How to Motivate ANYONE to Do What You Want

Summary

• Always thank and praise people when they do something right; it reinforces positive behavior and makes them more likely to repeat it.
• Recognition and praise are more powerful motivators than punishment; these can lead to higher performance.
• Leading with positive reinforcement rather than punishment creates a more motivated and loyal team.
• When I started in business, I leaned toward discipline, but I saw a culture of fear, leading me to change my approach.
• Building a culture of reward and recognition in your business can reduce employee turnover by 18%, increase profitability by 23%, boost engagement by 14%, and enhance recruitment by 56%.
• Instant recognition is highly effective. Acknowledge good work immediately, maybe with a simple message or gesture.
• Recognition isn't just top-down. Encourage feedback between all levels: manager to employee, employee to employee, and employee to manager.
• Reward the right actions, not just outcomes. This ensures that the team uses correct processes and systems.
• Be physical and visual with your recognition when possible; in-person expressions like high fives or supportive body language are incredibly impactful.
• Commit to a two-week challenge where you pick a specific behavior to recognize, then consistently praise and reward that behavior to see positive results.

Video

How To Take Action

A good way of doing better as a small business owner is to start by praising people when they do something great. This makes them happy and want to keep doing a good job. Here are some tips to help people feel good:

• Say "thank you" a lot! When someone does something right, tell them right away. You could use a message or even just give them a thumbs up.

• Have everyone give praise, not just bosses. People like hearing "good job" from their coworkers and even saying it to their bosses.

• Focus on the good stuff people do, not only when things turn out great. This helps everyone use the right steps to get work done.

• If you can, give praise in person. A high five or a big smile can make a big impact.

• Try a two-week challenge. Choose one good thing to notice about people. Every time you see it, say something nice or give a small reward.

Doing this can make your team excited to come to work. They'll want to do better and stay with your company longer. Plus, more people might want to join your team because they hear it's a great place to work. It's a simple and cheap way to make your business better!

Quotes by Leila Hormozi

"Mary Kay Ash has said there are two things that people want more than sex and money, and that is recognition and praise"

– Leila Hormozi

"What really happens is that that employee…gets more skilled at avoiding punishment than doing the job how you want them to do it"

– Leila Hormozi

"If we want to get people to work harder, we need to reward them rather than punish them"

– Leila Hormozi

"Real discipline should look like teaching"

– Leila Hormozi

"The more that we can recognize people, reward people, and put our focus on what they do right, we will get more of it"

– Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

out the trash the husband who every time he takes out the trash his wife thanks him and Praises him for doing so or the husband that every time the trash isn't taken out the wife punishes him for not taking out the trash and then when he does she really says nothing which one do you think is more likely to take out the trash again probably the husband whose wife reinforces the fact that he just took out the trash Mary Kay app has said there's two things that people want more than sex and money and that is recognition and praise recognition reinforces Behavior the more you reward someone or recognize the behavior they're doing the more likely they are to do that thing again and again and again there are two ways to get people to do things punishment and there's praise I think I was like 21 or 22. I worked at a big globo gym the first manager I had was fantastic he always was rewarding us congratulating us on our success and he very seldom used punishment to direct our Behavior because of that we were the top performing gym in the entire State when he left and a new manager came in all he did was yell at the entire team and inflict here in us he told us what would happen if we didn't hit quota and if we didn't bring in new clients which was basically fire us if we didn't do what he wanted us to do what I saw over the next few months one I left but two what people did before they left is they took their clients slowly sifting their people from the gym getting them to go to private facilities and doing it all behind his back we went from the top performing gym to one of the lowest performing ones in the region under his leadership people were more scared of the consequences that he would inflict if they didn't do what he wanted them to do then they were excited to do things because they were recognized for what they did right punishment May temporarily cause compliance by somebody but they will find ways to avoid punishment and not do what you want them to do and so what really happens is that that employee that kid that teammate gets more skilled at avoiding punishment than doing the job how you want them to do it the kid learns how to make his room look clean by hiding all the clothes under the bed rather than actually cleaning his room the employee learns how to make it look like they did a full day's worth of work rather than actually doing a full day's worth of work if we want to get people to work harder we need to reward them rather than punish them listen this was not something that I understood when I first started a business when we started gym launch I was a very soft boss people told me it's Layla there need to be consequences when people don't follow the rules we need to have performance Improvement plans we need to have disciplinary action and I really believed it I kind of let those outside influences affect how I treated my team and what I saw from that was a culture of fear and so I really changed my mind about how I coach our CEOs in acquisition.com how I coach our team how I lead my team because I just don't believe that leading with threatening and consequences and punishment is going to help anybody real discipline should look like teaching the more that we can recognize people reward people and put our focus on what they do right we will get more of it how can this be applied to your business in workplaces that have formal recognition and reward programs this is what they see it reduces employee turnover by 18 it increases profitability by 23 it increases Employee Engagement by 14 and it increases your ability to recruit Talent by 56 this is the real stuff that builds an enduring business and a good business so then the question becomes how do we actually deploy this practice because I think most people have been taught how to punish employees so much efforts being put into preventing the negative that it's not being put into producing more of the positive and the irony of that is if you try to produce more of the positive the negative will dissipate so what I want to share with you is my framework for driving a culture of reward and recognition people work harder because they want to work harder so there's really four pieces to a recognition formula as I see it so the first piece is the what what are we rewarding what are we recognizing there's really two types of recognition the first one is one that you've probably heard of which is formal this might be Employee of the Month MVP of the year most improved this is standard and I don't think it's bad I tend to lean more towards instant recognition the faster you can recognize or rewarded Behavior the faster that person will improve and the more they'll adhere to doing it it is as simple as a slack message or a high five in fact this is crazy a high five in general there have been studies on this actually produces more dopamine in somebody's brain than saying any kind of affirmation to them can send them a handwritten card buy them lunch send them in Virtual gift cards anything where you can instantly get it to that person and even better is if you can do it like in the moment so if somebody for example on my team does a presentation I know they're nervous I want them to do more presentations because I want them to get over their nervousness immediately after the presentation is done I'm going to be telling them how much they're doing a good job and not even so far that I will tell them in the middle of their presentation I'll send a private message and tell them they're doing a good job I can give you another example right now you know what's happening in the corner over here is Caleb is just nodding his head giving me reinforcements that the content I'm making is good so the more that we can do that we can give people feedback in the moment the more likely they are to do the behavior this is in my opinion the most important piece of the formula of recognition people assume the worse if you don't give them feedback the same goes for your employees your teammates or your kids if you say nothing they assume it's bad because that's what our brains are wired to do the second piece to giving recognition giving reward is the who there's really three types of a who in a business there's manager to employee there's an employee to employee and then there's employee to manager if you're looking at building a more resilient organization an organization where it's a culture of positivity those cultures often have all three of those figured out because if you have a culture where it's just the manager telling the employee that they do well well then that employee's wondering do the rest of the team think I do well I don't think that people understand how meaningful peer feedback is not just from the manager to the employee even more so what a lot of people don't think about is employee to manager bosses tend to like those who reinforce them the most bosses tend to get very little recognition people never tell them what they do right what they do wrong but the reality is bosses will spend more time with the people who reinforce them you can train them to spend more time on you to pay more attention to you the more that you recognize and reward them and then the last one is really peer to peer and the reason that this one is so advantageous is if you're trying to move up in an organization it means that you have to gain influence I would never move someone up in an organization who hasn't earned the respect of all of their peers we had a woman in our software company and she was head of customer success and she was so good at recognizing behavior when the time came that I was going to give her promotion the entire team had already come to me and said she needs to be promoted all she did all day every day was recognize and reward people for what they did she would send them cookies send them flowers he had influence over everyone in the organization because of how she treated them the third piece is the when when do you recognize or reward Behavior obviously instant is what we want but I think it's really important to pay attention to what is the thing that occurs that we want to reward do you reward A salesperson for closing a sale or do you reward them from following a script which is more important if we reward them for closing a sale they might be more incentivized to find ways to close a sale without using the system and that I actually might lead to people signing up and not being good clients why they might use tactics that are not advantageous to the company to close people where you rewarded people for following the script then you're probably going to get better clients are you rewarding the outcome or the action if you award actions and you don't get the outcome you want and everybody on a team is doing those actions it's not the team it's the action so we can just change the action you want to reward people for the actions or what I would say is like winning behaviors that will eventually lead to the win the last piece of this is the how how are you giving the reinforcement Studies have shown that the more physical you can get with reinforcement that sounds weird when it comes out the more that you can emulate an in-person a high five a hug uh you've got this people get so much feedback from people doing something in person the more that you can do it in a way that is visual you're lighting up you show body language to the person the better it is nothing is going to feel better to that person than being on a zoom call with you or being in person with you and you having a big smile lit up telling them they did a awesome job giving them a high five at the end of the day it is the easiest thing it costs you the least amount of money and yet it is the thing that people do the least for the next two weeks pick one thing that you're going to recognize people for decide how you're going to recognize them when you're going to do it how you're going to do it try to repeat that over and over again I promise you you will see results faster than you think