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Leadership
How to Motivate A Growing Startup Team
Here’s what actually works when it comes to getting the most out of your team.
Have you ever met someone who’s highly motivated at work? Try to picture them now.
You might have a mental image of someone upbeat, someone focused on getting results and hitting deadlines, all while happily looking for proactive ways to go the extra mile.
Similarly, if I asked you to imagine a demotivated worker, you might picture someone with their head down and a cynical attitude, waiting for the clock to strike five so they can escape the office.
You’re probably picturing two quite distinct individuals — after all, there are only two types of people in this world: motivated and unmotivated. Right?
In fact, whether an individual is motivated or not isn’t just down to their personality. It also depends on the company they work for. And if you want to keep your team in the ‘motivated’ category over the long-term, read on.
Mr. Motivator
In his book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink discusses two varieties of motivation: extrinsic and intrinsic.
Many of the most obvious motivators are extrinsic, meaning that the incentives of behaviour are external to the person — in other words, carrots and sticks. They include:
- Targets
- Bonuses
- Penalties
- Scoreboards
- Awards
- Praise
According to Pink’s research, external incentives lead to increased motivation only when the job involves following a set of instructions or sticking to a routine — like a factory worker. This is because external incentives tend to narrow focus and concentrate the mind.
However, if the job involves creativity and experimenting with different possibilities, external incentives can lead to demotivation, by ‘crowding out’ the inherent joy of the job. This phenomenon is called ‘The Overjustification Effect’.
Here’s the issue: in a startup, there is no set of instructions — and you need all…
