Motivate your employees with “Why”

Have you ever wonder about how Apple and Google makes itself the best place for employment than other organizations. They have the same pool of talent, technology, and resources as any other organization in the world. So, how are they able to attract motivated people than other organizations? Do you think its their lucrative salary package? You may be completely wrong, if you think that money can motivate people to perform their best. I am not denying that money can’t motivate you, I am saying that  money can’t be the only thing that can motivate you to do your best. Don’t you agree?



Those days are long gone, where people were working in labor intensive jobs (production jobs). In the 21st century, with latest technological equipments, most of the employees use tools/machines to get their work done. You can certainly motivate your production employees by providing money as an incentive, but you can’t motive your other employees through the same technique. In fact in one research by Dan Pink, he talks about - how money does not motivates us to do our best.

I personally believe that - its not “what you do” that motivates your employees. But its “why you do it” that motivates your employees. Lets put this concept in to your life. I am sure that you must have come across some situations in your lives, when you must have had an employee, who was not motivated. The most common technique that you might have adopted must be “fear”. You must have communicated something like - “You need to finish this, otherwise....”. Do you realized, what did you do? You communicated - what he/she needs to do. Lets consider an another scenario. Lets assume that  you communicated to him personally and said something like - “Your work is important, and this is how it helps the team, and this is why we do it”. Don’t you think this approach would have worked better?

Take Linux for an example. Linux is an open source software, which is used as a corporate server in 1 out of 5 organizations. And surprisingly enough, it is free. Why would someone make something, if he/she doesn’t get any benefits out of it? The answer lies in my headline - “motivation through why”. Lot of people believe in open source platforms, they believe in the “why”, and that’s why they are willing to create these kind of software for free. So, next time if you see a poor performer in your team, then don’t directly jump in to “how to fix it”, instead help him understand “why you are doing the work that you do”. I guarantee that - you will see some positive result at the end of that discussion.

I hope my blog helped you understand Leadership from a different perspective. Let me know your opinion through your comments. Thanks. - Bhavin Gandhi