Bus 610 - Motivational Problems

Motivational Problems

By

Elida shepherd

BUS 610

On-Line Class

Professor

Kathryn King-Metters

08 -01-2011

Motivational Problems

Motivational problems are going to be faced every day during one's leadership career. There are many ways to solve a motivational problem and, depending on how we view the problems, determines how we are going to find solutions. Learning how to motivate one's employees is not easy, especially if those employees are having problems with the company or other employees.

Like Kathryn King-Metters mentioned in her suggestions on how to became a better problem solver during an employee's review, one must:

"As managers, create a separate folder for each of your employees. When they do anything noteworthy (good or bad), write a quick note, date it, and drop it into their folder. When the year-end review comes up, you'll be hard pressed, quite often, to remember all the good things the employee has accomplished over the previous year. Same goes for a major blunder on their part, not taking responsibility, dropping the ball on a project, etc."

As leaders, one needs to identify the different problems that the company employees are encountering and determine what the best solutions are for each of those problems. Becoming a good motivational manager gets harder every day. However, developing a good strategy to get the appropriate and successful conclusion, giving the employee the right worlds to increase their job performance perspectives, and getting the leader to achieve the result to benefit both employee and organization, is even a bigger challenge to accomplish.

"Behavior change is rarely a discrete, single event. During the past decade, behavior change has come to be understood as a process of identifiable stages through which people pass (Zimmerman et al., 2000). The Stages of Change model describes five stages of readiness pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance - and provides a framework for understanding behavior change (DiClemente and Prochaska, 1998)."

Adapted from DiClemente and Prochaska, 1998

The leader needs to first identify the problem and then find the right motivation for that individual and the issues that he/she are facing in the organization. Today's leaders are better at how to confront this motivational problem solving; this is not something that is new to the organization's culture. On the contrary, leaders confront these motivational problems from generation to generations. It is very important to distinguish the individual cultures and personalities to solve problems and motivate the employee to become a better person. There is one book that I refer to a lot because it has helped me out tremendously during my leadership years; that book is "The Color Code." On page 27 of "The Color Code" we read:

"Personality is a code of behavior. Personality is that core of thoughts and feelings inside you that tells you how to conduct yourself. It's a checklist of responses based on strongly geld values and beliefs. It directs your emotional as well as your rational reactions to every life experience. It even determines which type of reaction-emotional or cerebral- you're likely to have in any given situation. Personality is an active process worth each person's heart and mind that dictates how he or she feels, thinks, and behaves."

Once the leader understands the individual's personality, then the leader can better understand how to improve the worker's mentality to be a better employee. The leader can also learn how to motivate the employee without making that individual feel bad. We need knowledge and facts to achieve the goals of motivating the employees during a problem situation. Like it was mentioned by Kathryn King-Metters on her suggestions on how to became a better motivational leader during an employee's review:

"You can justify your review more easily, with your management and with the employee, when you base your comments on facts and dates. The more details you can provide, the easier it is to justify giving them the top percentage raise or bonus. "

As a manager, the individual faces many different types of problems but, if that leader can communicate well with their employees, he/she can also motivate them so that the problems become less stressful at the work place. The book "Don't Sweat The Small Stuff" mentioned something about the way that as humans we react to different situations:

"Many people spend a great deal of energy arguing for their own limitations; "I can't do that," "I can't help it, I've always been that way," "I'll never have a loving relationship," and thousands of other negative and self-defeating statements. Our minds are powerful instruments. When we decide that something is true or beyond our reach, it's very difficult to pierce though this self-created hurdle. When we argue for our position, it's nearly impossible."

Once