 So one of the things that attracted us to becoming leaders in the first place was the ability to take on challenges that we couldn't do by ourselves. So how do we get our team members to take on jobs and tasks without being told by us what to do? Welcome back and congratulations on taking one more step towards becoming one of the great leaders of tomorrow. Today we've got a question from my friend Pete and he asks, how can I motivate employees who don't show initiative? So today I'm going to give you four tips on how to motivate those employees who aren't leaning forward and taking on jobs without being told and stay tuned to the end because I'm going to give you a link where you can go download our workbook to develop your own leadership development plan. Getting employees to take initiative and step up and do what needs to be done without being told is a challenge for any leader. Even when I was in the Air Force where people are highly motivated and usually step up to do what needs to be done without being told, every so often there was a situation or an occasion where someone didn't do that. And so unless the person who's working for you is a complete dirtbag, which happens sometimes and we aren't going to talk about how to deal with those people today, that's more of a disciplinary process. So I'm going to assume the people that you're talking about aren't complete dirtbags, it's just a matter of trying to reach their motivation. So the first tip I have for you is to understand the psychology of motivation, both extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. And we've done a video on this in the past that you can find on our YouTube channel, so I won't get into all the details. But what you need to know today is that everyone is both extrinsically motivated to some degree and intrinsically motivated to some degree. Extrinsic motivation is that motivation by external rewards, whether that's money, a bonus, time off, whatever it is. And intrinsic motivation is that reward that comes internally from feeling the satisfaction of doing a job well done. As leaders, our job is to get to know our people and to understand to what degree they're extrinsically motivated and intrinsically motivated. So as part of this first tip to understand the psychology, we also need to get to know each of our team members and understand what about them is extrinsically motivated and intrinsically motivated. And we're going to use that to our advantage for the next three tips. Our second tip is to appeal to the intrinsic motivation inside our employees. And this can be a bit trickier than using extrinsic motivation. So that's why I'm starting with this one. As we get to know our employees, we're going to know what their hopes and dreams are, what they like and dislike and what they get excited about. Everyone has something they don't like about their current workplace, or at least something they think could be improved a little bit. As leaders, we can encourage our employees to talk about what these improvements are that they'd like to see. And we can also encourage them to come up with ideas and challenge them to come up with solutions to the problems. If they follow through on that, come up with an idea that we then approve, they'll feel rewarded intrinsically for doing a job well done to improve their workplace. Our third tip is to also use extrinsic motivation to get our employees to start showing initiative. To do this, you've got to use the resources you've gotten. Sometimes you have to be a little bit creative. Not every organization has money to give out as bonuses for good behavior, but almost every organization has a formal awards and recognition program. And you can use this to your advantage. When you're deciding who's going to get the award in your group, go ahead and wait initiative heavily when you're doing that. Make sure your team members know that. When they see people starting to get recognized for doing things they haven't been told to do, they'll all start to step up and do the same. And if you don't have a formal awards and recognition program in your company, go ahead and create one even if it's for your own team. And when you're given out benefits that go along with these awards, again, you've got to be creative. So what's in your authority to do? Can you let people work from home? Can you give them an extra day off? Can you let them have a flexible schedule? Whatever you've got available to do, whatever authority you have, use that to extrinsically reward the people who are doing a great job for you in showing initiative. Remember, to incentivize any behavior, the incentives have to match up with what you value. If you value initiative, you have to provide extrinsic rewards that match up with that. Finally, our responsibility as a leader, if you want our team to show initiative, is to create a culture that fosters and rewards initiative. And this requires some honest introspection on our part. How have we reacted when people have stepped up, shown initiative and done things they haven't been asked to do? Have we embraced their solution and accepted it even if it wasn't the way we would have done it? Or have we shut them down? Our reactions to when people show initiative, both conscious and subconscious, are really important. What are our words saying? What is our body language saying? If our words are saying great job and our body language is saying, this isn't the way I would have done it, go back and do it another way, we're not really fostering a culture of initiative on our team. What we have to do is be open-minded and even if the solution isn't the perfect one we envisioned, if someone takes the initiative to do it and it's acceptable, we probably should just accept it and reward them for showing the initiative. So there are your four tips for getting your team members to show initiative, step up and do what needs to be done without being told. Remember if we want our team members to show initiative, we've got to make sure they don't feel like their efforts are being wasted when they do so. We need you to know each of our team members and what makes them tick, what motivates them intrinsically. We also need to use extrinsic motivation in combination with intrinsic motivation. Remember everyone is both intrinsically and extrinsically motivated to some degree and that's our job as a leader to figure out what that is for each person on our team. Finally we need to make sure we're setting up a culture that rewards initiative that doesn't shut people down if the solution they come up with isn't perfect. Follow these four tips and pretty soon everyone on your team will be taken on new challenges without you having to ask them to. If you found this helpful please share it with a friend or co-worker, follow us on social media and click on that link below so you can download our free Leadership Development Plan Workbook and that'll help you start setting your goals for the near, mid and far term. If you have any leadership or business questions, email us at info at EvilGeniusLeadership.com or just reach out to us on social media. Thanks for watching today. I really appreciate it and remember the future is out there. Lead the way.