3 Tips from Managers to MBA Students: Motivation, Wellbeing, and Team Environment
The influence that a manager has on a team is immense. The way that the team is led by a manager can be the difference between a group of highly motivated and productive team members and unmotivated dissatisfied team members. The question then becomes, what is it that makes a great manager? Six MBA students from Hult International Business School set out to try to find the answer to this question through a series of interviews. Each student interviewed three managers that they considered to be successful in leading teams and compared their results. During their interviews they found that the three main contributors to the success of these managers were; self-motivation and team motivation, managing energy and well-being and creating the right environment for their team.
Self-Motivation and Team Motivation
According to Daniel Pink’s “Drive, The Surprising facts about what motivates us”, there are three factors that lead to better performance and personal satisfaction. Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose (RSA, 2010). Autonomy is our desire to own the task we are doing. Autonomy gives us a sense of our abilities in achieving the organization goal (Cherry, 2021; RSA, 2010). Micromanagement, one of the motivation killers, demolish this sense of ownership and contributes to demotivation (Fermin, 2019). Mastery is the desire for learning or improving a competency that we already have. Managers need to provide opportunities for the staff to learn new skills or build on pre-existing ones to master skills (Lumen, 2018). Without such an opportunity, staff motivation will diminish over time. Catherine Shannon adopted mastery of competencies. Catherine Shannon is the director of the disability resource center for the College of Southern Nevada. When we asked her about what keeps her staff motivated, Catherine stated, “I set up frequent training and workshops to give learning opportunities to my staff (Shannon, 2021). Bill Tetz is the Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Revolution Prep. and Ayesha Al Memary, Chair of the Emergency Department at Seha Hospital, described “passion”, which provides a sense of autonomy and mastery, as the main driver for motivation within their organizations (Memari, 2021; Tetz, 2021). The purpose is the third factors that impact performance. Catherine Shannon and Bill Tetz stated that they connect with their teams during the day to open communication channels with the team and allow discussion among the team members. These meetings will ensure a support system is in place and give a sense of autonomy, which will create a motivational environment. One of the essential elements that motivate employees is to acknowledge their efforts and celebrate their success. Recognition is an external motivation for the employee, but it can be an internal motivation giving a sense of fulfilment to the employee (Cherry, 2021). We were not able to identify this element of motivation in any of the interviews we conducted.
Managing Energy and Wellbeing
Self-care was essential to all the interviewees. Health habits such as nutrition, exercise, rest and sleep were fundamental for their energy management and wellbeing. In addition, some mentioned caring for their mental energy by reflecting and journaling, meditating, and simply taking breaks to reset themselves. They try to spend time with those they love and enjoy their personal lives as well. Erin Hurley, a pediatrician for 23 years and Haysing Han, former manager for a large bank both said they had to learn the hard way as they pushed too hard earlier in their careers, neglecting or sacrificing the self-care aspect and focusing too much on productivity that ultimately resulted in burnout. Successful managers tend to use tools to avoid burnout, or when they do burn out, correct course by prioritizing self-care to become better leaders and live more balanced lives. They also set better boundaries (Hurley, 2021; Han, 2021).
Looking at hugely successful people around the world, it is evident that self-care is indeed essential. Arianna Huffington famously encourages type-A working women to literally sleep their way to the top — get enough sleep so they can show up as their best. Being busy is not something to celebrate, as it does not equal productivity at all (Andrea Callahan International, Inc. Brand Management, 2017). According to renowned physician Dr. Daniel Amen, the first thing to make better decisions is to get seven hours of sleep so the brain can function in a healthy way (FranklinCovey, 2018). Exercise is also a common habit for highly successful people from Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton to Richard Branson and many more (Gillet, 2016).
The interviewees too had similar health habits. It is by managing their energy and leading themselves first that make the difference. In order to lead their teams well, managers go to great length to properly take care of themselves and become role models for others to follow. In doing so, they build resilience as well because a healthy mind and body can manage stress more easily and are able to bounce back quickly from temporary setbacks. This is the opposite from what Dr. Martin Seligman calls learned helplessness, where people give up their agency and resign to a victim mindset of blame and complaint. Even during the pandemic, the interviewees carried on with grace and grit. They take responsibility for who they choose to be, the vision and the outcome.
Creating an Environment for the Team
According to Frances Frei and Anne Morriss article, Begin with Trust “Trust has three drivers: authenticity, logic, and empathy.”(2020). Trust is important to have between managers and their employees. As we discovered, most of the interviews conducted, many of the interviewees had mentioned that trust for creating an environment for their teams to do their best work. All of the interviewees differed between the three drivers of trust that they utilize when building trust with their team. Trust also plays into the teams’ psychological safety. Psychological safety is important for teams to have. The interviewees provided psychological safety to their teams. The interviewees can do this by empowering the team, the interviewee’s personability/behaviors and trust. This allows their team members to be themselves without fear of judgement, they feel empowered to be able to have autonomy and freedom of action/choice. Team members have a high level of support and care for one another. They also trust one another personally and professionally.
Managers are tasked with multiple tasks at any given moment requiring them to be able to think on multiple levels. All the while they must focus on keeping themselves and their teams motivated, focused on the task at hand, and work on keeping the team dynamic in a positive state. In Daniel Kahneman book Of 2 Minds he states” To survive physically or psychologically, we sometimes need to react automatically.” At times decisions seem to be made instantly with little to no thought about the consequences and system 1 of thinking is very active. In an environment that is constantly moving, decisions are made using previous experiences making it very easy to fall into decisional biases. When speaking to a manager who has embraced the world of banking operations, though motivation may come easy as multiple things are occurring at one time, it is easy to fall into status quo decision traps as decisions seem to be autonomous. It can be easier to agree with what has worked in the past then to push innovation in most operational situations. A great example of system 1 thinking at play as we are not considering the opportunity cost we are foregoing. However, if we do not embrace change, we will become stagnant and eventually whatever task we are working on will fail. Multiple managers have expressed that system 2 thinking is a learned skill. As Beth an operations manager at a local bank stated “early in my career I used to push very hard every day, I didn’t leave much time for myself to really think about the things I was doing on a daily bases.” As managers we need to learn to apply both systems to our decisions. If we are able to make sound decisions we can easily gain the trust of our team and began to focus our attention in one of the other many areas we are in charge of in a daily basis.
Take away message
Managers leading high performance teams must have a work-life balance that allows them to be self-aware and develop their inner self by doing the activities that bring pleasure and meaning together to derive intrinsic motivation and fulfillment. Confidence builds trust on leaders and allows them to be authentic, logical and empathetic within the team to have a positive impact on performance. Once you are aligned and comfortable with yourself you can design a process structure with the success ingredients to be resilient in a result-oriented environment where the team can perform. Influence and persuasion by role model leaders are the abilities to establish partnerships and bonds that allow members of a specific team to rely one another to achieve their goals. Engaged team members are pro-active, solution focused and live under a growth climate that bring psychological safety within emotional neutrality.
Authors: Andres Restrepo, Cristina Stovba, Masako Toyama, Sara Kazim and Tess Black
Works Cited
Cherry, K. (2021). Self-Determination Theory and Motivation. Retrieved from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-self-determination-theory-2795387
Fermin, J. (2019). Surprise: Bad Managers Kill Motivation. Retrieved from https://medium.com/newtheory/how-managers-kill-motivation-198bea0551c9
FranklinCovey (July 28, 2018). The Ideal Amount of Sleep for your Brain, Dr. Daniel Amen. Retrieved from http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=q2shQv9E1UY
Frei, F., & Morriss, A. (2020). Managing People Begin With Trust. Harvard Business Review, 1–11.
Gillet, R. (2016). How 19 highly successful people stay in shape. Insider. Retrieved from
Han, H. (June 11, 2021). [Manager Interview]
Hurley, E. (June 8, 2021). [Manager Interview].
Lumen. (2018). Motivation in Organizational Behavior. Module 6: Motivation in the Workplace. Retrieved from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wmopen-organizationalbehavior/chapter/motivation-in-organizational-behavior/
Memari, A. A. (2021, June 8, 2021). [Manager Interrview ].
RSA (2010, April 1, 2010). RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us [Abi Stephenson]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
Shannon, C. (2021, June 6, 2021). [Manager Interview].
Tetz, B. (2021, June 7, 2021). [Manager