'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.

Our role as cultural leaders is to build an organization that encourages associates to become more focused, involved and committed to outstanding individual and collective performance. That responsibility envisions leading as many associates as possible into an inner circle of involvement for the purpose of creating a feeling of being part of an elite organization . 

Typically, a leader has three main categories of associates in his or her organization, differentiated by their relationship to this inner circle. The closer they are to the inner circle, the more committed, effective and happy they are. The three categories include:

Desirable associates: These seemingly self-motivated employees are always there for you, consistently performing at high levels. They are the model of what you want every employee to be like. Acceptable associates: These employees are less than ideal but perform at an acceptable level that enables you to consider them as ongoing participants in the organization.

Unacceptable associates: These employees never perform up to their own potential or to the organization’s standards. They seem more like liabilities than assets. Our role as cultural leaders is to create an organizational culture that encourages every associate to move into the center circle of high involvement by developing a workplace culture that gives every associate a sense of belonging and being an integral part of the organization’s success. Unfortunately, there may be a few associates who can’t or won’t make the move into the acceptable or desirable category. There comes a time therefore when the leader must deal with these employees, even if it means moving them out of the organization. When associates feel they are part of an inner circle, they become more confident of their leaders and more excited about their own potential and the potential of the organization. Its purpose, vision, goals and objectives become their own, and they commit themselves to helping move the organization to a better place. The cultural renewal process helps leaders identify associates who will move toward the inner circle, and those who will not.