The Tech Leader's Toolbox
The Tech Leader's Toolbox
Mastering Motivation for Your Tech Team
Great leaders are always working to get the most out of their team. Productivity matters. Effectiveness matters. And people matter most of all. You often hear people talk about motivating someone or motivating the team. What is that all about? Is it really possible? What are the best ways to do that? In this episode, Paul Simkins, The Values Coach, talks about what to do INSTEAD of motivating your team and the best way to do it.
Plus, because November 6 was National Nachos Day (really, it was) Paul shares an excellent recipe for BBQ Chicken Nachos on the grill or box oven. You can also do it in your kitchen oven. You can find the recipe, and many more, on the Smoke and Ash Facebook group or by emailing paul@BoldlyLead.com.
You can get a copy of Paul's eBook 15 Innovative Ways to Show Employees You Care and Not Break the Bank by emailing him at paul@BoldlyLead.com.
Join the discussions at our Podcast Facebook group here.
Learn more about Paul Simkins on his website.
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The tech leaders toolbox podcast is brought to you by Paul Simkins and the Boldly LEAD program, focusing on helping tech leaders like you, and the frustration of low performing teams, and losing excellent employees. So they can increase productivity by 50%. Go home on time, and sleep better at nights.
Paul Simkins:Hello, and welcome to The Tech Leader's Toolbox. I'm Paul Simkins. And we're here because how you lead today determines how your team succeeds. Tomorrow. This is Episode 42, the tech leaders toolbox. And one of the biggest concerns for any leader or manager is how you get or keep your team at productive levels, or even how you make them even more productive. So we're going to talk today about what gets people going and keeps them going, despite the circumstances. Are you ready? Let's go. Team productivity is always a challenge for any leader. How do you get the team to be more productive? How do you get more out of them? How do you keep those things going? How do you keep the levels going? How do you keep those challenges going so that your team is always performing? And again, it's a big challenge. And the problem is, is there's not one easy answer to it? But invariably, it seems that the answer always seems to kind of roll back around somewhere in the area of talking about motivation. See, real leadership is, is about employing positive influence, to get the most out of each member of the team for everyone's benefit. In other words, we're always looking for a win win. How is is the best for the team? How is this best for the individual? How is the best for the leader? How is it the best for the organization, we look for those wins, wins. And so leadership practice effectively is about employing your positive influence to get the most out of each team member. And that means keeping them motivated, so that they will continue to perform well. Now also what goes into there is keeping them informed and keeping them equipped, as well. And all of that factors into that as well. So we're going to talk again about motivation, and what exactly it is and and how do we get there as a leader? How do you accomplish motivation within your team within your organization? Well, first talk about what exactly motivation is simply put motivation is a reason or reasons one has for acting and behaving in a particular way. You know, you've probably heard the joke before about actors being coached, and they go, Oh, well, what's my character's motivation? You know, in other words, what's the reasons why they're doing the things they're doing? It has to be, there has to be reasons behind the choices and the actions that we take. And it has to be here's the key with motivation is, it has to be their reasons. So in other words, as a leader, you don't motivate them by giving them your reasons why they should do something. Because that's really, you know, we're getting back into that area of you're not really motivating them, you're more threatening them, you're thrusting something upon him. Going On a side note with that. It's one of the reasons why if you do annual goal setting with your team members, and you push down goals to them that you want them to accomplish for the year, here's why that is almost never going to work is because it's not their goals. It's your goals that you're trying to accomplish through them. It's not their reasons. It's your reasons. And so to motivate people, we have to reach their reasons for doing things. So motivation is not something we do. It's the result of decisions based on reason and inspiration. I'll say that, again. Motivation is not something we do. It's the result of decisions based on reasons and inspiration. And the challenge that we run into with motivating people well, there's several but one of the challenges We run into with motivating people is that when we try to push reasons down like that, we're not going to reach people. Because ultimately, one of my favorite sayings from Bob Berg is that we all listen to the same radio station, WI I FM, what's in it for me? We're always motivated by what, again, our own reasons we're motivated by the things that drive us. You've heard probably heard people talk about finding your why. And, and that's what it's all about finding those reasons that are going to cause you to endure hardships, to endure challenges, to find your way to find a way to make things work to put in the time that it takes to accomplish something. That's the wise, that's the reason. And it's going to be different for each and every person. So we have to find that what's in it for them, in order to be able to help them along, so and so along that line, what you need to understand about motivation. And anytime you have like a, a management consultant, or, or an executive say, Oh, we got to motivate your people, well, you don't motivate people. You cannot motivate people. Even the old theory of and we've talked before about this, the old theory of the carrot and the stick, you're not motivating people with the carrot, you're not motivating people with the stick. And just in case again, you haven't ever heard of that before, you know, the whole carrot and the stick thought process is that if you're the drug, if you're the driver of a horse drawn carriage, it doesn't go anywhere, unless the horse moves, and you move the horse one of two ways, you either hold a stick in front of their face, and they will try they will move forward trying to get to the carrot, or you beat their backside with a stick. And in order to stop the pain, they'll start moving in move away from that pain. And so you motivate them one of those two ways. Even that is not motivation. It's simply providing reasons, the carrot is a reason for the horse to move forward, the stick is a reason for the horse to move forward to get away from it. And the carrot and stick theology, by the way, doesn't work at all. So toss that out. So what we do is we don't motivate people, we find the reasons and provide the inspiration. Where they can motivate themselves. And that's the key, people will motivate themselves. They do it all the time. And all you need to do is you need to find the reasons, and you need to find the inspiration that will help them become more motivated. So this is where connecting comes in. Huge, you know, I've talked before about you have to learn to first care for people. Because when you care for people, you can connect with people. When you connect with people, you're going to know more and more about them, it's going to become more personal. And you want it to become more personal. You want each each and every person on your team you need to have a personal relationship with Now does that mean that you're constantly going over their house and, and drinking beer and playing games or anything like not necessarily. But you need to know about them, not just what they can do at work you need to know about them. And the more you know about them, the more you'll be able you're going to be able to find the things that will inspire them enough so that they can find their own motivation. And again, you got to be able to do that by first connecting with them. And one of my mentors, john Maxwell says that you need to ask some questions, you need to ask about what makes them cry. What makes them sing? What do they dream about doing? And you're going to do that usually you're going to do that through one on ones you're not going to sit down in a group of people. And we've talked about this before one on ones are so important and this is why they're so important because if that opportunity To get to know somebody individually, and to find those things out. Now, of course, you're not going to ask them that way you're gonna go. So what makes you cry? And and what makes you sing and you don't even I could ask that they're going to give you a really funny looks. So you have to find the way to ask those questions. But those are the questions you want answered. Because those are where we find our motivations. As individuals, we find our motivations and the things that make us happy, we find our inspiration in the things we don't like that we don't want any more of. And we find our inspiration, in the things we have always dreamed about doing. Something we've always wanted, something we've always wanted to do. You know, it's like the the there is the movie, the bucket list, and the course then everybody was making their own bucket list of things they wanted to do before they died. Those are motivations. Those are people finding their own motivations, I want to do, I want to create a situation where I can do all of these things, I've always wanted to do some time before I die. And so that's what you're gonna want to do. You got to spend your time in your one on ones with your, with your team members. And you need to connect with them. You need to do that hard work of connecting with them. And you need to find those things that you can inspire them with, so that they will find their own motivations. And it's not manipulation. And I want to be very careful about that here. This is not manipulation. manipulation is very one sided. manipulation is always about finding the triggers and people that will get them to do things for your benefit. Or Remember I talked about at the beginning, as a leader, our leader is to find win wins. So we're not trying to get somebody to do something for our own benefit. We're trying to find the inspirations. So somebody will motivate themselves to do things that are in their own best interest and will serve their dreams, what makes them happy? What do they want nothing. What do they want to stop? What do they want to do? What do they want to keep on doing what have they always wanted to do? finding those finding those inspirations. They're serving themselves. They're serving the team. Everyone wins. That's what we're looking for. And it's a fine line. But there is a line between manipulation and leadership. And that's where it falls is who benefits. So caring matters. That's also affects whether it's manipulation, or whether it's leadership is do you actually care about the people that you were trying to inspire? Because again, if you don't care about them, and you're simply trying to inspire them for something for your own ends, that's manipulation. And it's wrong, it's unethical. And it comes to no good end in the long run. Remember, when people are doing what they enjoy, for someone they like and respect, who likes and respects them, they will find their own motivation. So building those relationships with people so that they know that you like and respect them. They like and respect you. And because you have found out what they've always dreamed to do, and you have tried to help them get there, you have determined their strengths, where they best fit into the team and where they best serve the needs of the team. And they're doing that. Because people love to work to their strengths. When they're doing those things. They're going to find their own motivations. When they enjoy what they do, they do it for someone they like and respect. And they know that that person likes and respects them, they will find their own motivation. key thing to remember is it also changes over time. What inspired somebody today may not inspire them in a year from now or two years from now. So you need to be constantly or even six months from now, perhaps you need to be constantly checking back on your team. You want to keep those one on ones going, constantly checking back with them, seeing how have things changed, how's your life changed? How have your dreams changed? How are the things you want changed over time? So that again, you keep finding those inspirations so that you can help people find their motivations. So some things to think about a couple of questions to think about as we close up here is, how can you have these conversations with your team members to help inspire them? Specifically, what questions will you ask? And how will you set up a plan to help put people in the right place, doing the things they enjoy, and that they're good at, so that everyone wins. That is how you get a team motivated. And that is how you get them to be more productive. Because productivity comes from everyone working with the best interest of the team in mind. And it's about helping them find their own motivation. We'll be back in a moment.
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Paul Simkins:All right, another part of the show I love to do. As you know I love outdoor cooking, and I do a lot of it, especially the benefit of living in Florida is I can pretty much do it year round. I go camping a lot as a scout leader. And so I get to do a lot of outdoor cooking with Dutch ovens cooking over open fire. I have my grill and I'll do a lot of grilling. I have my smoker and a lot of times I'll throw things on the smoker we have Thanksgiving coming up. And so I'm trying to sell everybody on letting me do a smoke turkey again all the last time I did a smoke turkey it took me about 18 hours. And the neighbor ended up in the middle of the night calling the fire department because she smelled smoke. It was exciting time said they're attending to the smoker and around the corner of the house. Here comes the fire department. Anyway. So I love cooking. And so I've created a Facebook group called smoke and ash. And me and all my friends are out there. And on that group we we share ideas about outdoor cooking. We share recipes, we talk about our gadgets and our cookers. And we have a lot of fun out there. I throw a lot of trivia out there and trivia questions and all that and, and whether you're an expert, whether you're a big aficionado of outdoor cooking, or you're just looking to get started, it's a great place for you to be. It's called smoke and ash. And I invite you to come out to facebook and join us out there. I always like to share a recipe on this portion of the show. And we just had the other week. One of the days it was early November is National nachos day. And I had no idea what happened to just stumble upon that I had no idea there was a national nachos day but apparently there is and so in celebration of that the recipe I wanted to share with you today is this is barbecue chicken nachos. barbecue chicken nachos, and I call it barbecue chicken nachos. But you can do this with chicken. You can do this with pork as well. Either one works great in this. And so what you need to do for barbecue chicken nachos, is you need a large jar of salsa. Any kind of salsa will do. The heat level depends on your own personal preferences. I like to do at least a medium salsa, if not a hot salsa, depends on my weather. My wife's gonna eat it, she doesn't like the hot salsa. So a 16 ounce jar of salsa. You need about two thirds of a cup of sour cream. You need a couple of large bags of tortilla chips, whatever kind of tortilla chips you like. And you're gonna need about a pound of pulled chicken or pulled pork. Now again, whether you cook it yourself or whether you buy it pre cooked and pulled either way but a pound of pulled chicken or pork. They needed about two cups of shredded cheddar cheese. You're going to take about four green onions and you're going to slice them up. And then also you're going to get whatever your favorite barbecue sauce is. jar bottle of your favorite barbecue sauce. So the first thing to do is in a medium pot, you're going to combine the salsa and the sour cream. Now again, if you're cooking this outdoors, you can do this over a propane stove, you can do this by putting a pot on your grill, that'll work, anything like that, putting it over coals. But in that medium pot, you're going to combine your salsa and your sour cream, stir it together. And, and again, just enough so the sour cream melts and blends. You're not looking for extremely hot, you want it to be warm, pretty warm, though. And then you're going to spread on a baking sheet, spread your tortilla chips out. And then you're going to in layers, you're going to put some of the salsa mixture over it, some of the and the chicken in the chicken or the pork, shredded chicken or shredded pork, and then the cheddar cheese on top of all that all over that baking sheet. Now again, if you're doing this on a hot grill outside, or in a cardboard oven, if you're camping, this will work. You want to get the temperature up to about 425. And then you're going to just put your put your baking sheet with the everything I want it inside there and bake it until the cheese melts, which will usually be somewhere in the area five to 10 minutes. Vegan until the cheese melts. Then when you bring it out, you're going to sprinkle the green onions all over it. And then also drizzle your barbecue sauce all over it. Real simpy real simple, easy recipe serve it up is that and that's all it takes. So that's barbecue chicken nachos. And I think you'll really like that. And if you like that recipe, if you want to try it out, you can go to the smoke and ash Facebook group, I put all the recipes out there and you can find it there. Or simply send me an email to Paul at boldlylead.com. And I'll be glad to send you a copy of the recipe. Alright, so this week, we talked about motivation, and how you cannot motivate your team. As a leader, what you look to do is you look to find the inspirations where people will motivate themselves and will then be more productive, more productive as individuals more productive as a team. It's a win win. And that's what leadership is all about is creating positive influence for the win wins, for your team and for your organization. All right, that's all we have for this week. Until next time. Well, first of all, if you're listening to this on a podcast app of some sort, like Apple podcast or Google podcast or anywhere you're listening to it, be sure to give us a five star review. And also share it with others so that we can grow our audience and we can benefit provide these benefits and this information to more people I want to be able to reach out to more and I need your help to do that. So give us those big reviews. share this with others so that they can discover this as well. And until next time, go out and be the leader. You were meant to be