Management styles that best motivate employees

Whether you're an HR manager, a supervisor or a senior executive, unmotivated employees are a sign that you need to adjust your management style.

According to Anthony Bell, executive coach and author of Great Leadership: What It Is and What It Takes in a Complex World, there are five ways to adjust your management style to motive your employees:

1. A good leader responds according to whether employees are looking, say, for deep motivation or whether they are doing their best just to survive.
2. Line up consequences to support the behaviors you want. Define the behaviors you want and shape the outcomes to provide the consequences most likely to generate those behaviors. If you want to release initiative and creativity, you need positive consequences. Negative consequences typically only motivate to the level that avoids the negative consequence.
3. Distinguish true and false motivators and focus on the true ones. False motivators are those factors that if properly addressed reduce dissatisfaction, but in themselves don't motivate. For example, raising salaries and improving working conditions are false motivators. True motivators, however, are less tangible but more powerful. For example, a sense of achievement or accomplishment, recognition and appreciation for good performance and opportunities for growth are true motivators.
4. Adjust your approach to different behavioral styles. Become a student of your employees because different people are motivated differently.
5. Provide credible leadership. Motivators only work when people trust their leader. Keep communication open and keep your word. Tell your employees everything you know and if you don't know, tell them that you will find out. Great, motivational leaders will guard their integrity.

Reprinted with permission. © CCH