Appreciation is beautiful

Is it even pos­si­ble to mo­ti­vate peo­ple with­out giv­ing false in­cen­tives? Yes, but you have to have the right base for it. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, tai­lor-made re­wards are more use­ful than love­less­ly cho­sen gifts. Those per­son­al re­wards cre­ate some­thing more.

Prop­er­ly mo­ti­vat­ed, your work­force ac­com­plish­es more than the bare ne­ces­si­ties and at the same time en­cour­ages oth­ers to do the same. Would you not want such a team? How­ev­er, this does not hap­pen just by chance, you have to mo­ti­vate your team prop­er­ly. Is that even pos­si­ble? In­cen­tives can lead to wrong mo­ti­va­tions, ones that fo­cus sole­ly on the re­wards and not the work. In or­der to cre­ate a healthy base, oth­er things have to be done first.

Every­one likes ap­pre­ci­a­tion

Even if we keep telling our­selves that we are au­tonomous and in­de­pen­dent: we need oth­ers to strength­en our self-es­teem, that is per­fect­ly nor­mal. And it is even bet­ter if it works in the long-term and we can tell our fam­i­ly or cowork­ers. Feed­back that en­hances our val­ue — to oth­ers and our­selves.

How can you reach the goal?

For mo­ti­va­tion to work it must be per­son­al and adapt­ed to the sit­u­a­tion, there is no catch-all so­lu­tion. The fol­low­ing 3 clues can help:

Are all peo­ple the same?

No, not all peo­ple are the same. There­fore, even be­fore you think about re­wards and recog­ni­tions: find out about the per­son­al pref­er­ences of your em­ploy­ees. You may even cre­ate a file. This way you can make sure that your recog­ni­tion hits home

Bet­ter per­for­mance = bet­ter re­ward

The sig­nif­i­cance of your re­ward should re­flect the per­for­mance. Some­one who has been work­ing over­time with you for a week gets less than some­one who has just suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed a two-year project. Make sure that the re­ward al­so re­flects your ef­fort. That way it be­comes clear that you have done your part and in­vest­ed time and thoughts.

Faster is bet­ter

In or­der for your re­ward to have the de­sired ef­fect, it should hap­pen as soon as pos­si­ble af­ter the com­ple­tion of the task. If you wait, say for a few weeks, it will hard­ly mo­ti­vate the em­ploy­ee to re­peat the per­for­mance. In ad­di­tion, you should make sure the con­nec­tion be­tween the re­ward and the per­for­mance is ev­i­dent: on­ly then you can get across your ap­pre­ci­a­tion prop­er­ly.

Mo­ti­va­tion is a com­plex phe­nom­e­non and it de­pends on many fac­tors. Make sure fun­da­men­tal things are work­ing be­fore think­ing about ad­di­tion­al mea­sures. Just start by say­ing thank you.

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