Getting The Best From EVERY Member of Your Team

Most of our teams are made up of a mix of high ambition employees, low ambition employees and everything in between. What often motivates our highest ambition team members are things like learning new skills, challenged and varied work and the opportunity for advancement. But how do you motivate team members who aren’t interested in learning new skills or advancing?

First, let’s acknowledge that low ambition isn’t a judgment here.  Low ambition doesn’t mean low skilled, although the two can go hand in hand. Low ambition simply means that for any number of reasons, an employee isn’t at this moment interested in amassing new skills or advancing in your organization. Maybe it’s the parent taking on an added part-time job to help put a kid through college. Perhaps it’s a highly skilled employee who is simply satisfied with where they are. It could be the manager who is trying to balance work with family demands. Or even a working student supporting themselves while they complete their education to get the job they really want.

There is nothing wrong with coming to work, doing your job and collecting your pay without wanting more or different. In fact, many organizations can suffer from ‘too many captains and not enough sailors.’ We need employees who are content where they are. The challenge here is motivating people who are mostly happy to stay in the same place. So what can you do to motivate team members who aren’t motivated by ambition?

• While you can’t just continually raise pay, you must offer solid, competitive wages and job security. This is especially important with low skilled workers as they often have little to lose by changing jobs if they become dissatisfied.  

• Attentive, connected managers because when you know your people, you have a much better understanding of what does motivate them.

• An organizational culture that respects and values every single team member. Just because someone isn’t eyeing the corner office doesn’t mean they don’t care about being appreciated for the work they do. In a well run organization, there is no job without value and your attitude and the attitude of your managers should reflect this.

• Many employees operate from a ‘path of least resistance’ mode so remove obstacles and they can continue to do their work and move forward without difficulty. Often these employees will exit when obstructive company policies or an ineffective manager finally push them to seek a better opportunity. So identify what obstacles might be making your employees unhappy and work to fix them.

• Elevate positive feelings about an employee’s work, connection and loyalty by providing meaningful work for all employees and helping your team members understand how their work contributes to the big picture.

You don’t have to be perfect, but be better than your closest competitors. Here I refer to other businesses that might compete for your employees rather than your customers. Be better than them in every way possible from wages to benefits to culture to inclusion and fun. It’s still work but being even just a little bit better removes most of the reasons an employee might leave or deliver less than acceptable work.