Employee motivation involves more than just salary and bonuses.

A frequent question we get from managers at all levels is how to motivate consistent high performance from others.

In today’s business environment, you can’t force anyone to do anything.

As a manager, you need to think of yourself as leading a volunteer army. In the words of President Dwight Eisenhower, you need to get people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.

The fact is, psychological research proves that praise and appreciation is far a more effective employee motivation strategy than threats or punishment. 

When people want to do something they tend to put in more and better effort than if they believe that they have to do it. And in this post we share a motivation strategy that you can use to encourage this kind of voluntary contribution from everyone around you. 

Are You A Master Motivator?

In your quest to achieve higher performance and productivity for your team, you might want to add this item to your management toolkit - the simple “thank you.”

In their bestselling book, The Carrot Principle, authors Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton report that managers who regularly recognize and praise high-performing employees achieve higher levels of productivity, employee retention and customer satisfaction than managers who don’t.

In a 10 year study of 200,000 managers and employees they found that expressing appreciation correlated with greater bottom-line financial performance as well.

Companies with a culture that praised and rewarded high performers were significantly more profitable and had higher rates of employee engagement than companies that didn’t recognize employee efforts.

Recognition & Praise Increase Employee Motivation

These findings aren’t really a surprise. In fact, they’re grounded in a long-accepted psychological principle.

Appreciation is one of the most powerful of human needs. And when it comes to getting the best performance from people - appreciation and recognition is far more effective than threats and punishment.

When people feel you appreciate them, they tend to perform better, leading to higher productivity, more satisfied customers and increased sales. The better people perform, the more you appreciate them. The more you show them how valuable they are to you, the more productive they become. This virtuous cycle of productivity and appreciation benefits everyone - you, your employees, and your organization.

Appreciation is the fuel that powers this positive cycle.

With all the evidence now pointing to the value of appreciation, you would expect that everyone would be offering it. But unfortunately, many managers continue to resist. In their studies, Gostick and Elton found that 88% of employees state that their biggest gripe with management isn’t pay, but a lack of appreciation

Why don’t more of us express appreciation? There are several reasons.

• We feel that by praising people we might “spoil” them.
• We assume people already know when we appreciate them.
• We assume that when people already know they are good, they don’t need to keep hearing it.
• We feel that expressing appreciation puts us in an inferior position or makes us obligated to reward people further.
• We’re busy enough already. Taking the time to praise and reward people is an unnecessary burden on our schedule.

While these are common preconceptions, they couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Expressing appreciation for a job well done doesn’t spoil people or make them complacent. It’s the best way to motivate continued high performance. And expressing appreciation doesn’t have to be a time burden. In fact, when the people around you begin performing at a consistently higher level in response to your sincere appreciation, you’ll need to spend less time supervising their work.

Get in the Habit

Many people we work with recognize the value of appreciation and want to get in the habit of giving more. However, with all the other competing demands on their time, their good intentions don’t translate into regular behavior.

Expressing appreciation is like any other habit. It may take some time to get started, but once you do, it becomes almost automatic.

One of our clients - an “old-style” senior manager who valued his “tough” image - finally got in the appreciation habit by forcing himself to recognize at least five people each day. He began each morning with five coins in one pocket and transferred a coin to a different pocket each time that he expressed appreciation during the day. Even if he had to call people at home to recognize them, he wouldn’t leave work in the evening until he had transferred all the coins.

It doesn’t take long for the appreciation habit to take hold. Once you see the positive results, recognizing people for their efforts will become second nature.

As people recognize that you appreciate their efforts, they will be more inclined to help you whenever they can. Even the most accomplished senior executives and highly skilled knowledge workers need and want recognition. Offering praise and encouragement fuels their continued motivation to achieve.

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