'What’s in it for me’?  As leaders, we hear this cry openly or in nonverbal ways over and over.  But it’s not really about money alone.  Yes, when you ask people what their most important motivator is; the answer is most often money.  But human behavior belies this often held belief.  Yes, having a competitive extrinsic (Monetary) rewards program is important.  But in actuality people are really most interested in being recognized for their performance and being given the opportunity to be engaged and empowered in their work.

As a team leader, supervisor, departmental or divisional level you probably don’t make the major decisions over the extrinsic rewards for you organization.  However you do have 100% control over the intrinsic (Non-monetary) rewards for your entire organization – individually and collectively.  Believe it or not on a daily basis, your workers are more concerned with their formal and informal recognition than they are about Friday’s paycheck it’s a ‘given’.  In addition to recognition we can reward our associate by engaging them in decision making, planning, problems solving and the many other ways to effectively ‘engage them’ in your workplace.

So don’t get caught up in the belief that you don’t control your organization’s rewards program.  Because, you really do control the most important part of the rewards program for every individual and you team as a whole.