The Ultimate Motivation
for Any Team
Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick | Inc.com contributor
Employees will always resist
change unless they believe the
company’s survival is literally
at stake. Here’s how to make it
clear to them that it is.
There is no list quite as sobering to an
entrepreneur as a list of the most promising
young companies of two decades ago—most
of which, you can be quite sure, don’t exist
any more.
The fact is, as entrepreneurs, you stand on
the edge of a burning platform: You have
to keep moving to survive. Your ability
to define the potentially fatal issues you
face and separate them from the routine
challenges of the day is your first step in
galvanizing your employees to believe in
your vision and strategy.
This is a reality of human nature: Most
people will change only when anxiety over
their very survival outweighs their resistance
to learning something new. While employees
like the excitement of a challenge, they also like
to be comfortable in their work. In a faceoff,
comfort usually wins. This is where survival
anxiety comes into play; it drives home the
painful realization that in order to succeed,
you and your employees often have to make
themselves uncomfortable.
The key to doing that is not to instill fear,
but rather to frame serious threats in
honest and real terms that employees can
relate to. Before his company’s remarkable
recent turnaround, Starbucks CEO Howard
Schultz’s sent a jarring 800-word e-mail
to all Starbucks employees in which he
claimed his company was losing the
“romance and theatre” so core to its defining
DNA. In short, he said, the company’s
drive for growth was diluting its brand,
and it was time to get back to the artistry
of making coffee—for only such care and
skill would allow them to deserve the
premium they charged on their goods.
At the core of this idea is helping your
people understand “why” your company
does what it does. If you want to stress
safety, for instance, don’t just concentrate
on the tasks; instead remind your team
that if they tie off their ladders and wear
their hard hats it will help them go
home to their families every night.
Engage their pride and sense of responsibility by reminding them that junior
workers are looking to them as examples.
Great leaders translate the ethereal concept
of a business mission into day-to-day
priorities for their people. They motivate
the team by reminding them that they are
building a better future and by providing
the clear goals, values, and expectations
associated with their role. When it works,
your employees respond by focusing their
energies on the tasks with the most impact.
No matter the size of your team or the
challenges you face, it is your job as a
leader to help your team understand why
it’s not acceptable to remain where you are.
You have to move them toward a better
future, and reassure them that it’s safe to
do so—in fact, it’s much safer to move
than not to.
Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick:
Chester Elton & Adrian Gostick are the
New York Times bestselling authors of
All In and The Carrot Principle. Learn more
about their work at TheCultureWorks.com.
@chesterelton