's close up with, okay, let's wrap it up with self-motivation.
Do you ever think about motivating factors that actually can overcome poor extrinsic motivators? Like have you been in a position where you think, you know what, I'm just doing so much and I'm learning so much, I know I'm underpaid in my role, but me getting paid not so great is worth the learning I'm getting right now. Have you ever been in a position?
George Drapeau: Most of my career, Camille, most of my career.
Camille Rapacz: Oh no. I think gonna become therapy again. Yes.
George Drapeau: Yes, absolutely. It's interesting. I mean, I will have to admit that I have used intrinsic motivating factors to counteract bad extrinsic ones so personal. Motivators that make me feel good to counteract things that are a bad work environment or bad supervisors, and that's not healthy.
I'm using 'em to kind of pay for over a problem or to help me last longer until I can get out of a situation, I guess is more often what I've done. So, you know, not great, but sure it's, it's worked. But I, I also say that I've used some of these things about that positively motivate me to help me kind of lessen or de-stress.
Some of the other things are temporarily bad. Manager or my supervisor relationship isn't fantastic, but I know it's not forever. Or the salary I know maybe we're in a position where we're not doing raises and I'd like a raise or something, but it's not happening. And there's other, so I think about, well, what else about the job is good?
Is it enough to make me stay and try to last out for a while? So, absolutely. And I think about, well, I'm not paid the way I think I should be. But man, this work is great. The work I get to do, the team I work with this, the stuff I'm learning. Absolutely. I've done that. Sure.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. I think this is a really interesting challenge because, well, because I see, I, when I watch people who I, so I often also work with people who are making a move from a corporate job to wanting to have their own business.
And so we always talk about what's, you know, causing them to want to leave that company. And, and, and leave the workplace period. Right. And go create for themselves. And it is always this interesting balance of both the hygiene factors and the motivators not being what they want them to be. And I have seen people, I've seen companies do this thing where they will give somebody additional responsibility.
They might even give them a new title, but they don't raise their salary. And that only, and to you what you just said, that only lasts for so long. That only sustains them for so long. Eventually, resentment builds up that I've taken on all this extra responsibility. So for a while it's, thank you for acknowledging that I have the ability to do this work, but at some level, you're gonna need that salary to match up with what I know I should be making by taking on all this extra, like I'm now, I am now working harder. When are you gonna start paying me for that?
And I think that, yeah. I do especially see women making this mistake of not demanding that they get paid for the level of work they're delivering. Mm-hmm. They get a lot more, they, they, they drive themselves a lot more on these intrinsic motivators and are willing to tolerate a lot more on the hygiene factors not being what they want them to be.
Fascinating.
The other thing that we haven't mentioned that I want to throw in here is that part of this thinking about your intrinsic motivators is also thinking about what your own core values are. So I see people have their, their core values don't line up with their company's core values. And companies basically come up with values.
Every company does this, right? Here's our values, our list of values are a value statement. Here's what we're all about. And they put that out there. And basically like employees, this is the, these are the values that we share in the workplace. Mm-hmm. Well, if those don't line up well with your personal values, or if there's something really missing in there say Environmental Stewardship is an example of somebody I know who listens to this podcast and was a big miss in a company that she was working for, and she just couldn't do it anymore.
It was so important to her own personal values. She's like, I can't just keep contributing to this company that really isn't driving in that way the way that I want to. Right? So she's doing her own thing. So I think that's important to know is what are my personal values and do they dock into, they have to be identical to the ones that your work has but do they line up enough?
Or if there's conflict there, that can also be creating. A lot of that can also be taken a hit on your motivation if that's not lining up for you.
Oftentimes this will show up in how you think work should be led, how you think teams should be led. Kind of back to the Amazon example.
If you're coming up with policies and the values at work Yes. Are showing up. So Amazon may have a value statement that is not in alignment with the way policies are created. And that there's a little, you know, conflict there. It just, it's incongruent with what they say they espouse. They're gonna be, I don't know that this is true, but I'm just using this as an, an example that I could imagine would be true.
Like we say, we're this kind of company, but then our policy is this other thing and how we treat people and that's of course gonna make people demotivated. And it's this combination of both extrinsic and intrinsic motivators that are actually knocking you down. So these things don't really stand alone is my point.
It's very complex and there's interrelationships between them both. But I think it's important to know that me just paying somebody enough is not enough to actually motivate them to do more work. And I do see companies try to do that to solve a problem. Well, if I just pay you more, will you stay?
Maybe for a little while, but ultimately there's something else. Mm-hmm. That's driving them to want to move on. That isn't just about how much they get paid and to your point. Yeah. It can actually be more, the reverse, a motivating factor can actually overcome not getting paid enough, but expecting to pay somebody more to overcome a lack of motivators usually doesn't work that well. Yeah. Not in all cases. Of course, nothing that we say here is about all cases, but for the majority, that's how it plays out.
George Drapeau: Yeah. Yeah, I agree.
Camille Rapacz: All right, so for yourself, here's what you do. We're gonna tell you just do our favorite tool. What's our favorite thing that we tell people to do on this podcast?
George Drapeau: Reflect.
Camille Rapacz: Yep. That's what we're gonna tell you. Yeah.
George Drapeau: All the time. What am I doing right now? What am I doing? I'm looking at my navel. If you could see me on video. I'm looking. I'm staring at my navel. I'm navel gazing himself. I'm reflecting.
Camille Rapacz: I don't think naval gazing is reflecting, George.
George Drapeau: You're not doing it right.
Camille Rapacz: So yeah, reflect weekly on what motivates you, and then use that to continue motivating yourself. That's number one. Own your own motivation is definitely a message I want people to take away from this.
But also as a leader be curious and reflect on your team's motivation, and what are you doing to help drive their motivation First to understand it. So first, seek to understand what motivates them and then what can I do to help drive their motivation? Understanding that there's a balance between making sure that those job dissatisfiers or those hygiene factors are meeting people's basic needs, and that you're staying true to them, and then that you're really able to focus on all of those other motivating factors, acknowledgement, the work itself, all those other things. I'll put this in the show notes so people can, if they wanna see more about this there's a, a great diagram that really puts herzberg's two-factor theory that clearly shows you how it works.
Okay? So if you wanna see that visual and you wanna see more about this to understand it a little better, I'll put this in the show notes so that you can go see it for yourself for all of you nerds like me who like to look at that stuff and I say nerd lovingly. I love all the, anybody who's nerding out on this with me.
George Drapeau: We are nerds. We love nerds.
Camille Rapacz: That's right. All right, any last thoughts, George, before we check out of here?
George Drapeau: Yeah, I was gonna, I was gonna add reflection myself 'cause it's just, it comes up again and again. So you said it all.
Camille Rapacz: All right, fantastic. So if you have thoughts on motivation that you wanna share you can leave us a [email protected].
There's a little widget on the side where you can leave us a voicemail. We'd love to hear from you, but also if you need support for getting yourself motivated, maybe through some, you know, executive coaching or something like that. If you need some support, getting your team motivated, you should book a consultation with me.
It's free. We will chat. We will talk about what your challenges are. Maybe you walk away with just enough from that call to go do some new things with your team or maybe we start working together. Either way, it'll be a fun conversation. You can do that by going to camillerapacz.com/bookacall.
That's all one word, book a call. I will put that link in the show notes as well, and I would love to chat with you about it and help you and your team get motivated.
George Drapeau: You'll have fun too. She's fun.
Camille Rapacz: It'll be fun. Yeah, I, I can be, I can be fun. Yeah.
George Drapeau: The thing, I serious comment about this. I think the thing I'll tell the audience about working with Camille is it will be fun, but you're gonna get stuff done.
Like, it's not like you're just gonna be goofing around. You're gonna come out of it realizing, wow, that was fun. That's not how you're gonna think about it going into it, but you will come out of a session with her thinking, huh, that was the most fun I had either reflecting or being productive I've ever had.
That's, that's what's gonna happen. Test me.
Test George's theory. Yeah, it's true. Anytime I'm gonna do anything that's like a team building or a motivating event with people the fun comes from the satisfaction and the work that we got done. That's how we approach it.
So you will always come out satisfied that you got a lot done and it was enjoyable as you did it.
All right. Thanks everybody for listening to another episode of the Belief Shift Podcast, and we'll be back in your ears next week.
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