Motivation
A lot is written about motivation. From a manager’s perspective, I see motivation as two things: energy, and caring. I want people with the “hustle” to get things done—to be highly productive, go the extra mile. And I want them to care about coworkers, customers, quality of work, and safety, not to mention profit and the success of the department and the company.
A big part of your job as a manager is to generate motivation in the individuals in your workgroup. But when you’re “growing” motivation, you’re really more like a gardener than a carpenter. You don’t really make it or build it, you provide an environment for it to prosper. Like a gardener provides the fertile soil, water, fertilizer, and a place that’s exposed to sunlight, you provide the environment for people to be motivated.
We all know that success is motivating. Success gives a person energy—there’s no better sales person than one who just sold a car. So one thing you can do is to create an environment of success, one where each individual feels successful. Here’s an idea—something you can do. Use good delegation as a form of recognition. Recognition creates positive feelings, and delegating can be a great form of recognition. Good delegation isn’t just dividing up a task and having everyone do a part of it. Good delegation means thinking about what each person is ready, willing, and able to do. What would help the person grow in their career? Here’s how it might work:
- Measure As you’re looking over all those reports you review, pay attention to the range of performance. For example, service managers see range in service advisers’ RO’s written, hours per RO, sales per RO, customer ratings, and so on. Sales managers see range in number of contacts, demos, contacts into negotiation, and negotiations closed, among other performance numbers.
- Notice who’s consistently good at one particular activity. It’s likely that someone in your group is consistently among the highest in some performance measure, and someone is consistently low. Who always takes more “ups,” or writes more repair orders than others? Who maintains the highest customer satisfaction ratings? Everyone is good at something (if not, why are they there?!). You may have an individual who consistently gets the highest ratings from customers for explanation during delivery (it could be a sales or service delivery).
Notice individuals’ talents and yearnings.
What do they like to do?
When do they seem to catch on quickly?
Talk with him or her about what makes them so good at a specific activity. Talk to them about their interests.
“Chris, you always have the highest demo percentage. What do you do to get your customers into a demo drive?”
Or, “Pat, you said you like to take a shot at….” Listen.
- Delegate Ask if they’d be willing to talk about how they do this in a meeting to help others learn to do it as well as he/she does. Give them an opportunity to try some of the activities involved in their next potential career step.
- Thank them. This is great recognition for anyone. And it helps the whole crew. When you see even a small example of energy and caring, thank the person. When they contribute their expertise to a training session, or when they try something new or help out in any way, thank them. Try to arrange so that everyone has a turn to share their success and to try new things.
Here’s a personal example of using delegation as a form of recognition and an opportunity for growth. It’s something I did with a young sales person early in my sales management career—though admittedly, I think I did it more by accident than on purpose! The truth is, by doing this, I learned as much as he did! He was an eager beaver and a hard worker who just loved the car business—he loved the cars. He expressed an interest in specifying our incoming stock vehicles, so I just let him help me preference the models and equipment for our incoming inventory. It was a real help to me, and he loved it. He learned a lot, too. And he went on to be a darn good sales manager himself.
At some point, you may like to have help reinvigorating your positivity and coaching activities. Call Woolsey Performance Experts at 866-526-6156. We have the flexibility to make it cost-effective for you.