Ya Got Skills Baby Skills!

All people have some sort of skill. Everyone has some sort of skill that they are good at. However I should caveat here that it doesn’t mean that you like using that skill. The fallacy of the marketplace is that it wants workers to do one of two things. They either want workers to do what they love for them because then it makes managing them easier, but it had better be a skill you are good at. Or, they want you to do what you are good at but then they have to either motivate you with fear or reward. As professionals we rarely sit down outside of the corporate environment to actually figure out and define what skills we have. Oh sure we know what we like to do! But when was the last time you asked yourself or sought out feedback as to whether you were any good at it? I know lots of people who craft. Most of them are horrible at it. But there they are pounding away at it supported by work they hate but use some of the skills they are good at. So skills can be powerful if you are good at said skill, and passion is present and the market needs the skill. This is the ideal.

Most people though are driven by motivation. And motivation come in two forms fear and reward. Motivation is a commodity that is hard to come by because there are two issues with relying solely on it. First, if fear is motivator and let’s face it; fear is the primary motivator managers use to drive performance, is a limited commodity. At some point fear just doesn’t drive people and can actually demotivate. Many times an employee will hear that their bonus is driven by performance. Now you would think that the money is what is driving them. And to a point it may partially, but the main motivator is fear. There is the fear that the reward will not come. The fear that their coworkers will do better. The fear that their family and peers will do better than them. Reward is the scorecard, but fear is the driver. Now for a few reward IS the motivator. And you can tell who these people are because if the reward is not there, they are no longer there. Managers call these people disloyal or not committed. They certainly are committed…to greater reward. And many of these types of people will get the higher pay especially if they are talented. Because if the rewards don’t come and a reward could be as trivial as the size of the office, managers know their competition will offer it.

Ironically though most of the world is driven by will. Why? Because it’s easy. Will is forcing yourself towards an action whether you want to do it or not. It is doing it because it must be done. Not because a person wants to. Who wants to actually clean their house? It is done because it’s a task that must get done for a purpose and an outcome whether desired or not. People rely on will to get through life and really there isn’t much emotion driven by it. And well for will is deep. We will go to that job that sucks the life out of us until we find a new one because it pays the bills. Its not driven by motivation to do good work as there may not be any will one way or the other. And certainly not because it’s driven by fear or reward who cares beyond pay to get the bill paid.

And this is where the manager comes in. The challenge for front line manager is to assess where their team members fall. Who is driven by skill versus motivation versus pure will and tailor their leadership style to these employees. Ideally, it would be nice to be able to dismiss all the employees who are not as talented or as driven as a manager would like. This is a fantasy world. At some point a manager has to have the hard conversation to assess what their employee wants.