It happened again to me. Another time a person who works in a well-known national company, and with subsidiaries in various locations, asked me about what to do to motivate the staff of that company. Of course they already have “their” solution to the problem or the one they think it is. The idea that the company manages is to give the staff some motivational talks. Additionally, this person told me, which should no longer surprise me, that it would be better if university students from the last years of management or psychology careers gave such talks, because a professional consultant would be very expensive.
It seems to me that the problem is flat out wrongly focused. First, it is believed that the problem of staff loss or loss of motivation is the sole and unilateral responsibility of the workers. Furthermore, management does not recognize any responsibility in the matter at all.
As if that were not enough, he implicitly acknowledges his refusal to change. How to help someone who does not even perceive their share of responsibility in that situation?
Let us assume the following. You, a reader friend, are a teacher in a school and one day a parent asks you to talk to your child because he or she does not know what he or she has or why they behave badly.
Obviously, the first thing you would do is explain to him that the minor's behavior is a reflection of the context in which he lives on a daily basis and that the solution is not just to pressure or punish him. It would be necessary to speak with both parents and analyze the immediate environment of the minor to determine the conditions of their undesirable behavior. Suppose your interlocutor responds that as parents they are not to blame and that the whole problem comes down to the child. It would be difficult to progress, right?
Now imagine that you are a couples therapist and one day someone visits you complaining about your spouse. This patient expressly asks you to talk to the other person to make him change. And when you suggest that you should talk to both of them, either together or separately, your patient either refuses or looks at you with utter disbelief. He even rebukes you that you are making a mistake, that the one who needs help is the other person. What an absurd situation, no?
Well, let's go back to our initial case: the managers of a company want the unwanted behavior of their personnel to be changed and they completely ignore any participation in the triggering of the problem. As I said in another column, he called this "the threat that came from another world." That is, everything was harmony and happiness until some extra-terrestrial virus slowly but inexorably contaminated the workers. Something must be done, say the managers, those people must be saved.
I believe that the decline of one of the members of any human relationship has to do, inevitably, with what happened concretely between all the parties involved. And if the party complaining about the other does not acknowledge its fraction of responsibility, the problem is far from being resolved.
Finally, the problem of loss or loss of motivation must be faced not only by addressing staff. Also, and above all, it must intervene on its managers. The central problem is that executives often refuse to receive any advice or suggestions. They don't even attend the trainings! Apart from the payment received, what use would it be for a specialist to speak to employees if the managers did not change their behavior one iota? Motivation, like love, must be cultivated every day and in every detail.
