As the leader of any organization you struggle with getting your people to want to be more driven. In today’s article I’ll cover how to motivate every team member to reach their full potential, regardless of their personality type.
First, it’s important to consider that a lot of times as leaders we tend to forget how terrible we were at one point. We tend to forget how lazy we were or how much we lacked discipline, or maybe we lacked competitive drive. Perhaps somebody in our life motivated us to want to go out there and compete and have a strong work ethic. What I’ve learned over the years of having coached tens of thousands of people is that there are literally four different levels everybody falls under. It’s important to be familiar with each of the levels and how to motivate each person dependent on their level.
4 Levels to Consider to Motivate Every Team Member
Level #4: Extremely Content, Extremely Lazy
At the lowest level is the person that's extremely content and extremely lazy. Generally speaking, there's not a whole lot you can do for the content, lazy person.
What usually ends up happening is that regardless of how many books and things you give them, they tend to stay content and lazy, and you wonder why. A life-changing event is what's needed 99% of the time to get the content, lazy person to change. Either a girl breaks up with them, they lose everything they have, they go into debt, someone passes away - something dramatically happens in their life and boom! They wake up. It happens to everybody. It's happened to all of us at one point.
Level #3: Super Competitive, Very Lazy
The third level of someone you can work with in your organization is someone that's very competitive, but very lazy. This is somebody that every time you talk about or recognize someone else, they go nuts. But they don't take action. On one side you're glad that they're so competitive, but you're upset on the other side because they're so content.
What do you do with the super competitive but lazy person? What this person needs is for a decision to be made, with a lot of urgency.
Level #2: Super Content, Not Competitive, Hardworking
On the second level you have somebody that's content, and not very competitive. They're not competitive, but they're the hardest working people you have in your group. It can be confusing when you see that someone is content, always happy, and yet working the hardest out of everyone. They show up early, they leave late, but they're very content.
The person that is super hardworking but very content needs a bigger environment. They need an environment where they can compete and see how other people are doing things. The second thing they need is to start feeding their minds with more books, including biographies on thinking bigger and doing bigger things. Normally they think too small because they're content.They need to start thinking bigger and normally changing their environment will do that for them.
Level #1: Competitive and Hardworking
Last but not least, your favorite kind of people to have in your organization are the competitive and hardworking team members. These are the people that make any organization a winning one. You may think that the competitive and hardworking people on your team don't need anything, but that's not correct. They definitely have needs.
First off, they need to be recognized for their efforts. Secondly, they need new challenges. You can encourage them to ask themselves, "What are the next three things I want?" Maybe it's $100,000 in savings. Maybe it's a million dollars in savings. Perhaps a car, a house, or a vacation. It could be giving money to charity. Maybe it's something they want to do for their mother or father. Perhaps it's a new milestone in business and life.
If they don't have new challenges in place, they can at any point go from level #1 which is competitive and hard working to level #2 which is content and hard working, because they've achieved their milestones.
So you need to look at these four different levels and see where your top five people are on the list. If you do, you'll know what to do to motivate every team member to reach their full potential. It's your job as a leader to do that if you want to advance your organization.
