How to Motivate Without Money?

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At a recent talk I was asked the following: How can you manage and motivate your subordinates to work efficiently if you have no influence on their earnings and salary bonuses? Many project managers, team leads, and even some first level managers face this challenge. You are given responsibility for managing a team but may not have authority with respect to compensation, hire/fire authority, promotions, or other controls.

First recognize that not everyone is motivated by those things. In The Career Toolkit: Essential Skills for Success That No One Taught You I cover a number of different models of motivation. Certainly, most people won’t turn down more money, but it may not be their primary motivator. You may be able to provide other benefits that are valued as much as, or even more than certain amounts of money.

In my field, technology, engineers often want to work with the latest hot technology. This is due to both personal curiosity and also because it sets up their career for better opportunities down the road. You may have control over technology selection on a project as well as the team project assignments, both now and in the future, which can offer opportunities for them to gain that experience. Putting technology aside, there are often some projects people are more excited about than others.

Professional development is another area. Employees often enjoy going to conferences or training. This may already be in the budget, and you can select who goes. Even if it’s not in the budget, as the bucket of money for such activities is separate from salary and benefits you may be able to get some of these dollars for your team. Even a manager saying to a subordinate, “There’s money in the budget for a conference and I think you should go to this one,” sends a signal that you care about your employees' development.

Along the same lines, mentoring sends a similar signal and is appreciated by employees looking to grow their career. This has no financial cost to the manager/company but is highly valued by many employees. You can also set up training and development more broadly, for example using The Career Toolkit Development Program (completely free and which you can download here).

Sometimes it can be as simple as giving them access. When I was three and my father mowed the lawn, I would follow him around with my toy bubble mower because I wanted to be just like my dad. As a teenager I was far less excited about the prospect of mowing the lawn. You may have some work which you see as tedious, but a more junior employee would be excited to do, since that’s seen as activities performed by someone in his or her aspirational next job. (Just remember, you can delegate authority, but it doesn’t diminish your existing responsibility for it.)

Ideally, even if you don’t have direct authority over compensation, you should have some influence over it. The head of your department who does have that authority should ask for your input before making decisions on promotions, raises, termination, staffing, and similar decisions. She may not share with you the details of the compensation, but she should get your take on what size raise someone may deserve. Importantly, this influence should be known. If the people you manage know you provide input to the final decision maker, then you indirectly have some of that authority. If it’s done in secret (or just not widely known), you lose that influence.

This is especially important on cross functional teams where a team lead may be from another department and so may not be seen as having such influence. If you’re at an organization with cross functional teams, make sure the team lead is explicitly consulted by the team members’ managers when it’s time for feedback, reviews, raises, or promotions and make sure that practice is well known.

Finally, remind people that jobs are short, careers are long. Paths are likely to cross in the future. It may be directly aligned, such as working together or hiring one another in the future, or indirectly, like being a reference (which can be requested by the former colleague, or may not, and requested by the potential hiring manager of this former colleague). The point is this current relationship may end, but new ones may form in the future. In game theory and negotiations this is a multi-round activity.

We often think of management (and leadership) and having direct control over others. This is more about authority and control than management. The best managers don’t have to give orders, they motivate, coach, and support after getting buy-in.

To be fair, your employees wouldn’t be there without that paycheck; carrots and sticks, explicit or implicit, are key. Still, at good organizations employees aren’t donkeys who need the carrot dangled right in front of their eyes. As long as they know there’s a reward at the end of the journey, they will follow the trail. Organizations should make sure the rewards are not only carrots and not only controlled by one person. A variety of rewards, and clear lines of influence on those awards, will help everything run smoother.

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