There are two levers for moving men—interest and fear.
_Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821),

As a management consultant, I have studied human motivation 
for a long time, and helped to interpret it for scores of 
America's finest corporations. 

I can distill what I have learned into these basic principles:

(1)  All people are motivated. Think about the water in your 
kitchen faucet.  It is under pressure to get out.  It is motivated, but it doesn't have the opportunity to pour until you open the valve.  You don't provide it with the motivation; it is already full of motivation.  All you do is give it the opportunity. A lot of people are like that.  They're ready to act energetically; the motivation is there.  It's up to corporate leaders to provide the opportunity. Now think of a mountain stream.  It has lots of 
motivation.  It rushes down the hillside, and if you leave it alone, it will keep going until it reaches the ocean.  You don't have to motivate it. But suppose you want that stream to turn a turbine.  You have to channel its waters through a conduit that will focus the current on the blades of the turbine. When you do that, you can use the water to run machinery or generate electricity.  The stream is still following its motivation, but now its motivation is directed toward your objectives. Many people in your company are like that stream.  They have lots of motivation, but they need someone to show them how to channel it toward productive activities.  Your education and development process should be your channeling mechanism. 

(3)  The key to all effective motivation is identification. When you were in school, and your sports team lost, you felt it as your loss, even if you were just a spectator in the bleachers. If you can help your employees to identify that intimately with your company, you truly will create a motivating environment for them. The company will cease to be just an office building, a factory floor or an organizational chart.  It will be an 
important and integral part of your employees' lives. When something becomes personal, it becomes important.  When your employees begin to identify with your company and what your company is, good things begin to happen. When you begin to show them how improvements in the quality of your products and services relates to improvements in their quality of life, then you will have them on board. 

(4)  People change because of pain. When the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing, people will change. Robert Frey, CEO of Cin-Made, a small manufacturer of mailing tubes and composite cans, learned about the role of pain in forcing change.  He says:  "People hate change.  Change of any kind is a struggle with fear, anger, and uncertainty, a war against old habits, hidebound thinking, 
and entrenched interests.  No company can change any faster than it can change the hearts and minds of its people, and the people who change faster and best are the people who have no choice." 

(5)  If you pay attention to people, they'll pay attention to you. That means listening to others and not just hearing them. Listening is active; you have to involve yourself in what the speaker is saying, absorbing the message intellectually and emotionally.  Hearing is passive.  It calls for no reaction; no response. If you listen to individuals long enough, they'll tell you what their concerns and problems are.  It's a good way for management to get to know its people - not just by name, but also by their interests and aspirations. Listening is one of those "soft skills" that has little to do with pulling levers,  turning screws or following procedures, but a great deal to do with achieving performance, productivity and profitability in your business.  

(7)  You can't change people; you can only change their behaviors. A grocery store in California once tried to order its management people to be nice to the employees. The managers were given ten pennies each to place in their left pocket at the beginning of the day. Each time they paid an employee a compliment, they were to move one penny into the 
right pocket.  At the end of the day, all the pennies were expected to rest in right pockets. What was the first concern of those managers? Getting those pennies into the right pocket. What do you think the employees thought when they heard a compliment, then saw the manager take a penny out of one pocket and put it into another? Do you think the 
employees knew what was going on?  Did they feel  complimented, or did they feel patronized? You can't change feeling by executive order.  You have to do it gently, day by day through education and development, and by living the behavior you want to see in others.  It's not a mechanical act, but an emotional involvement. 

(8)  The employee's perception becomes the executive's reality. When you speak to employees, they don't respond to what you say; they respond to what they understand you to say. When employees observe your behavior, they respond to what they perceive you to be doing, and will try to emulate you. 

(9)  You consistently get the behaviors you consistently expect and reinforce. Look for ways to reward employees for doing the things you want them to do. The reward may take the form of financial incentives, prizes, or simply public recognition for a job well done. Reinforcement can be positive or negative. Sometimes the absence of a response can serve as reinforcement.  Behavior that goes consistently unrewarded 
will eventually be discontinued. 

(10)  We all tend to judge ourselves by our motives; but we judge others by their actions. Put another way, we're inclined to excuse in ourselves behavior that we find unacceptable in others. Corporate leaders should be careful not to make assumptions about the motives of employees.  Even the employee who engages in the unacceptable behavior may not be aware of the true motives.  Your leaders must be taught to deal with behavior, not motives.  If an employee is consistently late and a supervisor is unwilling to tolerate such behavior, the supervisor need only point out the unacceptable behavior, state the consequences of the continued behavior, and be willing to impose the consequences.  It's then up to the employee to deal with the motives. 

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