Determine what your company culture is lacking. As a leader, your job is to identify whether it is safety, belonging, mattering—or a combination of the three—that is most important to your employees.
“A little observation and thought will answer the ‘which one’ question,” Comaford shares. “For example, if your team has an us vs. them mentality, they’re craving belonging. If they behave like victims and complain that they aren’t appreciated, they want to know that they matter. And if there’s an undertone of fear to supervisor-employee interactions, they need safety. Once you know which subconscious need is most outstanding, do everything you can to satisfy it.”
Influence your team through behaviors. To truly motivate someone, you can’t just tell her what to do—you must make sure she’s emotionally invested and that she has a reason other than “the boss gave me this assignment” to keep forging ahead. The good news is, various cultural behaviors can boost the experience of safety, belonging, and mattering within your company and can help you to give employees this type of from-within fuel.
“While the art (and science) of influence is so complex that entire books have been written about it, here are a few tactics that may help you to deliver safety, belonging, mattering through your behavior,” Comaford shares.
