The Cause of De-Motivation at Work (aka work zombies)

 

The Cause of De-Motivation at Work

We’ve all seen them, the shells of once highly motivated individuals, stalking the halls at work.

What is the cause of this undesirable behavior? In my experience, it is not laziness, or a willing change in approach by the individual. Rather, it’s the result of a drastic change in motivation. Typically the change in motivation is a not a willing change by the individual who just wakes up one day and decides to stop trying. The change is caused by repeated mental beatings from bully style or uncaring leadership. Managers and leaders need to hear this (trust me I was one of them), it's not the employee, it is you. 1 in 2 employees has left a job to get away from their manager (Nolan, 2024); people quit because of their manager, not the job.

Yes, sometimes, its just not meant to be. Even if you’re the manager, giving your best effort, sometimes you just have to part ways.

But sometimes it can be handled a different way. You just have to figure out which way will work. If it is a long going issue, then you’ll have to start by mending the working relationship. A working relationship can usually be fixed. I manage someone who was completely unmotivated, underperforming, and hadn’t had the standard annual performance review in 4 years. Their old manager refused to work with them. I took a different approach, and it wasn’t by paying them more money. My first performance review with them was a “no change” in wage. They weren’t very pleased.

However, I began to lead this individual down a better path. I shared the vision of our job role, and a vision of the individual’s performance. Immediately I saw an improvement in performance. Now we were getting somewhere. I made sure to maintain sufficient communication and to give feedback right away. I noticed that the individual is creative, and likes to lead change, and that was the cause of their underperformance. The individual is not a good communicator themselves, and would take it upon themselves, often, to make changes from the normal process without communicating. Often times these changes had negative overall impact. This made it difficult for me to trust the individual, which I believe was the root cause of the spoiled relationship with the last manager.

We had a discussion about their approach, and performance really started to improve.

Today the individual is not the president of the company, but they are meeting expectations, and have been for some time. I am proud of this result, so I wanted to share how I think it happened.

In every working relationship their will be conflict. The performance of the team or individual will only go as far as the conflict management goes. Here’s some tips on how to handle conflict positively, and not get the result of de-motivated employees.

Causes of De-Motivation (some of them):

·         Lack of feedback (If an employee does something wrong, don’t ignore it, make sure they get the feedback in a timely manner)

·         Lack of respect (Bully style leadership gets you no-where in the long run, only use it in war-time or when absolutely necessary)

·         Surprises in the performance review (employees must never find out they are underperforming during the performance review, it should be known before then)

·         Lack of vision (Not knowing where we are headed creates uncertainty and lowers motivation)

·         Lack of inclusion (excluding those involved with the change from the planning process is a cardinal sin, you can’t blame the employee for not changing if the change doesn’t work for them)

Resolving Conflicts that Lead to De-Motivation.

Method 1: Give feedback. Have the discussion. This is often the hardest part of the job for managers, especially managers with little experience. Discussions about underperformance can be uncomfortable and scary, but the ends outweigh the means.

Method 2: Give vision. Don’t force your employees to run at a problem blind. Open and honest leadership is the only method that works.

Method 3: Get feedback. Ensure your leadership style is driving employees towards de-motivation. Ask them through an anonymous survey or if you’re comfortable enough for face to face feedback on your style. You’ll be able to tell if they have an issue with you.

Method 4: Decide, execute, communicate. Decide whether going forward with the discussion is worth it. Will your investment result in something positive? Whether this is in a team member’s development or during a team meeting during a discussion, always make sure you know the purpose behind the discussion. Don’t let discussions veer from the topic at hand, and don’t let them become personal. There is a time and place for personal discussions and that is in private. The best way to solve conflict is to focus on the task at hand, the concept, the principal, not the person or relationship (Patterson et. al., 2002).

References

K. Patterson, J. Grenny, R. McMillan & A. Switzler. (2002). Crucial Conversations.

Nolan, B. T. (2024, January 25). The No. 1 employee benefit that no one’s talking about. Gallup.com. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/232955/no-employee-benefit-no-one-talking.aspx