Motivator (summit)

Coaching to motivate requires understanding what truly motivates individuals. Many leaders make the mistake of trying to motivate based on the job itself, without considering the personal goals and desires of the person. It is important to ask questions about their aspirations and what they love or dislike in order to gain insight into their motivations. Surprisingly, many people don't know what truly motivates them because they haven't asked themselves. The pandemic has put people in a defensive posture, focusing on immediate concerns rather than their own careers. Lack of career development and coaching can lead to a high percentage of employees wanting to leave their organizations. It is recommended to have regular conversations about motivation and to align coaching efforts with individuals' goals. By understanding what motivates someone, leaders can create an emotional attachment to change and increase engagement. When coaching to motivate, a critical component is where most leaders make a mistake. We try to motivate based on the job, and there's nothing wrong with that. When we try to motivate to the job, remember, we're coaching to motivate to the job. Remember, we have to coach the person to produce or perform within the job. Now, fundamentally, at the core of that is the opportunity to find out what motivates that person. So let's say you have somebody who's a teller in a bank or a credit union, and you're trying to motivate them to upsell and cross-sell and increase their numbers so they can become an assistant branch manager. Now, this hypothetical example's pretty easy, right? Now, let's say this person got into finance and they really wanna work with numbers. They really love data and analytics, and they wanna get into financial planning or wealth management. They don't wanna be an assistant branch manager. They don't even wanna manage people. Now, this actually happened at a client site. Here's the funny thing. The intentions of the leaders or this leader were fantastic. They're promoting from within. They're rewarding their people. There's nothing wrong with that. Yet at the core, they were trying to motivate without understanding what motivates. So the rule of thumb is never try to motivate until you first understand what motivates. So when you're figuring out what to coach to in terms of motivation, ask them, where do you wanna end up? What would you like to be doing? What would you love to be doing? What do you dislike now that you'd like to potentially not be doing in the near future or maybe in the next year or two? So when you ask questions around love, like, dislike, you get insight to where people are at, what really motivates them. And again, the most interesting yet fundamental question is what motivates you? What's your end game? What's your goal? And when you ask those questions, here's the funny thing. 50% of the time, roughly, and this has been tracked across organizations, people don't know what motivates them because they haven't even asked themselves. See, the funny thing is the pandemic put people into a defensive posture, getting kids on the school bus, or are we even gonna have school tomorrow? Do we have enough bandwidth and Wi-Fi at home? We weren't thinking about our own careers. And that's what we mean by a defensive posture. We went from offense to defense. So if you're coaching, and again, the McKinsey Organization reported in the fourth quarter of 2022, 41% of people were looking to leave their organizations due to a lack of career development and coaching. At the core of that is what motivates you. Just ask your people. Our advice is to ask every quarter or twice a year. Have a conversation just around motivation. Now, here's the funny thing. Let's go back to our teller. What if this branch manager knew that information and actually had conversations such as, I know you really wanna get into wealth management, you wanna work with analytics and financial planning, let's make an assumption here. What if you got your numbers up and that positioned you to be up for a promotion like that, and I became your biggest advocate? What would your willingness be? And what the understanding of what motivates or their motivator does for you is it creates the emotional attachment to this thing called change that most people avoid.