The ability to create a positive, energising environment where people are motivated to give their best and feel connected to their work. It involves understanding what drives individuals, aligning work with their goals and values, removing barriers to success, and recognising contributions in meaningful ways.
“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them become what they are capable of being.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Why motivating others matters
Discretionary effort, the difference between doing exactly what’s required and doing what actually moves things forward, can’t be mandated, only invited. A team that’s technically compliant but not genuinely motivated will hit the letter of what’s asked and rarely more, while a genuinely motivated team routinely finds the extra mile without being told to look for it.
Without real attention to motivation, a leader ends up managing a team that’s present but not really invested, doing enough to avoid trouble rather than enough to make a difference, and the gap between those two states is often invisible in any single week but enormous over a year. The cost shows up less as an obvious failure than as a team that could have been excellent settling quietly for adequate, and a leader who assumes that’s just what people are like, rather than a signal about the environment they’ve built.
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
What good and bad motivating others looks like
| Bad | Good |
|---|---|
| Assumes a public reward that motivated one person will land the same way for everyone. | Checks how a specific person likes to be recognised before assuming public praise, private thanks, or a new opportunity is the right currency for them. |
| Introduces a reward or incentive for work someone was already doing well because they found it meaningful. | Notices when work is already intrinsically motivating and protects that, adding recognition without making the reward the only reason to do it. |
| Treats a single motivating conversation, at hiring or during onboarding, as a permanent read on what drives someone. | Revisits what actually motivates each person periodically, since it shifts with seniority, life stage, and circumstances. |
| Assigns stretch opportunities to whoever is already most visible or vocal about wanting them. | Actively looks for capable people who wouldn’t have put themselves forward, and offers the opportunity directly. |
| Waits for someone to raise a demotivating obstacle before acting on it. | Actively looks for what’s slowing people down, even when no one has complained about it yet. |
| Treats declining energy or enthusiasm as a performance issue to manage. | Treats declining energy as a signal to ask what’s changed, since disengagement is usually a response to something, not a character trait. |
| Delivers recognition only once a project fully wraps up. | Recognises solid effort and good judgement along the way, not only the final, visible outcome. |
| Assumes that because a team looks engaged in meetings, everyone in it actually feels motivated. | Creates enough genuine safety that someone could admit they’re struggling to stay motivated without it costing them anything. |
“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” Zig Ziglar
Barriers to motivating others
Uniform approach to individual difference: Some leaders default to assuming everyone is motivated by roughly the same things, whether from a genuine belief that people aren’t so different, difficulty empathising with values or working styles unlike their own, or simply never having asked. Whatever the root cause, the effect is the same: motivational effort lands well with people who happen to be wired similarly to the leader, and quietly misses everyone else.
Assumption of automatic motivation: Treating motivation as something a person either brings with them or doesn’t lets a leader off the hook for the conditions they’re actually responsible for creating. Engagement that looks like a personal trait is often really a response to how much clarity, trust, and purpose the environment has been supplying.
Absence of purpose clarity: Repetitive or routine work is far easier to stay motivated by when someone can see what it actually adds up to, and much harder when it feels like activity for its own sake. A leader who never makes that connection explicit is leaving people to either supply their own reason for the work or stop looking for one.
Inconsistent fairness and recognition: People notice quickly when comparable effort or results get treated differently, whether in recognition, opportunity, or leeway, and that noticing does more damage to motivation than any single missed thank-you. Once someone concludes the system isn’t fair, no amount of individual praise fully offsets it.
Low trust in others: Autonomy withheld reads as a judgement about competence, whether or not that’s what the leader intends, and few things drain motivation faster than feeling distrusted in your own area of responsibility. This is often sharpest with people who work or think differently from the leader, since unfamiliarity gets mistaken for unreliability.
Information hoarding: Uncertainty about direction, priorities, or the reasoning behind a decision leaves people guessing, and guessing is exhausting in a way that saps the energy that would otherwise go into the actual work. Most information hoarding isn’t deliberate, it’s simply that the leader forgot the context they take for granted was never actually shared.
Self-focus over team-focus: A leader whose attention stays mostly on their own visibility and results has little bandwidth left to notice what anyone else needs to stay engaged. The team doesn’t need this named to feel it, they experience it simply as rarely being asked what would actually help them.
Lack of inclusion awareness: Motivational effort that consistently reaches some groups more easily than others isn’t usually intentional, it’s often a byproduct of the leader defaulting to what’s familiar and comfortable to engage with. Left unexamined, this quietly concentrates opportunity and energy on the same people every time.
Over-reliance on external rewards: Leaning on bonuses, prizes, or public rankings to drive effort can work in the short term, but it can also erode someone’s own sense of why the work mattered to them in the first place, especially when they found it meaningful before the incentive existed. Once the reward becomes the reason, reducing or removing it can drop motivation below where it started.
Treating motivation as fixed: Assuming that what motivated someone in their first year, or in a past role, still motivates them the same way now, without ever checking. What energises a person predictably shifts as their circumstances, seniority, and life stage change, and a leader who never re-asks the question is managing to an outdated picture.
“Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Abraham Lincoln
Enablers of motivating others
Personalise motivation strategies: Fair treatment is not about treating everyone the same, it’s about meeting people where they are. Once you understand what energises someone, from career goals to personal values, tailor your support, rewards, and development opportunities specifically to them, rather than applying a standard package to everyone equally.
Connect people to the bigger picture: Help each person see how their individual contribution connects to the team’s purpose and the organisation’s broader goals. Work that feels meaningful sustains motivation far longer than work that simply gets ticked off a list.
Make goals collaborative, not top-down: Involve people in setting their own objectives rather than simply assigning targets. Ownership of a goal, even a demanding one, motivates in a way that an imposed target rarely does.
Actively clear the path to success: Regularly ask what’s getting in people’s way, whether that’s unclear priorities, missing resources, or unnecessary process, and remove it. Motivation drains fast when effort keeps hitting the same avoidable obstacle.
Stay curious about what people need: People rarely volunteer what’s actually demotivating them unless the conversation genuinely invites it, so the discovery itself takes deliberate effort, not just an open door. Create psychologically safe spaces to surface personal drivers, frustrations, and aspirations, and treat what you learn as something to act on, not just note.
Recognise effort in ways that matter: Acknowledge contributions specifically and in the form each person actually values, whether that’s public praise, a private word, or a new opportunity. Generic recognition is quickly forgotten; specific recognition tends to stick.
Foster positivity and shared enjoyment: Bring energy and genuine warmth to everyday interactions, and look for small ways to make work enjoyable, not just bearable. Teams that share moments of lightness alongside hard work tend to sustain motivation longer than those that treat seriousness as the only acceptable mode.
Understand why people stay or leave: Pay close attention to what keeps your best people engaged and what might eventually push them to leave, and act on both before either becomes urgent. Retention conversations are motivation conversations, just asked earlier.
Build a culture of feedback and growth: Give people honest, timely feedback and visible opportunities to develop. Motivation grows when people can see a credible path from where they are to where they want to be.
Empower people to stretch and thrive: Offer meaningful challenges and real autonomy over how work gets done, not just what needs doing. People are consistently more motivated by problems they get to solve their own way than by instructions they simply execute.
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou
Reflection questions on motivating others
1. When did you last ask someone directly what motivates them, rather than assuming you already knew? What did you learn that surprised you?
2. Which team member’s motivation have you not checked on recently? Has anything in their circumstances changed that might have shifted what drives them?
3. Where might your own recognition or reward habits be landing better with some people than others?
4. What’s one demotivating obstacle on your team right now that no one has explicitly raised with you?
5. How much of your team’s current effort is coming from genuine engagement versus simple compliance? How would you actually tell the difference?
6. Whose stretch opportunities have you assigned recently, and whose could you have offered but didn’t think to?
7. Where have you introduced an incentive for work someone already found meaningful? What did that change?
8. How consistently do people across your team, including those less like you, get real opportunities and recognition?
9. What would someone on your team say demotivates them most, if they felt completely safe telling you?
10. If a strong performer’s motivation started to fade, would you notice in time to do something about it, or only after they’d already disengaged?
“To win the marketplace you must first win the workplace.” Doug Conant
Micro practices for motivating others
1. Ask the actual question: In your next one-on-one, ask directly what part of a person’s work energises them most right now, and what part drains them. The answer often shifts every few months, even when nothing about the role has officially changed.
2. Protect one piece of intrinsically motivating work: Identify one task or project a person already does because they find it genuinely satisfying, and resist the urge to formalise it with a metric, reward, or KPI. Some motivation is better left alone rather than “improved” with an incentive it didn’t need.
3. Offer the stretch assignment to someone who wouldn’t ask: Before assigning your next visible opportunity, name one capable person who’s unlikely to put themselves forward for it, and offer it to them directly. Waiting for volunteers quietly favours whoever is already comfortable asking.
4. Recognise the process, not just the result: Next time you see someone handle something well mid-project, with no finished outcome yet, say so specifically and immediately. Recognition that waits for the finish line misses most of the actual effort.
5. Run an honest stay conversation: Ask a team member directly what would make them consider leaving, and what’s currently making them want to stay, before either becomes urgent. This only works if you’re prepared to actually act on what you hear.
6. Name the obstacle before someone complains about it: Once a month, ask yourself what’s currently slowing your team down that no one has explicitly raised yet. Waiting to be told about a problem means you’re always at least one demotivating cycle behind.
“Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person, not just an employee, are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled.” Anne M. Mulcahy
Explore related leadership resources
To further develop this capability, examine how it intersects with other core leadership dimensions across the libraries:
Leadership library:
- Group Influence (Understanding): Decode the collective motivators and social pressures within your team to foster a culture of shared enthusiasm and high performance.
- Sizing People Up: Accurately assess individual strengths and potential, allowing you to assign work that challenges and fulfils each person.
- Style Flexibility: Adapt your motivational approach to meet the unique needs of different personalities, ensuring your message resonates with everyone.
- Interpersonal Savvy: Build the authentic rapport and trust that makes your encouragement and recognition feel meaningful and sincere.
Supporting libraries
- Interpersonal insight (Traits): Leverage your ability to read subtle cues to identify when a team member’s engagement is flagging before it impacts their performance.
- Positive view of people (Traits): Approach motivation with an inherent belief in others’ capabilities, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of success and effort.
- Sociability (Traits): Use your natural ease with people to create an approachable, high-energy environment where communication flows freely.
- Optimism (EQ-i): Maintain a hopeful, future-oriented outlook that inspires your team to stay motivated even during periods of organisational change.
Continue exploring: Return to the Leadership Library to view the full directory of competencies and resources.