Motivation – A systemic perspective

I recall 2005, I was called for a motivation program. I was approached by a senior general manager of a company. He said that he perceived that his employees were demotivated and he wanted me to conduct a training program to motivate his team. I was enthusiastic and I developed a training module with various concepts like, “intrinsic, extrinsic motivation, locus of control etc. I also framed questions for small group discussions with the hope the employees sharing the answer will inspire each other. The questions were

Apart from the discussion on the above topics I had also planned to show videos and planned some management games. I was well set and I went with great confidence to kick start the program. When I started the training after one hour, all participants pushed aside the training and started an out -burst. They started sharing

The list was becoming bigger and bigger. I felt I have opened an pandora’s box. Wise thing I did is I also kept aside my plan of training and started to listening to them. I could only show empathy and nothing more. At the end of the day I felt challenged and helpless. It was 2 days training and the next day, I came with the same mood that employees are not going to listen to what I say, but an interesting shift happened. The employees appreciated my patient listening and were willing to listen to what I had to offer. I felt successful I was able teach and facilitate self -motivation techniques. Post training the general manager also got a good feedback about my program. The general manager called me and asked, “ could I conduct more training programme to motivate other employees.” I did not take this offer for further training, because I knew training will not impact the issues the employees were going through. I also did not know how else I can create a situation for change or motivate the team.

Now after 13 years my approach particularly after learning from Dr Bernd Schmid has changed. I have a sense of awareness, professional potency and competence to handle such situations and facilitate change. Recently I was asked to facilitate a motivation programme for a sales team. I led the training with a perspective of collective motivation. I pitched the program with the perspective that motivation is a shared responsibility and can be understood from 3 dimensions.

The three dimensions that impact motivation for an employee are :

This aspect is generally always addressed in all the workshops and caters to development of the individual. However, The other two aspects detailed below are equally important in an organisational context.

Though there are many books and ideas to motivate self, it is important to consider the impact of relational and systemic perspectives. For example, an employee said “my manager does not like me and I don’t feel interested at my work”. I have sometimes seen how

In such circumstances, the relationship between the manager and his subordinate can itself become a major demotivating factor. No amount of self motivation can continuously sustain itself in the face of continued negative onslaught by the manager. To gain motivation the manager and subordinate have to take mutual interest.

Example : A sale executive and his manager got an order of 5000 units food packets for each day for 7 days. The order was refreshments for a local community which wanted to welcome pilgrims who were traveling towards a local temple by walk. The agreement was to make supply at 1500 hours. On the first day, the supply reached only by 1700 hours. This was a result of poor co-ordination between factory and logistics. They did not make an effort to inform the delay to the sales executive. The customer waiting from 1500 hours became frustrated and expressed dissatisfaction by cancelling the order. Under such circumstances, expecting the sales executive to be self- motivated and promote sales can be an unfair expectation.

Without addressing the poor co-ordination between factory, logistics and sales team, expecting the sales team to get motivated through training alone is not realistic either. Self motivation alone cannot generate results in an organisational context.

Facilitating motivational workshops from the three angles is a systemic approach practised by Nibbana and has yielded consistent results