While many people are adaptive to change, most individuals resist change. This plays out every day in workplaces around the world. For many people, change at work still represents a threat — maybe not to our lives, but certainly to our livelihood. Supervisors and managers have an important responsibility to navigate emotional and behavioral responses to resistance and understand that team members do not automatically jump on board to new plans. It is critical to assess what kind of change you are asking people to make collectively.
We encourage our managers to make an effort and interact with employees, communicate openly and solicit ideas to collaborate on maximizing motivation, including on what is working and what is not working to stay engaged with work. When it comes to workplace interactions, psychology research makes it clear that leaders can maximize engagement and drive lasting performance when they help their team members meet one another’s needs. Managers can focus on using the and strategies on collaborating and influencing others. The SCARF model involves five domains of human social experience: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness.
Status
Status is the drive we feel to stand out from the crowd. When we share our new ideas and take credit for jobs well done, status is that glow of importance we’re looking for. For many cultures, status is not important or needed to feel motivated. When managers squander those new ideas or take credit for others’ work, employees are less likely to further engage. During your next team meeting or during 1:1 conversations, consider sharing employees’ accomplishments to the wider team — or better yet, give your team members the floor to do so themselves.
Certainty
Employees naturally like to know what’s going on. We like to understand our surroundings, including any existing threats to our certainty when things aren’t totally clear. For example, when managers allow meetings to go long and our team objective isn’t clear, without any clear end in sight, credibility and trust from employees are compromised. Consider facilitating a discussion with the team or during 1:1 conversations that address concerns about their roles and responsibilities, about the department or college, and offer certainty rewards by making their expectations known whenever possible. Try setting clear agendas and timelines for meetings as a good start.
Autonomy
Employees have individual differences in needs for autonomy. But generally we like to feel a sense of control over the work we do. When managers involve themselves with every little detail of their team members’ work, they risk creating threats to those people’s autonomy. This is why micromanaging feels so offensive to most employees. Consider facilitating a discussion with the team about how often they need you to check in, consider using prompts such as: Do you feel like you’re given the time and space to do your work? What information are you expecting that you do not believe you are currently receiving? With this approach, managers send a much more rewarding signal that they trust and value the person’s ability to get things done.
Relatedness
Whether we mean to or not, people draw boundaries around their groups. Some people are “in-group,” while others are “out-group.” In-groups and out-groups crop up all the time at work. For managers, the goal is to expand the in-group and shrink the out-group. Relatedness is the sense that we belong — that we’re in the in-group. While having conversations with various team members, consider being more aware of using language such as “we” and “us” to promote that feeling, instead of language like “you,” “me” and “they,” which signals a clear boundary between groups.
Fairness
Lastly, people innately feel a sense of equity and equality in social interactions. We prefer what’s justified over what’s tilted in one party’s favor. Managers can go a long way in promoting fairness through acts of transparency. For example, when making decisions, consider communicating your thought process behind making one choice over another with the team. When employees don’t get the full picture, and start to invent alternate stories, it may increase the chance people feel slighted.
What’s your strategy to foster motivation? If there are strategies you have found useful to share with other managers or if you feel that your team lacks motivation and productivity, please share your ideas and thoughts with Director of Inclusive Culture Amy Moreno and/or Assistant Director of HR Steph Prokop, who can be a resource for additional information.
