1.   You Can't Motivate Somebody Who Doesn't Want to be Motivated.

Time and time again, it has been proven impossible.    We motivate ourselves.   Others can challenge us and others can inspire us but the engine of motivation is fueled from within, from our own determintaion, our own desire, and our own beliefs.

So if this is true, why is so much time spent trying to motivate employees?   Is the whole notion of employee motivation a tragic waste of time and money?   Not if the leaders or organizations and teams think about motivation as something deeper and more enduring than a rousing speech.

Think about motivating employees as making sure they spend their working hours in an environment that is designed to help them flourish.    As a manager, look for ways to really engage your people.   Make this engagement a regular habit, a function that fires off like clockwork, something that is built into the DNA of your orgainzation.

What does engagement look like?   It is as simple as listening, paying attention, and, as Tom Peters puts it, "wandering around."

Once you understand you can't motivate people and you have invested your energies on making your organization a place where people want to be their best, be objective.    There are things about your organization that need improving.   Identify them and act... improve them.   Your actions will be noticed.   And if your actions have made the organization a better place, you will have let all of your people know that you're paying attention, you're in touch with real issues, and that you are recognizing real needs.

2.   Eliminate Demotivators First.

What about your sales meetings, where a group of people sit around listening to information which may not be of value to them?    Leaders who know how to motivate know that meetings are only held when necessary, not because the calendar says so.   They know that anything discussed in a meeting must be relevant to everyone who is taking part.   And it must be information which couldn't be shared in a more efficient fashion, such as an email or on your website.

Meetings are just one potential demotivator.   There are countless others, from the slow processing of expense reimbursement checks to promoting the wrong people.   Make a list of the demotivators in your organization.   One by one, start getting rid of them.    You can't start to build a positive, enduring spirit, you can't expect your people to be high performers and highly motivated until you clean up the toxicity.