Whatever time and effort we spend in motivating others, it is always a great investment. This is something that you need to do in a consistent manner, and you should realize that motivating others isn’t simply about making their day; it is about ensuring a good business for you as well. Motivating others holds benefits for the motivator more than the motivated.

The motivated will be able to accomplish the job in a better way, but the motivator gets the benefit of the job done. Good motivation also ensures that the task is accomplished in a highly satisfactory manner, which is usually more important than the accomplishment of the task itself.

In this chapter, we shall see how motivating others bode well for everyone. You will also read about the right way of motivating others, so that your motivation doesn’t just fizzle out without purpose or doesn’t seem like you are putting them on too much.

When we are speaking of motivation, we need to realize one very important thing. Motivating someone doesn’t just help the motivated person to do better; it also helps other people who are associated with the person in some or the other way. For instance, if your spouse is motivated into starting a new business, and if that business starts bearing fruit, then the entire family is benefited.

Here, just one person is motivated, but that motivation has helped a whole family. This can be extrapolated to larger scenarios. A motivated leader of a company could benefit the entire organization. A motivated president could benefit the entire country. A motivated freedom fighter could bring about a revolution for the betterment of society and the world at large.

Hence, motivating others is important to you. Especially if you are in some position of power and you deal with people all the time, then it becomes important for you to keep your people inspired. Only when they are inspired will they feel that they can do a good job for you and for the entire society or organization that you are a part of.

Motivating people in real terms

Motivating others is one of the chief challenges faced by leaders in the political and other arenas. Take the case of corporate leaders or chief executive officers. They are the people who head an organization and are in charge of its operations. They need to show results to their shareholders—results in terms of sales, profits and the social good achieved by their respective enterprises.

But, the amount they can do by themselves is very limited.They therefore depend on their managers, subordinates and teams to get the job done and to meet the annual targets. Here is where the task of motivation comes in. Left to their own devices most workers will just shy off.

It is something of a joke in Kolkata (India) that the babus or clerks take a ‘break’ from their continuous sessions of tea to do some work. So, one of the most vital tasks of the CEO is to motivate his team to deliver the desired results.If you want people to work and to work together as a team to achieve results in a specific time frame you need to use many ways to motivate them.

Successful motivation requires a combination of structure and incentives. It also calls for communication, communication, and communication. It is no longer just a carrot and stick approach. It requires special skills and cannot be done by any and every one. See if you can motivate your dog to fetch his bone for you and you will better appreciate how difficult it is to motivate humans.

Motivation, a valuable skill

Motivating others is a skill that is always rewarded with sweet success. Thus motivating others helps you achieve your own goals. It also gives you the satisfaction of having helped a fellow human being realize his own potential. Any CEO knows the value of this. People are the most valuable resource in any company.

In addition, all people have some talent, which is usually hidden, lost under a pile of everyday routine. It is for the wise CEO to give all employees an environment in which their talents can bloom. Moreover, when this happens, the employee become self-motivated and you cannot stop him from achieving his goals even if you tried to.

“In the terrorist attack on the Taj Mahal hotel Mumbai, in 2008, many employees laid down their lives in trying to help their clients out of the hotel safely. So remarkable is this that Harvard has actually commissioned a study to understand what motivated these employees to do so. A lot of the credit will go to the management obviously.”

The achievement of results, the satisfaction of a job well-done, the success of the enterprise, the altruistic rewards of helping your fellow men achieve self-actualization… These are some of the benefits you will derive out of motivating others. It will help you head a team of people who are happy because they are involved in an enterprise and all rowing in the same direction. It will help you become a better person.

What can you do to motivate people?

Since motivation comes in all shapes and sizes, everyone does not get motivated in the same way. This has its difficulties. Imagine you are a teacher handling 20 students. These are all different students, students with different ethnic and economic backgrounds. They react to situations in different ways. They think differently.

They offer different solutions to common problems. What can you do to motive and inspire this motley crew of people? You have to look for the common thread that works for all. But, when you are managing a crowd of people—political leaders manage a whole nation full of people and even maintain good foreign relations—how do you make sure that your motivation does not fall flat on some of them?

Motivating people is a highly difficult job, and in this chapter, you shall see that perhaps the best way to motivate people is to not go about it in an individualistic manner. If you try to give a carrot to each person individually, it might take a lot of time and effort as well. But, if you keep a bag of carrots for everyone to take from, it becomes easier. Even the people who do not like carrots will understand that you have given them something, and will feel good about it.

Excerpted from the book Bringing The Best Out Of The Worst People.

This excerpt has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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