Do your company’s managers fall short on motivating others?

Inspiring employees and peers to meet and exceed objectives is a crucial part of a boss’s responsibility. Some common fallacies about human behavior can undermine that effort.

Ragan Insider Premium Content
Ragan Insider Content

Is motivation a problem spot in your organization?

My team and I went to SavvyRoo, a cool site where people can enter a question and rank other people’s posts, and we asked leaders for their top question about workplace motivation.

Out of hundreds of questions, this one surfaced in the top 10: Why are managers such lousy motivators?

Most entries asked about how to motivate people, but this question tugged at the deeper issue of why motivation is such a challenge. There’s good science to explain why managers are typically lousy at motivation.

RELATED: Engage employees though culture and communications

The chasm

You might be familiar with Ken Kovach’s seminal research. Individuals rank 10 workplace motivators. Their answers are compared against rankings of what their managers think motivates them.

The results reflect how most employees feel: My manager doesn’t know what motivates me.

To read the full story, log in.
Become a Ragan Insider member to read this article and all other archived content.
Sign up today

Already a member? Log in here.
Learn more about Ragan Insider.