Key Idea

In an ideal world, everyone in your organization would be inspired by your vision and willing to work toward your end goals. However, in reality, you will likely find people who do not want to follow your lead. As tempting as it may be to ignore such individuals, you must deal with them head-on. If left alone, they can undermine your efforts by lowering levels of productivity and morale.

In trying to motivate intractable employees, inexperienced leaders often make the mistake of forgetting that everyone has different motivational drivers, values, and biases. They think that if they position their perspective in a certain way and use the "right" language, problem employees will see the logic of their views. Unfortunately, efforts such as these are doomed to failure. So, how do you energize difficult people?

To successfully motivate problem employees, you must uncover their inherent motivations.

Everyone has motivational energy, it just may not be directed effectively in the workplace.

As a leader, then, your role is not to try and motivate your problem employees; rather it's to help them motivate themselves. Instead of trying to impose a solution on your employees, work with them to uncover the barriers that prevent them from achieving desired goals.