Motivation largely lives inside the individual.
Leaders can’t force someone to care or increase their inner drive.
Thankfully, high-performing team members arrive armed with a healthy dose of self-motivation. They bring ambition, pride, and a commitment to excellence, no matter where they work or who they work with.
But self-motivation won’t sustain itself unless leaders create the conditions for it to grow.
Great leaders don’t inject more motivation. Instead, they amplify what already exists.
Of the many assets available to leaders for priming motivation and keeping the fire burning hot, recognition stands out. People run more on recognition than leaders generally admit.
At the core, people want to know and feel three things: I am special, I matter, and I belong. Recognition is how leaders confirm all three.
Recognition endorses, sends signals, and gives meaning. Because people learn who they are from how others respond to them, recognition plays a central role in stabilizing a healthy, highly motivated identity.
Sadly, far too many leaders think praise is the most effective form of recognition.
As a result, they recognize people primarily through the positive evaluation of past events. It makes sense. Praise rarely offends, takes little effort, always sounds supportive, and requires little thought. “Great job!”
Unfortunately, praise avoids any complexity with the work product, preserves hierarchy by flowing top-down, and often creates a dependency for receiving more of it for those with low self-esteem.
Worst of all, it shifts the meaning of work to a focus on the approval of work. The best leaders do better.
When leaders focus their remarks on impact, improvement, trust, progress, and experience, they move from praise to higher and more motivating forms of recognition.
Acknowledgement, validation, appreciation, affirmation, and attribution all fit this bill. All require the leader to move from being an evaluator to being a witness.
Recognition in its highest form is about observation.
The best recognition is about seeing: “I’ve noticed how much time you put into this,” “That decision took courage,” “What you did mattered because it made the team open up,” “You are becoming one of the team’s mentors,” “You have proven you can handle this.”
It makes an observation about who people are and who they are becoming, as opposed to what they did. The best leaders go beyond evaluation and use their observations to affect identity, trust, and belonging.
When leaders praise, they tell people they are being positively evaluated. When leaders fully recognize, they tell people they are seen and understood.
Whereas praise typically ends a conversation, recognition often starts one.
Recognition calms the nervous system, reduces self-doubt, and makes people feel safe. No wonder team members find that their inner fire increases on teams where the leader offers recognition beyond simple praise.
Maybe it’s time to up your game. When recognition, not just praise, is common in the workplace, team members find the intrinsic motivation to work harder and to produce superior results.
We’ve noticed you’re paying close attention to this idea.
