How to Inspire Workers in Tough Times

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The interesting thing about the master motivator is that they intuitively make better use of informal networks and communities of common interest than most good managers do.

No matter how crummy things are, there's a master motivator down there who is taking care of his people by focusing them on the work they have to do each and every day, and finding a way to make them feel good about it. If you can find a handful of those, they're very insightful about what can work under today's difficult conditions. Their whole focus is, 'I have 22 people working for me. I have to keep them feeling good about what we have to do here. That's what I do.' The stuff they do is very different from what good managers do.

It's much more focused on the work itself, and much more likely to make use of informal sources of pride in that work. Their "mental compass" is always centered on how do I make Charlie and Emma feel good about the work we have to do here—no matter how boring, routine or difficult it may be. Understanding what they do in this regard and how they do it is incredibly helpful when you're trying to extend the emotional connections that can mobilize critical behaviors during difficult times.

What do these supervisors do that managers don't?

These "master motivators" recognize that every person has a different definition of success. And that's not what most leadership systems do. The system assumes that every person's definition of success is to climb the promotion ladder and make more money. In contrast, the master motivator knows there are a lot of people whose definition of success is tied more to their family or their community or something else in their personal lives. They're very clear on the fact that everyone has a different definition of success.

The other thing master motivators do is find and capitalize on local sources of pride. And they use multiple sources of pride. They might use company values. They might use family reactions. They might use customer feedback. They might use peer interaction. They might use several different sources of pride in the work because what they're trying to do is find something that is local and meaningful to a worker emotionally as well as rationally—and connect them to it in an individual way.

It's that individual connection with a local source of pride that master motivators are really good at. When you look more closely at what they do, there are only three or four things that really matter to their people—and anybody could do those things if they recognized its value. As a result, you can spread those three or four actions rather rapidly if you find ways to make exposures to those people more common. It's like spreading a virus—and it actually spreads the behaviors more rapidly than relying on formal methods alone.