How do you motivate employees who are too comfortable?

And that’s where the magic started… people from a range of roles, size of business and industries collaborating to provide practical ideas to take away and resolve a common problem.

Starting with an interrogation of the situation that ensured we understood it, we moved into an exploration of potential solutions. Some of those included:

• Asking the individual which aspects of their role they are motivated by, good at and want to do more of (as well as the opposite). Are there opportunities to get involved in more tailored activities? What are that individual’s aspirations?
• The team collectively clarifying where the company is going, what is needed to get there, and every individual’s role in that. As a weekly discussion point, it holds people to account and identifies where support (or calling out poor performance) is needed.

It’s meaningful when we can share our experience and insights to support others and walk away from a meeting with different ways of thinking and operating. Here is what some people said:

• It was helpful considering the questions to ask to better understand the problem to identify strategies. I realise previously I’ve jumped to solutions before taking a step back.
• There are lots of solutions to work with from different people that moves us away from our own train of thought.
• It is good to reflect on the different experiences and expectations of employees and leaders who may be motivated by different factors, and by they buy in to their own measure of  ‘success’.

Duncan Targett’s session on developing a talent philosophy brought clarity to performance, behaviour, differentiation, transparency and accountability. That helped pull together the problem-solving discussion and as one participant said, ‘it helped me join the dots’.

Do you want to be part of our next session to learn new ideas and develop different approaches to bringing out the best in your people? Look out for the next People Ecosystem invite coming from B4 soon or contact richard@b4-business.com to be added to the B4 People Ecosystem directory.

Written by Lisa LLoyd of It’s Time for Change (www.itstimeforchange.co.uk)