» Inspiring Your Workers: Part 2 – How to Appeal to their Competitive Nature

Inspiring Your Workers: Part 2 – How to Appeal to their Competitive Nature

Enthusiasm and inspiration are very powerful motivational states. What’s even better is they’re completely free! Those 2 characteristics are the difference between someone who looks good on paper, and someone who turns everything they touch into gold. So if you’ve ever wished to learn how a manager can inspire and motivate people to work with them effectively. Read on for part 2!

2. Appeal to their competitive nature. Humans are competitive beings. Naturally we have to compete for partners and resources, but we also have to compete for the best education, the best job or even the last brownies in the shop! Everybody has a competitive spirit to some extent, and this can be used to motivate an employee into performing well. As a manager, you simply have to set the challenge. Give the individual a high standard to try and meet, or compare them with another whom they wish to beat.

Back in my sixth-form college I remember a conversation with my business studies teacher very well. The exam results from the first round of examinations had just been released and it turned out I had achieved full marks on my business paper. My teacher called me to his desk and said to me quietly;

“I’ve seen your results. Fantastic! Just fantastic!. About 3 years ago there was a girl in my class who also did brilliantly in her exams. She wasn’t that nice though – a bit arrogant and up herself y’know, but she ended up getting full marks in her whole qualification. Shes the only person to have ever to have done that here, but I really think that you could do it too, and not be arrogant. It’d be good to have, y’know, a decent person who’s managed to do it.”

What a perfect thing to say. My teacher had set me a challenge to try and complete. Was I now going to slack off in class and get complacent on the back of one good grade? Definately not. I was going to try and beat that girl. I badly wanted to get full marks without being ‘arrogant’ about it. And so for my 2 year course I tried very hard in that class and came out with an impressive grade. Who was I to prove him wrong in thinking I could do this? He gave me a good reputation that I didn’t want to let down, and he also gave me a chance to prove I was better than this unpleasant person. It was a perfect combination of challenges that had one great result = dedication on my part.

Give your employees a good reputation to uphold
Compare your employees to their rivals
Set your worker a tough goal to meet, but enough praise to show that you believe they can reach it

If you set your own employees challenges such as these, you will fill them with a sense of purpose and clear focus that would only come them accepting a competitive challenge and striving to succeed at it.

Tags: Competitiveness, Inspiration, Motivation

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 12:26 pm and is filed under Leadership Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.