Of course motivation is not permanent. But then, neither is bathing; but it is something you should do on a regular basis.
—Zig Ziglar
I tell people at Umpqua that if you’re a leader, then your job description is really the same as mine. I don’t care if you lead one person or one thousand, your job description has just two simple words: motivate and inspire. If you can’t motivate and inspire people, you can’t lead. It’s as simple as that. If you can’t motivate and inspire others, then you need to get out of the way and make room for someone who can. Doing this requires building trust and unlocking the energy and passion inside every one of us. And it means making a conscious effort every day to recognize and reward the kinds of behaviors you want from your people.
Before I got into banking, I was an officer in the military. If I was going to get my platoon motivated to do something challenging, I knew the approach I shouldn’t take:
Okay guys, we’ve got to take this hill. Now, the enemy isn’t going to make it easy for us. In fact, he’s going to make it very difficult. It’s going to be bloody; it’s going to be hell. Not only that, but half of us probably won’t come back—maybe less. I don’t know why we’ve got to take this particular hill, but the general gave me orders to do it, so let’s just do our jobs and hope for the best.
I can guarantee that no one would get fired up for that weak attempt at motivating my platoon. Would you?
But if I had put things in perspective and painted a vision of what we were going to do, exactly why we were going to do it, and why it was important to my fellow soldiers, our families, and our nation as a whole that we accomplish our goal—no matter how difficult it might be—then that would be a very different situation. My troops would be motivated, perhaps even fired up, to storm that hill and push out the enemy occupying it.
In my experience, one of the most important traits of successful leaders is sincerity. If you’re going to motivate and inspire your people, you have to build trust and you have to be sincere. If you were to get a bunch of leaders in the room and ask them, “What is it that you were you trying to do today?” I think that most of them would probably agree that what they’ve been trying to do is persuade people to do something. But persuasion is just one part of the equation. Leaders who are able to motivate and inspire their associates to do the things they need them to do are going to be successful—they’re going to move their organizations in the right direction.
If you’re a leader and you can’t motivate and inspire your associates, then you’re dead in the water. Unfortunately the majority of employees in American businesses today don’t feel that they’re being recognized for their efforts, and as a result, they’re not as motivated and inspired as they could be. Research conducted by employee motivation and incentives company Maritz reveals that 34 percent of employees disagree or disagree strongly that they’re recognized in ways that are meaningful to them. Surprisingly, just 12 percent of employees strongly agree that they’re consistently recognized in ways they value.1
According to employee recognition expert Bob Nelson, “One of the strongest tools in a business’s arsenal for increasing motivation is recognition.”2 Nelson defines recognition as “a positive consequence provided to a person for a desired behavior or result.” He goes on to describe what recognition looks like:
Recognition can take the form of acknowledgment, approval, or the expression of gratitude. It means appreciating someone for something he or she has done for you, your group, or your organization. It can also come in the form of asking someone’s opinion, involving them in a decision, or encouraging them in their career. Recognition can be given while an employee is striving to achieve a certain goal or behavior, or once he or she has completed it.3
Additional research that Maritz conducted shows that employees who receive recognition where they work are:
As a leader, I can’t make you get behind me; I can’t make you follow me. I’ve got to get you to want to get behind me. There’s a huge difference between ordering someone to get in line versus explaining the positive benefits to the associate and the organization and its customers by doing so.
One more thing: when you’re motivating and inspiring others as a leader, you have to be contagious. If you have the passion, the enthusiasm, and the ability to motivate and inspire people and if all these things become contagious, then you’ll have an organization that’s on fire. I haven’t met a person yet who doesn’t have passion about something. It might be helping customers, or reading mystery novels, or fishing, or spending time with loved ones. Great leaders tap into the passion people already have within themselves. Everyone wants to do a good job and please others. Effective leaders recognize this fact, and they find ways to motivate and inspire associates to unleash this desire to perform well.
And it’s a two-way street. Just as leaders can motivate and inspire their associates, so too can an organization’s associates motivate and inspire its leaders. You see this when leaders get standing ovations from their workers. The message, “We’re in it. We get it. We’re with you,” is remarkably motivating and inspiring to leaders. It communicates loud and clear that the leader is trusted, and his or her people think he or she can do it. If I’m successful in motivating and inspiring my people, then they should also be successful in motivating and inspiring me. And when it comes back at you like that, it’s a big deal. It’s huge.
In uncertain moments or times, people look for support, encouragement, and help. This includes leaders, who want their advisors around them. It’s a natural human trait that we reach out to others, and it’s a good thing we do. I’m sure there are people who feel, “No, this is my problem. I’m going to deal with it.” This attitude, however, can be counterproductive and even dangerous to their health. People need to remember that the moment you put your problem on the table, it’s easier to put it in perspective and the healing or resolution process can begin. If you’re keeping it inside yourself and worry about what to do, it could burn a hole in your stomach! This attitude won’t be conducive to making progress and at best is not productive. And that’s not healthy for a company or a person.
People have the opportunity to be resource catalysts for helping leaders, managers, and family members work through issues. I’m not an island. I’m not in this thing all by myself.
When I think about Umpqua Bank, I often say the most valuable asset we possess is our culture, because our culture has been created by our people. In 2008–2009, when the recession was creating havoc for our industry, including our bank, I continued to reach out. I needed good people by my side.
There’s another element of this too: these people—especially those who feel supported by family or friends or their company—are the people with the freedom to give advice. Providing more empowerment to them and then giving them the ability to provide constructive criticism is motivating and keeps them involved in the process.
An important way to keep our people involved and motivated to advance our company is our focus group meetings where I get ten to twelve of my fellow associates—no one from management—to sit down with me for an hour and just talk about how the company could be better. In these meetings, I’m actively looking for constructive criticism. The only rule I have in these meetings is we’re not going to talk about people problems. We’re focused on talking about how we make this company better from our associates’ point of view. The input I get from these meetings is incredible, and I act on the good ideas I get from them immediately. Of course, not all the ideas are good ones. That’s okay, and it’s a natural part of the focus group process. If that’s the case, then I tell them that’s probably something we won’t be looking into, but I’m truthful with them and don’t get their hopes up when an idea isn’t going to be implemented.
How else can a company get better if it’s not willing to listen to constructive criticism, if it’s not willing to listen to what it’s not doing as well as it could? If you’re not willing to listen, you’re not going to improve and you’re not going to grow. That’s not a recipe for success for any leader.
The value of an organization’s team is incalculable, and it’s limited only by the amount of energy, focus, and passion it can unleash. When I took on my job at the helm of Umpqua Bank, I quickly realized that I couldn’t change the organization by myself. I couldn’t possibly be everywhere all the time, especially if the company was growing. So in the early 1990s we created the President’s Club, whose members are cultural ambassadors for Umpqua Bank. These are team players; people for whom confidence, motivation, and the unique Umpqua culture are contagious.
At the same time, the members of the President’s Club aren’t afraid to provide constructive criticism when we’re less than the best we can be, to make sure that we continue to get better. Today the President’s Club has about 125 members scattered throughout the organization. They are my eyes and ears, and I meet with them every quarter.
Within the President’s Club, we have a chairman’s committee made up of a small group of President’s Club members, with one person designated the chairperson. This group meets on a fairly regular basis to talk about where we’re going from here, what we need to do, and what we need to get better at as a company. This team is a tremendous asset for us. I’d like to think that I have the ability to motivate and inspire the people I come in contact with, but I can’t come in contact with everybody every day. The members of the President’s Club are my ambassadors, and the group has proven to be invaluable to me.
The President’s Club promotes the Umpqua culture, and has a variety of ways to recognize teams that are doing a great job. For example, they give out the Team Award. (The members of the President Club do this independently, by themselves; I have nothing to do with it.) They select the team that they believe is living up to the standards of our company in the most professional way. It could be a team in one of our bank stores, it could be a department, it could be a division of a department, or any other organizational element. Winning the Team Award is important to our associates, and the President’s Club is empowered to award it any way that they want to.
Any associate is eligible for membership in the President’s Club, and anyone in the company can nominate anyone else to be in the club. The nominations go to a selection committee of club members. They take the nominations and reduce them to six people in each of two different regions: one includes Oregon and Washington, and the other includes California and Nevada. The President’s Club in each of these regions votes for their top three candidates, and those who are on 75 percent of the ballots are inducted.
That all makes it sound like it’s easy to get into the President’s Club, but it’s not. In fact, in 2013 we inducted a young man who had been with the company for ten years and on the ballot for probably five or six of those ten years. The members of the club enjoy a lot of prestige along with their memberships. They’re granted some company stock, special name tags, and other perks. The club is very important to our associates and to me.
Associates serve on the President’s Club for ten years. When that term is up, they are moved to the President’s Club Advisory Council; in other words, they become President’s Club emeriti. This allows us to constantly bring new blood and new people into the President’s Club.
What we’re trying to do with things like the President’s Club is ensure that no matter what size we become as an organization, our culture grows faster. As long as our culture remains strong—what we consider to be the most valuable asset we have—we’re going to be an incredible company. There’s just no question about it.
At Umpqua we have an entire infrastructure of rewards, recognition, and engagement programs specifically designed to get our people fired up. The sheer volume and variety of these programs help us ensure that every associate has the opportunity to participate in the success of the organization in some way, however large or small his or her contribution might be.
Here are a few of those programs:
Inspiring, rewarding, and recognizing your people are some of the most important tools you as a leader can wield. Practice these skills, and you will be rewarded with a workforce that is motivated, engaged, and genuinely happy to report to work every day of the week.
Notes
1. Bob Nelson, 1501 Ways to Reward Employees (New York: Workman Publishing, 2012), 9.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., 3.
4. Ibid., 10.