If you really want to get the most out of your staff, you need to be willing to challenge them.

Challenging work brings lots of benefits to workplace morale, improvements to culture as well as increased employee output.

Below are some reasons as to why challenge is so important in the workplace.

Your Staff Will Accomplish More

One reason why challenging work is important is because it pushes your staff to work harder. This demands more impressive results out of your staff that couldn’t have been achieved if they weren’t challenged.

Challenges Motivate Us to Work Harder

Challenge motivates people to try harder. We enjoy challenges and want to prove we can rise to them.

Because your staff will feel motivated and will be working harder, having challenging work will make their jobs feel that much more important.

The more valuable your staff feels, the harder they will work to continue to feel important. They will work harder to solve more challenging problems, and will feel better about their work once they complete an objective.

Lack of Challenge Will Bring Laziness

Work has a funny habit of expanding to fit any allotment of time given to it. Thus, if your staff is not challenged, work will take longer to complete and will be lower in quality.

Unchallenging work causes us to take work less seriously. If our work doesn’t challenge us at all, we’ll adapt the mentality: “I’ll do it later because it isn’t important now”.

Challenge Makes You Care More

Unchallenging work will not occupy your conscious mind for long. Because of this, you’ll procrastinate or do less than stellar work.

Challenging work, however, requires staff to remain deeply focused on their work. As a result, your staff will try harder to complete the tasks delegated to them because the work demands greater mental attention.

Challenge Makes Work More Interesting

Challenging work is far more interesting than easy work. Easy work can be completed quickly and with little brain power. It is nothing out of the ordinary and does not stretch your staff’s performance at all. Furthermore, completing easy work proves little about your staff’s abilities.

Challenging work, however, presents harder to accomplish tasks that your staff will want to try and tackle. They will be interested to test their abilities and prove that they can overcome the challenges presented to them.

This makes work more interesting, as it is more demanding and tests the outer limits of your staff’s abilities.

Are there any other reasons why challenge is important? How much challenge is too much?

Brian Linton, blog author of Nothing to Lose has recently launched a new blog called Daily Entrepreneur Tip.

The blog delivers short entrepreneurial tips, in 150 words or less from various entrepreneurs.

Yours truly has recently contributed a motivational tip of my own. You can feel free to read it here.

The blog itself is a great read and very useful for getting succinct daily tips for running your business.

Enjoy!

In desperate need for some motivation?

There is never a shortage of information on the web, with the topic of motivation as no exception.

Below are 30 articles and sites for motivation, so you will never be at a loss for ways to motivate yourself when you are feeling discouraged.

General Motivation

1. Steve Pavlina – Motivation for Smart People (Sans Chest Pounding) – a great article on how to stay confident and motivated after coming up with a great idea
2. Emory.edu – But They Did Not Give Up – this article offers inspiring little blurbs about famous and historical figures who faced setbacks but still achieved success through persistence
3. Zen Habits – The Only Two Secrets to Motivating Yourself You’ll Ever Need – two great essential principles to live by to keep yourself motivated
4. Think Simple Now – How to Achieve Anything – this article offers very interesting insight into examining why we don’t do something, and then changing these barriers within us
5. Pick The Brain – How To Motivate Yourself – Self Motivation – interesting post on why we lose motivation and how to get it back through confidence and focus
6. Steve Pavlina – Do It Now – fascinating article by Steve Pavlina who discusses how he accomplished outstanding scholastic achievements through motivation and focus
7. Steve Pavlina – Overcoming Negative Emotions and Boosting Motivation – Steve discusses his use of motivational audio tapes to keep himself motivated
8. Lifewithoutlimbs.org – this is Nick Vujicic’s website. He was born without limbs but constantly strives to get the most out of life
9. Make It Great – this is a blog by Phil Gerbyshak, dedicated to leading a positive and optimistic life and improving relationships
10. A List Apart – Staying Motivated – A List Apart is for web designers, but this post is applicable to everyone
11. Lifehacker – Hack Attack: Sustaining motivation – a great lifehack on staying motivated
12. Life Optimizer – Self Motivation: How to Motivate Yourself – another post offering some great tips on how to motivate yourself and let go of your past
13. Get Rich Slowly – The Power of Yes: A Simple Way to Get More Out of Life – an interesting post about breaking out of your comfort zone
14. Persistence Unlimited – The Top 50 Blogs That Will Unleash Your Motivation – a great resource for a ton of different sites related to motivation
15. The Motivation Tool Chest – this site has a lot of different articles and tools for how to motivate yourself

Psychology of Motivation

1. Stanford Magazine – The Effort Effect – a fascinating article about a study on motivation done at Stanford
2. Valdosta.edu – Motivation to Learn: An Overview – some psychological principles behind motivation
3. Wikipedia – Motivation – it can’t hurt to understand the basics of motivation itself, can it?

Motivational Tips and Tricks

1. Zen Habits – Top 20 Motivation Hacks – An Overview – some great motivational hacks brought to you by Leo Babauta, author of Zen Habits
2. Zen Habits – The Ultimate Guide to Motivation – How to Achieve Any Goal – Another Zen Habits post. Leo just really knows motivation!
3. Lifehacker – Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret – an interesting technique comedian Jerry Seinfeld uses
4. Pick The Brain – 21 Proven Motivation Tactics – here are some useful tactics for improving your motivation
5. SFWA.org – 50 Strategies For Making Yourself Work – some interesting techniques for keeping yourself working and staying self-motivated
6. Lifehack.org – Thirteen Tricks to Motivate Yourself – some more great tips to motivate yourself, brought to you by Lifehack.org
7. Zen Habits – Get Off Your Butt: 16 Ways to Get Motivated When You’re in a Slump – Leo offers some insightful ways to get yourself out of a slump
8. Lifehack.org – 8 Tips to Create a Day to Recharge Your Motivation – some useful tips you can use to make time for yourself to recharge
9. Lifehack.org – 8 Steps To Continuous Self-Motivation – these are some wonderful techniques for sustaining long-term motivation
10. WE The Change – Top 31 Motivation Hacks – even more interesting and relevant tips to motivate yourself
11. The Positivity Blog – 5 Things to Remain Positive About When All Hope is Gone – there is a lot of discouragement out there. Here is how to cope
12. Betterlife-seeker – Five Amazing Ways To Motivate Yourself – Better-life Seeker offers five interesting ways to ensure you are motivated

Do you have any other useful links for boosting motivation?

Are you having the start-up blues? Is your new business not profitable yet and are you starting to reconsider employment?

There is very little immediate incentive to start a business. In the beginning stages, the pay is low or even non-existent and most of the labor and heavy lifting is being done by you and you alone.

While I have provided ways to measure success when you aren’t profitable yet, I haven’t explained ways you can cope with the fact that you aren’t going to make a lot of money in the beginning.

Alternative measures of success can only take you so far until you ask yourself: “where is the money?”. Once you start asking yourself this, you have to start finding new ways to deal with lack of funds.

Look for the long-term

In a previous post, I presented a case as to why entrepreneurship makes more fiscal sense in financial terms.

You may have a cash flow projection, or at least have an idea as to how much income your business can be pulling in the long run.

After understanding that these long-term gains can be realized, consider that the short-term sacrifices you are dealing with now will be more than worth it, considering long term profits.

In other words, tell yourself: “We are struggling now, but as long as we stick it out, we will make it big in the long run”. It may sound typical and cliché’d, but it will certainly help you in being persistent.

Ask yourself if you are enjoying your new business

If you are enjoying your new business, then this is certainly a perk that can keep you going until you make money.

If the type of work you do is something that you wouldn’t mind doing for free, then this provides some incentive to continue with little pay, at least for the next few years.

Are there any non-monetary benefits you are receiving?

Are you making good social connections and networks? Are you learning new things? Is this experience teaching you new ways to do business and hone your entrepreneurship abilities?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you see that there are other incentives present that can hold you over until you are profitable.

Receiving no perks other than pay can be a hard pill to swallow when you are in the beginning stages of a business. However, if there are other benefits present, it can make it a whole lot easier to stay motivated.

Get a second, less meaningful job

Okay, you have made sure that you still get a warm, fuzzy feeling as an entrepreneur, even with with no pay. That still doesn’t change the fact that you have no money!

You certainly have bills to pay and mouths to feed, how are you going to address these problems?

Unfortunately at this stage, you probably need a secondary source of income. If you don’t have any other business interests or you don’t have a spouse or significant other that can assist with the bill paying (or already is contributing as much as he/she can), then you will have to get a job.

Just temporary, don’t worry. But in order to pay the bills and even give your business some start-up capital, you will most likely have to enter the workforce temporarily.

This may actually make coping with a young and developing business a lot easier since you will be more tolerant of your business’s lack of profitability. Thus, this can help in giving you more patience and in tackling your business’s problems with a clear head.

Reward yourself when reaching a milestone

You’re working hard to make your business succeed. Why not reward yourself? Buy yourself something nice next time you clear a milestone. That way, you will feel better about your accomplishments and feel more motivated to move on.

Ask yourself if you’d rather answer to a boss

Sure you’re not making any money yet. But what is the alternative? Do you want to work for a boss the rest of your life? Of course not! Keep that in mind whenever you start doubting if entrepreneurship is right for you.

Weigh flexibility in work vs. structure

Would you prefer a 9-5 workday? Would you rather work a rigid schedule, where you can’t choose your own working hours?

Remember the flexibility that entrepreneurship brings you and that it allows you to make the rules as to when you should and should not be working.

When it comes to motivating your staff, there are tons of theories as to which methods work best.

Out of the ones I have studied, one of my favorite theories of motivation is Herzberg’s Two Factor Theorem.

What makes this theory so intriguing to me is its lack of rigidity. Some theories has strict structures as to how individuals are motivated.

This theory, on the other hand, simply assumes that there are certain factors that you can put into place that can motivate your staff, and others that can demotivate your staff.

Allow me to share this theory with you. Understanding it will reveal that this motivational musing is actually quite useful and interesting.

“Hygienal Factors”

With Herzberg’s theory, there are two different factors that influence motivation. The first are factors that can demotivate employees if they are not present. These factors are called “Hygienal Factors”.

NOTE: ensuring that these factors are met will NOT motivate your staff, but it will ensure that they are not demotivated.

Hygiene factors are generally more tangible and easier to perceive. Some of these include:

• Pay and benefits
• A clean and safe workplace
• Status or title

What this implies is that if your employees are under-compensated, working in a poor or dangerous work environment or feel their title or status is lower than their perceived importance, they will be demotivated.

If you don’t satisfy these types of conditions, it will hamper or downright prevent any other motivational efforts you might employ.

“Motivating Factors”

These are the factors that actually motivate your employees. While satisfying all of the hygiene factors will make your workers content, providing motivating factors will empower your staff and help them to want to work hard for you.

Motivating factors are typically less tangible and more emotional or responsibility-based. You’ll notice that many of these are listed in my article: 10 Great Ways to Motivate Your Staff:

• Autonomy and empowerment
• Feeling of importance, recognition
• Feeling of responsibility and accountability

Here, if your employees feel important, responsible for something and given the flexibility to do their job, their way, they will feel motivated to work harder for you.

How is this useful when motivating employees?

So how exactly do you apply this? Firstly, you should ensure that there aren’t any policies or factors present in your business that may demotivate your staff.

For example, if your employees are paid less than the going rate for their position, chances are they will not feel obligated to work hard for you, no matter how much responsibility and flexibility you give them.

In other words, ensure your employees are well compensated for the work they do and that they work in a good work environment with a positive and energizing culture. As long as these types of conditions are met, your employees shouldn’t harbor any negative feelings towards you.

But you want them to do more than that, right? Now you have to provide an environment where they feel motivated and have a desire to produce. Provide them with autonomy, responsibility and anything that makes your employees feel that they are a part of something important to them. Here, you want your employees to LOVE their job, not just feel neutral about it.

Basically you want to ensure your staff is treated as valuable and important assets to your business and that they aren’t shortchanged or under-appreciated in any way.

Any thoughts on Herzberg’s theory? Does it seem useful or applicable?

Is it better for your business to promote from within or find an outside hire?

There is no simple answer to this question and there are many definite benefits to either technique.

Before making any kind of decision, it is important to understand some of the benefits and drawbacks of each.

Pros of promoting from within

Probably one of the biggest benefits to promoting from within is that it provides motivation for your lower level employees. Your employees may have career goals or hope to move up in your organization. If you look for outside hires, your employees are given no incentive to work harder for that promotion.

Promoting from within is also beneficial in that it can save you A LOT of hiring and training costs. Don’t underestimate how costly it is to hire and train a new person: recruitment costs, hiring trainers, putting together training programs and most importantly, lost productivity while this individual is training. If you promote from within, you save on all hiring costs and the training that this employee requires will be significantly less.

Another benefit is that you would already know the promotion candidate, so there is less of a mystery as to how the employee will perform.

Cons of promoting from within

The biggest con to promoting from within is the lack of diversity and new ways of thinking that this strategy provides. If you are retaining all of the same people and hiring no new blood, the same ideas and ways of thinking will continue to be bounced off one another and reinforced. No new ideas will come about and it will be more difficult for these employees to identify problems since they are used to the environment.

Pros of outside hires

Opposite to the cons of promoting from within, hiring a new individual grants you the possibility of bringing in new ideas and ways of thinking. This means new marketing ideas, product ideas and process improvements. Just adding one new person could open up new creative avenues since they will be adding a new dynamic to the business.

You also get the benefit of being able to view the outside job pool and find new qualified candidates than the ones that you have already hired.

Cons of outside hires

Hiring someone new is expensive! Hiring, training and loss of productivity costs will pile up by hiring new people. In fact, the entire process of hiring a new person can cost 5 times the amount of the positions salary.

Also, while an inside employee would need time to adapt to a new position, a new hire will need even more time to adapt to the new employment environment.

Finally, outside hiring, as stated in the pros of promoting from within, can sap away the motivation of an existing employee who wants to move up. You may even overlook more than qualified employees of your own if you are looking for an outside hire.

There is no right answer as to which strategy is better. However, my suggestion would be to use a little bit of each technique. Allow for some new faces in order to bring in new, innovative ideas, but also provide motivation and foster employee retainment by promoting from within.

Clueless on how to motivate your employees? Don’t feel bad, employee motivation can be a difficult concept to fully master.

That is why I have compiled a list of ten great ways to motivate your staff and kick-start your business to extra productivity.

Fulfill the needs of your employees

In order for someone to be motivated, they need to have an unfulfilled need. This can be monetary needs, social needs, a feeling of accomplishment, amongst many others.

If someone’s every need is satisfied, they have no reason to be motivated to work. People are motivated because they need something that they don’t have. Be it tangible or intangible.

Your job as a manager, entrepreneur or leader is to determine what these unfulfilled needs are (your staff isn’t always going to just tell you), and then fulfill them.

This is, of course the hardest part to motivating someone. Firstly, people usually have more than one unfulfilled need and it is up to you to determine what these needs are, if you can fulfill them, and which needs will best motivate your employees when fulfilled.

It gets even harder though. You have to determine which is the best way to fulfill these needs. You also have to determine which ways are the most cost effective. Once you answer these questions you must balance these out in order to be most effective.

Give them autonomy and empowerment

Here are some buzzwords that are thrown around all the time to employees, especially when recruiting: autonomy and empowerment. What do they mean?

Autonomy is giving an employee enough flexibility to do their job their own way and have the capacity to make their own decisions. This is a valuable motivation technique since many (not all) employees desire this flexibility and it allows them to truly shine when doing their work.

Empowerment is in many ways autonomy taken to the next level. When you empower employees, you grant them a level of autonomy to act more entrepreneurial in their tasks. They can make more decisions, are responsible for more tasks and they thus feel more connected and accountable for their work. This feeling of responsibility and accountability can be a very powerful motivator for some who have that entrepreneurial spirit but still prefer to work for someone else.

Please take note, however that some employees prefer no autonomy and like the stability of being told what to do. It is up to you (or your managers) to determine the level of autonomy that each employee needs.

Pay, recognition and benefits

The age old question: does pay motivate employees? Many academic schools of thought will say no, but the truth is: it depends. Some people tend to be very motivated towards incentive pay. Others are not.

I tend to lean towards the belief that pay does not motivate people. Being overpaid but hating your job will not motivate you. However, there is a much greater chance that money can motivate by linking recognition or status with pay.

For example, if certain pay levels for salespersons grants them certain tiers, recognition or status awards (that are publicly recognized), pay is much more likely to motivate your staff.

Delegate responsibility and accountability to your employees

This is similar to autonomy. Delegating responsibility and accountability to your employees will help them feel a greater degree of investment in their work.

This responsibility not only pushes your employees to deliver, but gives them a greater feeling of accomplishment when they do.

Generally, the employees that are most likely to be motivated by responsibility and accountability are those that are already motivated. However, delegating this will allow them to deliver even greater results for you and motivate them to perform even more.

Positive Culture and Atmosphere

Essential to any good working environment that fosters motivation is a positive culture in the workplace. If there is a feeling of misery and discontent, no one will be motivated.

Create an atmosphere for your company that is open, enjoyable and empowering to your employees and you will find it much easier for your staff to stay motivated.

An added bonus to this is that your employees that lack motivation, or the capacity to become motivated will self-select themselves out of your company. Thus you will retain your top employees while losing your weaker ones, just by maintaining a positively charged atmosphere.

Praise

Short and sweet: some employees just need some good old fashioned praise, a pat on the back for a job well done.

Reward their good work so they deliver again. Lack of praise however, will drain an employee’s motivation quick. Be sure to let your staff know when they are doing a good job.

Feeling of accomplishment

This is an example of a need one may have. Employees in search of a feeling of accomplishment will require projects that give them just this.

Assign these employees projects that give them this feeling of accomplishment and watch them deliver again and again.

Career Level

This isn’t so much a motivator as it is a potential indicator of motivation.

Someone who is invested in their career or career development is much more likely to be motivated or have the capacity to be motivated than one who is just looking for a job.

The difference between the two is that someone looking for a job is looking to fulfill one need: money. This need is fulfilled very easily once they receive a paycheck. The individual who is invested in their career is looking to fulfill multiple needs since they are more interested in long-term employment.

Working in Teams

Working in teams can be a very powerful motivator, since people have social affiliation needs and hope to be a team player. They want to feel as if they are contributing something to the team and feel more invested in the team’s success. A team is typically a smaller group of people, so the workgroup is more personal.

Ones own desire

Some people are naturally motivated. They may not reveal to you what their needs are, nor do you need to know them. They know what their needs are and they motivate themselves to try and get there.

These self motivated employees are frequently your superstars and will go extremely far for you and your company. Leverage their talents and make sure they are happy.

These are all examples of great ways to motivate your staff. These techniques wont work on everyone, as each person has different and unique needs. The most important thing, if nothing else it to ensure to reward good behavior by fulfilling your employee’s needs to incent your staff to keep up the good work.

Does knowing how to do something necessarily mean you care enough for something to get done?

What if you know nothing about a given project, subject, department or industry, yet you are motivated to learn or succeed in this area? Does this impassioned person stand a greater likelihood of flourishing than the individual who already knows the subject?

In this post, I will describe why being motivated and having passion in a given area is a much more powerful driving force than having the “methods” to getting something done.

Motivation will help you find methods

Your uncertainty on how to tackle a problem will quickly be cleared away if you have enough motivation to succeed in your desired area. If you are unknowledgeable in a given subject, be it in an industry you hope to enter, or a business process, yet have plenty of motivation, you will find a way to get what you need accomplished.

In the face of true motivation, lack of methods will prove to be a tiny obstacle

Motivation is a much stronger driving force than know-how. Just because you know how to do something doesn’t mean you will be willing to accomplish it.

However, if you are motivated enough to achieve, not knowing how to complete something will seem like an insignificant road block. Learning about your topic of interest will seem like a straightforward solution and you will find yourself proactively looking for answers rather than stressing over not knowing something.

Methods can be flawed, motivation will work through and fix flaws

Who’s to say that the standard way of doing something is the best way accomplish a given task? Methods can be flawed, inefficient and maybe even harmful.

There is no flaws in motivation. In fact, being motivated will help you locate flaws without being discouraged. An unmotivated person following methods will simply shrug their shoulders and continue to use the methods they know, even if they know it is defective.

Not everything requires a method in order to be completed, but it does require motivation

You can have the smartest people in the world working on a project for you. If their hearts aren’t in it, there is no way the project is getting done.

Some things may require know-how and methods, while others don’t. However, EVERY project requires motivation in order for it to move anywhere.

Having the knowledge to complete something doesn’t mean you want to see something through to success. Motivation, however is what drives a project to the finish line and is what gives someone the desire to learn, succeed and even obtain know-how.

Apply these points to your business. You may be discouraged about entering into an industry in which you know nothing about, or in taking on a role in which you have little experience. Don’t fret! If you have a strong enough desire to prevail, nothing will stop you from learning what you need to learn in order to prosper.

There are plenty of “industry leaders” that clearly possess know-how on how to succeed in their area. Yet, their culture, customer service and drive shows that the company lacks motivation to truly deliver an outstanding product. This is your edge! Your heightened passion and motivation can lead you to success far beyond that of your competitors. You just have to remain impassioned and be committed to meeting your goals.