How to Motivate a Demotivated Team

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR on Leadership, case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. Are you struggling to motivate your team?  You’re not alone. Case Western Reserve University management professor Richard Boyatzis  ays there’s a motivation crisis in workplaces. He cites research that shows that more than three-quarters of all workers in the US, Europe, and Japan report feeling disengaged at work. And that study was released before the COVID-19 pandemic. Boyatzis places the responsibility for workers’ demotivation with leaders – especially immediate supervisors. He argues that they’re in the best position to shift a demotivated employee into a go-getter – or the reverse. In this episode, Boyatzis takes questions from listeners who are struggling to motivate their colleagues and teams.  He offers his advice for what to do when your colleague wants the status of a prominent role, but doesn’t want to do the work that comes along with it. And he also discusses how to respond when your employees are leaving at a high rate.  This episode originally aired on Dear HBR in November 2019. Here it is.

DAN MCGINN: Welcome to Dear HBR: from Harvard Business Review. I’m Dan McGinn.

ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Work can be frustrating, but it doesn’t have to be. We don’t need to let the conflicts get us down.

DAN MCGINN: That’s where Dear HBR: comes in. We take your questions, look at the research, talk to the experts, and help you move forward. Today we’re talking about motivating employees with Richard Boyatzis. He’s a professor at Case Western Reserve University and the author of Helping People Change. Richard, thanks for being here.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: Thank you.

ALISON BEARD: How often is it that people are coming to work completely unmotivated to do their jobs well?

RICHARD BOYATZIS: Sadly, the engagement numbers suggest that we’re suffering from a motivation crisis. I mean, if 76% of the people with full-time jobs in the U.S. don’t feel engaged in their work, in Europe I think the last one I saw was 83%, in Japan 81, that’s a huge number of people who aren’t bringing their talent to work. And the responsibility for that lies with the managers and leaders. You know, the people who are supposed to be energizing people and engaging them.

ALISON BEARD: And you think that bosses can effectively shift someone from being completely demotivated to a go-getter who wants to outperform?

RICHARD BOYATZIS: I think it’s the only way to do it. And I think the immediate supervisor has the most impact.

DAN MCGINN: First question.

ALISON BEARD: Dear HBR: I’m a young female founder-director for a not-for-profit student program. I find it hard to motivate and manage my team. To get into the group, and get volunteering experience for university, they always promise to achieve something, but they end up doing nothing. They say they have to balance their own study and out of school activities. One student on my executive team even tells people that she’s the co-founder of our program. That’s a lie. She doesn’t even contribute effort equivalent to her position. She wants to be a leader, and always argues with me about her role. I really struggle to have her on the team, but she wants to stay for the title and experience. No one is paid to do these jobs, so I can’t really force them to do anything, but I really want to make this program a success. What should I do?

RICHARD BOYATZIS: This is a great example and a dilemma that’s all too typical because we don’t really help people learn how to manage or motivate others. Even in management schools, we’re not good at that. We teach people how to do analysis. And one of the great predictors of people who develop important competencies for life and jobs are being in extracurricular activities, clubs, community organizations, and sports teams. So, she’s in the right place to not just help add value, but she’s also in the right place to help develop herself more holistically.

ALISON BEARD: But the big problem is that she is managing this team of volunteers that don’t need to be there, who aren’t paid to be there, and who seem sort of apathetic.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: I think the challenge, if you will, for her leadership right now is to think about how do we build engagement. And the single most powerful way to do it is to have people talk about and arrive at, and then reaffirm their sense of purpose, their shared vision.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah, I mean, there’s always a challenge in managing volunteers.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: Right.

DAN MCGINN: You have to use soft power, you can’t quite boss them around the same was as if they’re a paid employee. Purpose, I think, has to be part of it. Relationships have to be part of it. Even if somebody joins because their girlfriend drags them in, if the person gets in there, and gets energized, and becomes a believer, and likes the relationships they’re forming, they can be a great volunteer.

ALISON BEARD: Presumably these people are interested in the cause, so how does she get them more energized about the cause?

RICHARD BOYATZIS: It is likely, Alison, that people did sign on because it sounded good. Now what they have to do is think of, and be a part of a dialogue, what’s our purpose, what are our values, why do we exist, how are we contributing. And then she reminds people about that along the way. That no meeting goes by without saying something about why they’re there. The more it can have meaning to people, and the less instrumental it feels, the more passionate people are, and the more we see what’s called organizational citizenship, people doing more than their jobs.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah.

DAN MCGINN: And especially in volunteer settings like this one, I also think a leader needs to sort of program a certain amount of fun into it.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: Yes.

DAN MCGINN: That’s something we see in organizations like this that are successful and have engaged people.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: And again, going back to medical research we know that playfulness is one of the four major things that activates the body’s own kind of healing and renewal process. Plus, you know, they’re in college. So, it’s not a time in which you’re supposed to be doing 90 work weeks like you’re a new associate in a law firm.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. I think also, this can’t be a top-down endeavor. She needs to have just more one on one conversations, and group conversations again, in a really fun way, to get people more invested, and feeling as if it’s their organization too, not just hers.

DAN MCGINN: Have you seen a leader who found an innovative way to get people to remember or recognize the purpose of an organization on a daily or weekly basis?

RICHARD BOYATZIS: An example of that, Tom Strauss was a brilliant CEO of Summa Health System. Started out as one hospital, by the time he retired about four to five years ago, they had nine hospitals and seven outpatient clinics. He would have a meeting of the heads of every one of the hospitals and clinics once a week in his office for 60 minutes. As they left, he would pick two of them and say, bring me back a story for next week’s meeting of some patient helped in your unit this week. The next week he’d open the meeting, he’d give five to ten minutes of his 60 minutes to them telling two stories. And the guy is brilliant. Because what he’s doing is he’s reminding everybody there that their real purpose is healing.

DAN MCGINN: Our listener is struggling to get the overall organization engaged, but she really seems to be struggling with this one person on her team, the person who’s lied about being a co-founder, the person who is not attributing equivalent to her position and is really just there for the title and the resume line. How should she deal with this one dynamic, which seems really at the heart of what she’s struggling with?

RICHARD BOYATZIS: My sense is that if the shared vision purpose discussion doesn’t awaken her, then I would suggest talking to her. And it really comes down to does she know why this person, she’s inferring why this person wants to be there, but she should ask her. She might be surprised. And then once she hears from her, how do we design a role for this person.

ALISON BEARD: And what should she do about this issue that everyone seems to be struggling with time management? You know, just feeling that they don’t have enough time to give to this volunteer not-for-profit organization in the midst of their busy schedules?

RICHARD BOYATZIS: If it’s fun, if it’s engaging, I think people will be drawn to it. I think they would give more time.

DAN MCGINN: Alison, were you on your school paper in college?

ALISON BEARD: I was.

DAN MCGINN: Did you spend more time on the paper than you did on classes at points in your career?

ALISON BEARD: I spent every night Wednesday night there like the entire night.

DAN MCGINN: Ours was Sunday night. [LAUGHTER] And is that one of your best memories of college?

ALISON BEARD: Yes.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: Well, and the important point that you raised, most of the actual learning that helps people be better at work, and better citizens and family members, they’re learning in the non-course related activities at school.

ALISON BEARD: Yes.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: You each found something that you’re using today.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah.

ALISON BEARD: Right.

DAN MCGINN: Alison, what’s our sum up?

ALISON BEARD: So, first we want our letter writer to realize that this is a really good opportunity to learn how to manage. We want her to start out by finding the why, what is driving her, how can she find the why of the people that she’s working with, what is bringing everyone to this organization. We think that she should involve her people in these discussions about what the organization should be, and do, and what its goals are. We also want her to make sure that everyone’s having fun. Playfulness, along with purpose, is key to engagement. In terms of the problematic executive team member, if this shared purpose conversation doesn’t change her behavior, it’s definitely worth a one on one conversation about her personal motivations, and maybe there’s a special project or something different she should do in her role. We think that if she does all of this well, people are going to stop worrying about their busy schedules, and really want to come work for this mission that she has set out.

DAN MCGINN: All right, next question. Dear HBR: I work at one of Canada’s top 50 employers to work for, but we struggle to retain talent. We’ve started losing our top performers to other companies due to a lack of growth and development opportunities. To counter this trend, the company has decided to identify and focus on rising stars. We’re hoping this new program will control the talent drain. Here’s the dilemma, how do we prevent the employees who aren’t selected to join this program from feeling discouraged? If confidentiality is needed, how do we maintain it? How do we ensure we achieve the goal of nurturing our best people, while still sending a positive message to everyone?

RICHARD BOYATZIS: This is a brilliant question. And a very common dilemma that people face. This person is talking about a classic retention brain drain issue. And whether we’re talking about countries losing their talent, or companies, this is a major issue. The problem is their answer is a bit simplistic.

ALISON BEARD: So, what are they doing wrong?

RICHARD BOYATZIS: It’s dangerous to focus on the few people. What do HiPo programs do? They make the people selected into them feel special and elite, and they make everybody else feel like chopped liver. And we also know that some percentage of the people, the non-high potentials, actually are. And all they need is something to wake up to. So, what you want to do is approach a lot of the folks with the opportunities for job shifting, for adding to their activities, look at the issue of what’s engaging, what’s exciting, what’s novel, what can people do and learn on the job.

DAN MCGINN: So, you’re arguing, and I think we agree with you, that there are downsides to high potential programs. And if a company is going to go down this path and have a HiPo program, it should have alternate tracks and alternate opportunities for development for the people who are not selected.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: Yeah, and I would say they should talk about the larger engagement and motivational program that they’re doing for learning opportunities and novelty, and then if they want a high potential program within that, they might do it as a subset.

ALISON BEARD: I’m going to say my two favorite Argentines, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, who talks about looking not just for ability, but for social skills, and drive, and Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, who talks about having the right values, curiosity, insight, engagement, and determination. And all of those things aren’t typically what leaders look for when they think oh, who’s my star here? So, I think it’s very important if this company does a HiPo program, to have our letter writer exert some influence on who is going into it, and why.

DAN MCGINN: She asks very specifically if the company goes ahead with this HiPo program, which it seems like it’s going to, how does it maintain confidentiality so that they don’t get into the situation where there’s the haves and the have nots.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: Right. That’s the dilemma with these programs.

ALISON BEARD: So, on this issue, I might make an argument for transparency because I think when people are chosen, it will get out. I think it’s sort of impossible to maintain confidentiality. And I would rather know well, what do I need to do to get into that.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: Why were they selected?

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, what were the performance metrics that I need to hit.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: And if the organization, Alison, also offers some options for you to explore these other capabilities or deliverables, then you end up feeling okay, I’m disappointed, but it’s a fair process.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah.

DAN MCGINN: Also, if there’s sort of either a rotational, or a cohort, or a cadence to it where there will be chances in the future to be selected. I think one of the problems with the secretive approach is that one gets the approach that because it’s secret you don’t know when it started, how long it is.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: And you assume that it’s unfair. That’s where the human mind will go.

ALISON BEARD: Our letter writer is smart to recognize that you can’t anger all of these people who you haven’t tapped, you need to make sure that they feel valued, that there are still growth and development opportunities for them, as you said, Richard.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: Right, and in professional service organizations, which by their very nature are more egalitarian, this becomes a serious sustainability issue because if, like at a university, or a hospital, or a consulting firm, or an engineering firm, if somebody knows that somebody is picked in this high potential program, the peers feel a little bit of resentment.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah, I know people who are cynical who would look at the people who would be put in a HiPo program would be like oh, that’s a try-hard thing. My teenagers used the word disparagingly: ‘Oh, that person’s a try-hard.” Too sort of ambitious and corporate in a negative way. So, I can see how like culturally that could — like the program could be seen as a turn-off by a certain group of people. Are there other downsides even for the people who are selected for them?

RICHARD BOYATZIS: I think that it is possible that people might rest on their laurels if you will, and that backfires. Or they end up generalizing the impact. Well, I’m good at these things, therefore I must be good at all these things. I think the high potential programs there’s a basic notion that you want to spend time with the people that you think are really the water walkers, but it’s got downsides for the water walkers as well because all of the sudden then they think they can walk on water.

ALISON BEARD: Just to wrap this up on a practical note, what exactly should she do now? Should she go to the leaders who are planning this HiPo program, and give them suggestions for how to change it?

RICHARD BOYATZIS: I think that if she frames it in terms of what they’re trying to do, and the resource constraint environment that she describes, she may say, you know, there’s a way we can push this that might help a lot of people. And we can do a HiPo program, but let’s not put everything into that. Let’s make that a little lower key, but include something.

ALISON BEARD: And then in terms of the people on her own team, as an individual manager she can just work to make sure that anyone who hasn’t been included feels as if they have room to grow.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: Yeah, you bet.

ALISON BEARD: So, Dan, what are we telling our letter writer?

DAN MCGINN: We’re telling her there are a lot of downsides to these high potential programs. They do create resentment, they create a have and have not kind of environment. We think our listener should speak up to management, and point out that these programs have downsides, and suggest alternatives. Among the alternatives would be to make sure that people who are not selected for the program also have other kinds of developmental opportunities, that there’s something there to keep those people engaged to make it a more rotational program to make it clear to people that if they weren’t selected this year for the program, there’s a chance they can be selected next year, and try to make it clear what they have to do to get into the program. At the end of the day, we wish that companies didn’t do this sorting in such a visible way because of the downsides. But it sounds like the train may have left the station on this one, and she just needs to try and speak up so that the program is executed in a way that minimizes the downside risks for the people not selected.

ALISON BEARD: Dear HBR: I’m one year into my role as manager of a team of five that I inherited after joining my company. I have 10 years’ experience and a master’s degree in my field, but I’m struggling to manage one employee, a remote work, in case that matters. Since day one, she’s given me extreme resistance. When I ask her to share information or perform minor tasks, she always provides long-winded responses for why she shouldn’t have to, or why that’s not how we do things. For example, I asked to see draft agendas before they’re circulated, and she balked. When I joined the team I made a point of not immediately introducing major changes, even though I saw tremendous room for improvement. Specific to her, I’ve identified major knowledge gaps, and have done what I think a good manager should, by providing her with training opportunities. I tell her all the time she’s a star performer, thank her for her contributions, and give her public praise. Despite being remote, she has great relationships at the main office and is always chatting with colleagues during her quarterly visits. She seems to behave badly only toward me. I’m not a micro-manager, although I suspect she assumes I am because her past managers were 100% hands-off. I’ve explained that my job is to connect the day to day back to the bigger picture strategy, and I can’t do that if she’s cutting me out and treating me coldly. All I can make of it is that she simply doesn’t like to be managed, or doesn’t like me. At one point she went over my head to complain about me to my boss, who shut it down, and told her that unless I was doing something illegal or unethical, bad mouthing me would not be tolerated. After learning about this, I scheduled a call with a report to hear her out. She asked for more time, which I granted, while also mentioning that we couldn’t simply brush these issues under the rug. We did discuss later. Her chief complaint was that she does not have full autonomy. I asked her to improve her team spirit, and understand that at times I will ask her to do things she may not agree with. Since then she has shifted from overt to subtle hostility. I see her taking credit for my ideas and work, which we usually hear about managers doing to their directs, not the other way around. Quite frankly I could never imagine saying or doing any of these things to my boss. What more can I do here to strike harmony with this report? Wow.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: This is a complex situation. And it’s one that a lot of new managers run into. I bet you, and this could be an action step for her, to go talk to the person who was the predecessor in her role, and say, I just need a little bit of perspective, when you were running the unit, how did people do. Were there anybody that you thought was high potential, and doing really well, was there anybody who you thought was very distraught or dissatisfied, or a pain in the rear. My prediction is if the predecessor is still around, they will identify this person as having had these problems. The boss could decide to reassign this person.

ALISON BEARD: It’s interesting that you immediately jumped to having a conversation with the boss basically about how to get rid of this woman. Because normally in this situation we would say, try to figure out what this employee’s motivations are, and what’s really going on, give her direct feedback. But I do think that our letter writer has done a lot of those things already. She’s already had the direct conversation, she’s already put the woman on notice.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: That’s right. Which is why I didn’t go there.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: Cause I think this is too far down the road. Plus, the letter writer is giving off very strong mixed signals. So, she says she thinks she’s doing a great job, and praises her a lot in public, meanwhile she thinks she has major technical deficiencies, and she’s told her about the training she needs.

ALISON BEARD: Right.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: And the dilemma is, it’s gone so far, I’m not sure that a conversation with this remote person is going to bring her back to the light.

DAN MCGINN: I was really impressed with the way the listener laid out the problem, she seemed like she was doing all the right things without a lot of success, so I empathize with her. At the same time, I empathize with the problem employee. Alison, you and I have a lot of autonomy in our jobs, and I think if tomorrow you and I had a new boss who was a lot more supervisory, and was a lot more involved in day to day decision making than we’ve become accustomed to, I don’t think we’d become problem employees, but I think we would bristle, and it would take some adaptation, and that there would probably be some tension around that.

ALISON BEARD: I agree. So, I do applaud the person who’s written in for everything that she’s done, but I think both of you are right in that she hasn’t fully taken her employee’s feelings to heart. And also, Richard, to your point, she hasn’t coached her in the right way.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: Right.

ALISON BEARD: So, before she has that conversation with the boss, maybe she could hit a reset button on this whole relationship, and just start over, and try to coach with compassion.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: Right, excellent point.

ALISON BEARD: So, how should she do that?

RICHARD BOYATZIS: Excellent point. And I think that’s the only concrete alternative, to try to engage this person. Here’s my fear, because this has gone on for a while, and I suspect even with the prior manager, this person’s not going to trust her. So, what can pull her around? If somebody can, which is possible, I’m not sure it could be this manager.

DAN MCGINN: So, essentially you’re seeing this relationship as too far gone to fix at a certain point.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: It sounds like that to me. Especially when she’s done these things, and the person has now gone passive-aggressive about it, that’s a lot, that’s a lot of healing. One technique I’ve seen used well is when there is a toxic relationship, the manager finds somebody else, a peer of hers that’s also a manager, but in a different unit, who has a good relationship with this person, and encourages them to have the engagement conversation. It’s kind of like third party conflict resolution.

ALISON BEARD: And that third party should probably be the boss.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: It could be, but it doesn’t have to be. Again, it depends on whether or not the boss is afraid of this person too, and that’s why he, in a sense, kicked the can down the road.

ALISON BEARD: Why shouldn’t we just fire her?

RICHARD BOYATZIS: If she’s done well in the past, and if she has some commitment to the organization, you know, to pick up on the theme of the prior question, you don’t want the brain drain. But the question is she might not be in the right job. So, if this manager meets with the boss and says, look, so and so is good at these things, she makes an important contribution to the firm, but in this role as a part of this team, it just doesn’t work. It’s really trying to say how do I find another job that she can do, find some opportunity that she might find more engaging. If that doesn’t work, as I say, sometimes you have to get divorced.

DAN MCGINN: One of the things about this employee that is unique, and the letter writer says this at the start, this is a remote worker in case that matters. I wonder if it does matter whether the letter writer might have a subtle bias that she needs to more closely supervise somebody who’s remote because she can’t see her every day. And I wonder whether they need to take a look at that aspect of the relationship and see whether the person is being treated a little bit different because she’s out of sight.

ALISON BEARD: And whether the employee is more sensitive because she isn’t around her colleagues, and her boss, every day.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: That’s all possible. And it’s also possible that a year into the role as a manager, the letter writer hasn’t had sufficient training or coaching herself to be able to think through these things.

DAN MCGINN: Or that because of the remoteness of the relationship, they just haven’t, they don’t have the everyday social interaction, water cooler things that people typically have in an office setting, so that while our letter writer has probably bonded the way you want to bond with your other four employees on the team, this fifth one is the outlier. Not just because of performance, but also because they haven’t had the daily interaction that you have from being in an office together.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: And clearly a lot of things in our work situations are based on the quality of our relationships. And if the letter writer has not interacted with this person or the rest of their team, they don’t have a prior relationship. So, I think working with remote workers, to pick up on your point, is more challenging.

ALISON BEARD:  Yeah, we did an entire show on remote work and the unique challenges it presents for managers. So, listeners please go check it out.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: Great.

ALISON BEARD: The one thing that I also want to add as a piece of advice, is to make sure that this toxic situation with one employee isn’t diminishing her management of the entire team.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: Excellent point, excellent point. We do know that managers tend to get fixated on a problem person when they should be spending all their time thinking about the good performers. And if she lets it get to her, she’s going to be so preoccupied that she won’t do the things that she knows she should do.

DAN MCGINN: All right, Alison, what’s our advice?

ALISON BEARD: So, first we applaud this letter writer for the things that she’s done so far to try to better manage this employee, but we do worry about a few things. First, we think she needs to take a little bit more time to understand where the employee is coming from, she had a lot of autonomy before, and she doesn’t know, the fact that she’s a remote worker is certainly a factor because the two of them haven’t had a chance to develop any kind of personal relationship. We also worry that she’s sent mixed signals. You know, she sees major deficiencies, but she’s telling her she’s a star, and praising her, which probably doesn’t sit right with the employee. It’s possible that she could just hit the reset button and try to coach and motivate her in a better way, asking about, you know, what her dreams and aspirations are, and trying to develop a path forward collaboratively. But it does seem like the situation has become too toxic at this point. So, we think it’s probably wise to bring in a third party. It could be the boss, and you could have a conversation about what to do with this woman, perhaps it’s a different role, a different manager. If that doesn’t work, it might be time to consider lettering her go. But ultimately we don’t want this letter writer to lose focus on the big picture. She needs to make sure that this one problem doesn’t diminish the way she manages her entire team as a new manager.

DAN MCGINN: Great. Richard, thanks for joining us.

RICHARD BOYATZIS: It’s been delightful, thank you.

HANNAH BATES: That was Richard Boyatzis in conversation with Alison Beard and Dan McGinn on Dear HBR. Boyatzis is a management professor at Case Western Reserve University and he’s the coauthor of the book Helping People Change: Coaching with Compassion for Lifelong Learning and Growth. We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about leadership from the Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review. We’re a production of the Harvard Business Review – if you want more articles, case studies, books, and videos like this, find it all at HBR.org. This episode was produced by Curt Nickisch, Anne Saini, and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Rob Eckhardt, Adam Buchholz, Maureen Hoch, Adi Ignatius, Karen Player, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.