Motivate Your Employees with Purpose, Not Profits

It’s natural for leaders to emphasize the importance of hitting financial targets, but making numbers the centerpiece of your leadership is a costly mistake. Financial results are an outcome, not a root driver for employee performance, and a growing body of evidence tells us that overemphasizing financial targets erodes morale and undermines long-term strategy. So, what should you do instead? Use your time with your team to build and reinforce your organizational purpose. This requires three actions:

 1. Reevaluate how you use your leadership “airtime.” Spend at least half your time with your team discussing your purpose and impact of the work, and no more than half your time on numbers or deliverables.

 2. Talk about customers, clients, and colleagues with specificity and emotion. The more clearly an employee understands their direct impact on another human being, the more likely they are to go the extra mile — and they’ll also experience greater fulfillment in doing so.

 3. Resist the urge to widely share every financial outcome, even if it’s positive. Ask yourself: What does my team really need to know on a daily basis to accomplish their goals?

 

Source: Harvard Business Review - Management Tip of the Day