Guest Blog: George Roter on Inspiring Success in Others

At Engineers Without Borders I have the great privilege of working with the most inspiring and motivated people I know.

So what keeps them going? What keeps them asking the tough questions, and not settling for easy answers? What keeps them up at all hours, working for little or no pay to achieve the millions of little “wins” that will be required for the change we seek?

I don’t always sit back and reflect on those questions, so consider this post a bit of professional development for yours truly as I try to disaggregate what I’ve learned about helping to create this motivating environment at EWB!

I’ve come up with three concepts, each with their own pithy description!

Bespoke suits, not hospital gowns: So here’s the thing: I have a big ass. It’s not that it’s particularly huge on its own, but relative to my waist size it is gargantuan! I can generally either have pants that rip up the back if I sat down, or that are 5 inches too large on my waist (I choose the latter). But last year, I splurged for custom-made pants, and wow, they actually fit.

This is rather like people’s motivation. It’s not one-size-fits-all like a hospital gown. Rather, motivation is intensely personal, and to motivate people I’ve learned that I must think more like fitting them with a custom-made suit.

Moreover, I’ve come to realize that most people aren’t motivated in the same way or by the same things that I am. I remember a particular management experience a number of years ago when I became acutely aware of this. A staff member I was managing was having a great deal of trouble balancing all of the tasks on her plate. In my analysis, she was spending far too much time with EWB members at our student chapters, and so I insisted that she take more time for strategic thinking and building the systems that would make her work more efficient. My assumption was that her motivation would come from being more efficient, as mine does.

I could not have been more wrong. She became less motivated and quite angry at me for continually insisting that she take time away from the personal coaching relationships; these were her primary motivation.

In this case I learned the hard way that people’s motivation is very individual, like a bespoke suit. I now align my actions with this realization and check-in regularly and explicitly with EWBers on what is motivating them.

The ‘Me’ in Team: Priority #1 for me this past May and June was raising money from high net worth individuals to fund EWB’s work overseas. We were feeling the cash crunch from the financial meltdown over the past year, and we needed to get funds right away to continue our growth. But to be honest, I didn’t deliver as I wanted to on this. I didn’t get a decent plan together, and I didn’t execute.

I have the same #1 priority this fall, and I’m rockin’! I’m halfway to my goal of meeting 100 “people of means” between Oct 1 and Dec 31, and I’m completely energized and motivated.

So what’s the difference? This fall I’m part of a larger team that is raising funds for EWB. While this work is my own, other people are following my progress, and we’re problem-solving together.

I’ve noticed this with others as well. People’s motivation increases greatly in a collaborative, supportive environment, and one in which there is positive joint accountability. As a leader I’ve learned that I can help create these positive environments. I must also be hyper-aware of situations where people get into silos and start to be insulated from each other, leading to lower levels of motivation.

One way we’ve managed this at EWB is by creating more “cross functional teams”, such as our latest internal communication team called ONE EWB.

20/20 Vision: This weekend I was reminded of a story of President Lyndon B. Johnson visiting NASA during his presidency. He came across a particularly energetic janitor and asked; “what do you do here?”  The janitor’s answer was “I help put people on the moon.”

Regardless of any technical improvements I can make in managing people, setting processes, etc, I’ve realized that a central part of motivation comes from clarity of purpose and contribution – a vision.

The interesting thing about this is that everyone’s vision is slightly different; again, it’s personal. So as a leader I’ve discovered that it’s not about getting people to see my vision, it’s about them seeing their vision, and seeing how they together become our vision. This requires me to communicate very clearly – 20/20 vision – where I see our work heading, and how each person in EWB can contribute (I will credit Laura McGrath (http://readyforchange.ca/), and amazing person and coach for helping me understand this).

So those are some of my reflections on motivating people and why so many EWBers are so incredibly motivated!

I would love to hear of other people’s experiences.

George Roter is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Engineers Without Borders Canada

Tagged as: Engineers without Borders, George Roter, motivating your staff, nonprofit leadership, nonprofit management, nonprofit vision