Motivating others from a distance

By Neil Shorney, Director of Navanter Knowledge Bites. Time to read: 2 minutes.

My last strategy for you in this little series on remote management, is about one of the biggest problems of managers of remote teams: how to motivate people from a distance.


We all know what motivation is – it’s the feeling we have when we really want to do something, which drives us forward, and helps us to work more quickly and efficiently. What’s sometimes less understood is what it actually means to motivate other people.

From a management and leadership perspective, motivating others is about taking positive, decisive actions to create feelings of motivation and desire to achieve, in another person. And whilst there are certainly some general things you can do to motivate groups of people, such as sharing the organisational strategy, giving feedback and thanking people, motivation is much more effective when people are treated as individuals who have specific motivational needs. Because people are individuals, and that’s exactly what they have.

Motivating others is something which many managers find to be a challenge even under normal circumstances. When you throw remote working into the mix, and the changes that brings about in working practices, communication and environment, the task of motivating team members when you don’t even meet face-to-face is particularly daunting for a lot of people.

The 3 types of motivational needs

If we categorise people by what motivates them, they fall into 3 main types:

  • Competitive
    • People who have a competitive motivational preference thrive on having the opportunity to be the best they can be, and for that to be noticed by others, whether that be peers, direct reports, or managers.
  • Contributive
    • The contributive motivational preference is about feeling that as an individual, you’re adding adding to something bigger. It’s about knowing why you’re doing something, and seeing the results for what you add.
  • Comfortive
    • Employees with a comfortive motivational preference thrive on feelings of being in control, and on knowing they are secure in their job and what they do.

There’s no right or wrong in motivational preference, of course – it’s just the way people are. What’s important to us as leaders, is that we notice the differences between employees, and target our motivating interactions accordingly, even when remote.

I've created an infographic of 4 key areas to consider for effective remote management. You can grab yourself a copy just here. 

Or why not check out Knowledge Bites' courses in the Remote Management Toolkit:

Managing Remotely

How To Facilitate Effective Virtual Meetings

Delivering Remote Feedback

Motivating From A Distance

Location: Oxford, Royaume-Uni

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The NPSI styles: Realist

Image
Welcome back as we continue our journey through the different personality styles of the Navanter Personality Styles Instrument. If you missed the previous parts of this section, you can start here . Motivation: Achievement and control The Realist is an achiever – this person likes to have a goal, and will proactively work to achieve that goal through motivated working, and through moving problems aside as they are encountered. Achieving the goal is more important than how it is achieved, however, and there’s a danger that there may be casualties along the way. Words chosen: Verbs and directing words The Realist chooses words which encourage action – lots of verbs and instructions for people. The Realist prefers it when people don’t push back on instructions, as this can delay the objective being achieved. The Realist likes to get to the point quickly, and has little time for small talk. Words like “I need” rather than “I like” can be over-used. Tone of voice: Confide
Read more

Critical thinking - scanning the environment

Image
The first place to look for opportunities and problems is within the organisation. For this, you can use a STACK analysis to get a good understanding of the current situation in the business. Strategy Tolerance for risk & change Available resources Configuration Knowledge & skills A STACK analysis helps us to do a few things: Get a good understanding of the current state of the organisation and its readiness to implement change Understand how well-aligned the organisation is from the top, where strategy is developed, down to individual contributors Consider whether there are sufficient resources to take actions you need Identify whether the way the organisation is set up would be helpful to grasping opportunities or addressing problems Understand whether additional expertise might need to be brought in from outside. Once you’ve understood the internal situation in the organisation, it’s time to look at whats going on externally which could affect your strategy. For this
Read more

Understanding where problems (and opportunities) have come from

Image
If you can understand the conditions which caused a problem to develop or an opportunity to come along, then you’ll be able to think about how you can replicate those conditions (for opportunities), or change them (for problems). For example, if you realise that an opportunity presented itself which you were only able to take advantage of because of your proactive recruitment strategy, you’ll want to continue that strategy in the future. 5 Whys The 5 Whys technique encourages you to look not at superficial causes, but to look deeper for root causes. For example, imagine you’re waiting for a train and an announcement comes over the loudspeaker saying: “Your train is delayed due to the late arrival of a preceding service.” You likely find this frustrating because it’s not a real reason for the delay – you want to know why the preceding service was running late. The idea with 5 Whys is that you keep asking “why?” until it feels like a daft question. This is likely to be around 5 times. Th
Read more