2 min read Managing Employees

How to Create a Personalized Motivational Manual to Boost Productivity

August 28, 2014

Your young hires can list their GPA, past experiences and take a few hiring assessments but do you have a true understanding of how your employees are hardwired?

When you onboard your next young professional, offer a “motivational manual” exercise. Young professionals currently on a job search can create their own motivational manuals to bring to the interview process. That will help you really standout in a crowded applicant pool.

A motivational manual simply highlights times in your new team-member's life that they were highly motivated. You may have learned about these times already in the interview process. Help them to find themes during times in their life in which they were the most productive.

Have your employees build a motivation manual so you can better understand how to max out their efforts. First, have them reflect on a time that they were charged up. Then start to answer some questions:

What was the end-goal that you were chasing?

What sparked the motivation to go after this goal whole-heartedly?

What were you really chasing? Money? Recognition? Mastering a Skill? A relationship?

What did your days look like?

Who were you close to? A coach? A teacher? Peers?

How did those people positively or negatively affect your motivation? Carrot? Stick?

What were you eating? When were you eating? What other habits do you remember?

Where were you getting the most work done?

What did the physical location look like? Did you have certain pictures up in your office, etc?

Now have your employees repeat this process for three-to-five times in their lives when they were most motivated. Pick up on the commonalities. This will help you craft a profile document that helps you understand how to get an employee to their super-charged productivity state and allow you to build an environment, schedule and coaching process that can help provide the most ROI to the organization.