How not to motivate your employees
Here are some handy rules of thumb. Anyone who calls themselves a thought leader is to be avoided. A man who does not wear socks cannot be trusted. And a company that holds an employee-appreciation day does not appreciate its employees.
It is not just that the message sent by acknowledging staff for one out of 260-odd working days is a bit of a giveaway (there isn’t a love-your-spouse day or a national don’t-be-a-total-bastard week for the same reason). It is also that the ideas are usually so tragically unappreciative. You have worked hard all year so you get a slice of cold pizza or a rock stamped with the words “You rock”?
This approach reveals more about the beliefs of the relevant bosses than it does anything about what actually motivates people at work (the subject of this week’s penultimate episode of Boss Class, our management podcast). In a book published in 1960, called “The Human Side of Enterprise”, Douglas McGregor, a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, divided managers’ assumptions about workers into two categories. He called them Theory X and Theory Y.
2023-11-20 13:28:45
Original from www.economist.com