How to keep your best people: develop a “level 4” mindset in your line managers

Abstract

Purpose

This purpose of the paper is to highlight the disturbing incidence of disengagement in the modern workplace. By highlighting why professionals leave their jobs, the author aims to change how managers think about motivation. Only then can they get the best out of their staff and retain their best employees.

Design/methodology/approach

The author uses his own experience of performance coaching, management, and leading without formal authority. The author critically evaluates classic motivational theories, preferring some more enlightened and recent research.

Findings

People leave managers not jobs. Disengagement results from faulty assumptions about what drives today’s professionals. Personal values or emotive needs matter much more than “extrinsic” rewards such as money and promotion. So the problems will not be solved by “making the carrots crunchier and the sticks sharper”; a new mindset is needed. While powerful and more or less universal motivators exist, every individual is different. However, uncovering what really matters can be very straightforward indeed. There is a need to be proactive and curious about what really drives the staff rather than wait till the best people tell the staff at the exit interview.

Originality/value

The author uses a real-life example to show what really happens under the surface. The author shows what is involved in adopting a “higher level” mindset and the resulting approach that might be taken with the people. Motivation mastery can be easier than what is thought about.

Citation

Hill, T. (2016), "How to keep your best people: develop a “level 4” mindset in your line managers", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 30 No. 5, pp. 3-6. https://doi.org/10.1108/DLO-04-2016-0035