Extreme Measures to Demotivating your Performers

Motivated teams are those teams that are empowered. When it comes to motivating your top performers, there are multiple factors to keep in mind, right from clarity in communication to the overall positive environment which fosters employee aspirations, an open and respectful culture, balanced workplace. Organizations that understand this early tend to thrive.

Recap: My earlier article touched upon some of the major factors which demotivate top performers in the organization, read on to get a much broader view on factors that affect motivation and performance.

1) Confused Expectations

Expectation management is a very important factor, usually, managers/leaders don’t set clear expectations with their teams and set the right performance indicators, this directly results in a lack of clarity among the team member and results in poor results. Team members fail to differentiate between Important vs unimportant tasks as all tasks are automatically taken as priority, they will fail to recognize priorities and eventually become indifferent to tasks assigned. Sense of accomplishment gradually decreases as there are no clear goals communicated and demotivation sets in. 

Performers in general are aware of the environment they are in and want to clearly understand what is expected of them. The general expectation is their managers and leaders are aware of the environment and know their achievements and accomplishments.

Managers/Leaders should be crystal clear about performance, and their expectations from the team members, set crystal clear goals and communicate them, clearly define expectations and should be able to provide objective measurable feedback.

Another part of communication is the ability to handle feedback received in a very objective and neutral manner. If the messaging is clear and consistent across the organizational level then it creates an environment for the performers to feel belonged.

Managers/leaders should set up a regular periodic discussion to ensure the feedback loop is open and the expectations are communicated and measured in a timely manner. 

2) Adjust with poor performance

When an organization starts adjusting to poor performance, the benchmark goes down, this will also pull down the top performers. Even a small hole is enough to sink the ship, likewise, a poor performer regardless of the level of role he/she plays in the team will pull down the entire team, this will result in failure of getting desired results, top performers are also demotivated as the team fails.

For successful performance management and a performing team, it is very important that the environment supports a proper feedback loop, clear performance indicators, and tools which help ongoing improvement in the system.

Honest and objective feedback mechanisms and intolerance to process deviations go a long way in reducing non-performance and motivating top performers as the achievements are tracked and communicated.

The longer negative the negative performance is tolerated, the more difficult a solution becomes, and this not only affects the performers but also there are severe implications in the long term, including the credibility of the leadership as well.

3) Micromanage

Micromanagement only works in a school as children are still in a learning phase and not in Organizations, It is impossible to take ownership, and focus on productivity when your boss is always leaning over you, and Tracking your every move like an invigilator.

When Managers/leaders demand approval for all assignments, teams are often left waiting for approvals on multiple projects and assignments, and often start scrambling to meet unrealistic timelines. 

Micromanagement demotivates high performers who have the ability to think creatively and work independently. It also results in attrition and a team full of average performers.

In the current times, Micromanagement is Obsolete, the focus should be on empowering employees. Managers and Companies should focus on an employee-centric culture, team-centric culture, developing leaders, develop and training potential leaders from within the teams.

Organizations/Managers should focus on treating individuals with trust, educate the employees on ownership, make them take responsibility, and ensure differences of opinions, suggestions, and inputs are treated fairly and due credit is provided if the organization receives values from such inputs.

General esat survey states that 93% of employees felt satisfied in their roles, and 90% of employees said they were motivated when the Managers trusted them with responsibilities.

About author:

Raghavendra Bhat heads the Professional Services at Chimera Technologies. He is a food freak and knows all the best restaurants in Bangalore. If you want recommendations of where to eat, please feel free to connect with him.

Was it exciting so far? wait for the Climax next week.