How to Motivate People Problem

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How to Motivate Your Problem People by Nigel Nicholson Nigel Nicholson is a professor of organizational behavior and the director of the Center for Organizational Research at London Business School. He is the author of “How Hardwired Is Human Behavior?” (HBR, July–August 1998). Everyone knows that good managers motivate with the power of their vision, the passion of their delivery, and the compelling logic of their reasoning. Add in the proper incentives, and people will enthusiastically march off in the right direction. It’s a great image, promoted in stacks of idealistic leadership books. But something is seriously wrong with it: Such a strategy works with only a fraction of employees and a smaller fraction of managers. Why? For one thing, few executives are particularly gifted at rallying the troops. Exhorting most managers to become Nelson Mandelas or Winston Churchills imbues them with little more than a sense of guilt and inadequacy. For another, all available evidence suggests that external incentives—be they pep talks, wads of cash, or even the threat of unpleasant consequences—have limited impact. The people who might respond to such inducements are already up and running. It’s the other folks who are the problem. And, as all managers know from painful experience, when it comes to managing people, the 80–20 rule applies: The most intractable employees take up a disproportionate amount of one’s time and energy. So how do you get these people to follow your lead? How do you get them energized and committed in such a way that they not only support your initiatives but carry them out? After 30 years of studying business organizations and advising executives, I have concluded that these are precisely the wrong questions to ask. That’s because, as it turns out, you can’t motivate these problem people: Only they themselves can. Your job is to create the

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