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5 Ideas For Motivating And Managing

Motivating and managing staff are no easy tasks. They quite literally require plugging into staff members’ brains to tap into logic, emotion, and other motivating factors.

    During her presentation, “Motivate and Manage: Use the Five Brain Toggles,” given during the American Society of Association Executives’ Great Ideas Conference in Orlando, Fla., Shelley Row, president and CEO of Shelley Row Associates LLC discussed motivation strategies for managing staff. During the presentation, Row the discussed five considerations — based on reward versus threat — that can provide guidance in how to lead staff:

  1. Control versus lost control. Ask staff for input. Provide options. Delegate and pass along responsibility;
  2. Certainty versus uncertainty. Certainty means stability for staff. Ad-hoc policies or processes, lack of transparency and feedback, and a lack of clarity from up top can all lead to uncertainty;
  3. Connected versus disconnected. In-group tendencies promote trust, collaboration, and empathy, while out-group tendencies can lead to distrust and reluctance. Team autonomy, activities, autonomy, and rewards are all means of promoting in-group tendencies. Avoid remote offices, merged companies, and internal competitions;
  4. . Consistency versus inconsistency. Consistency within management can be undermined with the application of ad hoc policies, ignoring organizational biases, failure to explain rationales, and uneven socializing with staff; and,
  5. Clout versus loss of clout. Respect, recognition, requesting input and public praise are all means of providing staff with cloud within the organization.