Why are you so nice to your team, but they still have no motivation? Four keys for managers to lead people in the AI ​​era

At the end of an in-house training a while ago, a trainee who had just been promoted to supervisor for half a year stayed at the end and asked me a question that had troubled him for a long time.

“Teacher Vista, I consider myself to be very good to the team: I invite them to afternoon tea, I accompany them when they work overtime, I give credit to them, and I even remember their family affairs. But why do they still look so unmotivated?”

I was silent for a few seconds and then asked him: “Are you doing this to be good to them, or do you hope they will think you are good?”

He froze.

Well, this is the deepest misunderstanding that most people have about leading people. We think that caring means asking for help, increasing benefits, and being a good gentleman. But to put it bluntly, that’s closer to flattery. But flattery cannot be exchanged for motivation, it can at most be exchanged for temporary embarrassment.

Leading people and leading hearts are two different things

Managing and leading are two different jobs. Management manages things: progress, quality, KPIs, and processes. Leaders lead people: motivation, trust, meaning, and energy. The first mistake most novice managers make is to treat people as a manpower list and assign work, forgetting that every box on the list is a person. If you lock him into the process as a screw, he will naturally only give you the output of the screw.

There are numbers to back this up. Gallup’s global survey shows that the proportion of employees who are truly engaged in their work has been around 20% in recent years. About four out of every five people just turn in their work as an errand. What’s even more disturbing is another figure: Gallup’s 2015 State of the American Manager report analyzed more than 25 million employees and 250,000 work units and pointed out that at least 70% of the difference in a team’s level of engagement can be explained by the direct supervisor.

Seventy percent. Whether the employees are committed or not is mostly not a problem for the employees, but a problem for the person who leads them.

So, how to carry the heart? I summarized my observations after leading teams, leading students, and interviewing various supervisors over the years into four key points.

Key One: Seeing, are you seeing people or human power?

The starting point of motivation is seeing.

Self-Determination Theory in psychology has been talked about for decades. Two scholars, Deci and Ryan, proposed a theoretical framework in 1985 and formally established three innate psychological needs in 2000: wanting to make one’s own decisions (autonomy), wanting to do things well (competence), and wanting to have real connections with others (connection). When these three are in place, talent will be engaged from the inside out.

In other words, everyone’s switch is turned on differently. Some people want to grow, some want to be seen and affirmed, and some want space and trust. If you apply the same motivational method to everyone, of course some people will not respond. For example, if you invite the whole company to the same restaurant, there will always be someone who only eats rice.

So the first step is very specific: take a piece of paper and write down the name of each person on the team. After each name, add three things: what he was doing last time his eyes lit up, what type of job he least wants to touch, and what kind of person he wants to be in three years. If you can’t write three things, it’s not because he has no motivation, it’s because you haven’t really seen him yet.

At this point, I have to admit that I also missed this question myself.

Many years ago I worked in a media department. When a new officer takes office, in addition to wanting to set an example and set an example, I also consider myself to be very good to my colleagues. I know that it’s hard to travel around for news, so I try to provide as much convenience as possible. Many process matters are made easier for everyone.

As a result, colleagues were not particularly grateful, and some even felt that this was how it should be.

I was quite frustrated at that time, but later I figured out: I was giving them what I thought they wanted. What I care about is hard work, but what some people really care about is whether they are seen, some people care about whether they can learn something, and some people care about whether the path to promotion is clear. I took convenience as a universal solution, and the result was not particularly good for anyone.

There is one action between thinking you are good to your team and really being good to them: have you asked him what he wants first?

Key 2: Give meaning, first tell why, then what to do

People can do things for money, but it is difficult to work hard for money. What makes people desperate is meaning.

Dan Pink’s 2009 book “Motivation, Pure Power” (Drive) tells a counter-intuitive fact: for work that requires creativity, extrinsic rewards are not only useless, but sometimes even harmful. Psychologist Glucksberg conducted an experiment on the candle problem in 1962. When the task required a flash of insight, the group of people who received a bonus as an inducement solved it more slowly. Bonuses tie the focus to getting the money and crowd out any room for creativity.

Pink says the real lasting fuel is autonomy, expertise and purpose. Among them, purpose is the most easily overlooked by supervisors. Simon Sinek also talked about the same thing in his 2009 TED talk, which has accumulated tens of millions of views so far: great leaders start their communication with why, first let people know why this thing is important, and then talk about how to do it and what to do.

There is an old fable that tells a good story: Three workers are laying bricks, and you ask them what they are doing. The first said I was laying bricks, the second said I was building a wall, and the third said I was building a church. With the same movement, the third person had light in his eyes.

The supervisor’s job is to point out that church for the team. The approach can be very small: every time you assign work, in addition to clearly stating what is to be done and when it will be handed in, spend an extra thirty seconds to add who this matter will affect. The same report is said to be handed over to me by Wednesday, but the people who receive it feel completely different from those who are told to sit on the board of directors on Wednesday and decide whether to continue this product line next year. The latter knows that he is not filling in a grid.

I had a similar feeling when I read The experience of “Motivation Revolution”: When a person can connect what he is doing with what he wants to live, that kind of motivation cannot be exchanged for any bonus.

Key Three: Entrust, trust must be given first, and the stage must be set first

Many supervisors talk about authorization but never let go of their hands. He kept saying that you were responsible, but in the end every decision had to be repaid and every letter had to be read by him. This is leaving the responsibility to you and leaving the power to yourself.

True trust comes first: you believe he can do it first, then give him a stage and support him at the same time. There is a key concept behind this called Psychological Safety, proposed by Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School in 1999. Her definition is: In this team, making mistakes, asking questions, telling the truth, and admitting “I can’t” will not be humiliated or punished.

Google later tested this concept with a large-scale study. Their Project Aristotle analyzed more than 180 internal teams to find what high-performing teams had in common. Number one, and far ahead of the other factors, is psychological safety, regardless of how smart or senior the members are. A team that dares to tell the truth, admit that it doesn’t know, and ask stupid questions is better than a group of masters who are armed with their own weapons and dare not show weakness.

So if you want your team to be effective, you must first make them believe that it is safe to make mistakes in front of you. A person who is always nailed to the wall will eventually develop the ability to hide his mistakes.

Here’s a good indicator of trust: Count how many letters you’ve been copied on this week that you didn’t need to know about. The more your partner puts you into the dungeon, the more he tells you that he doesn’t dare to make his own decision. Those who are truly entrusted do not need to take a copy as insurance.

Regarding the matter of truly handing over power and trust, I have talked more about it in Reading Notes on “Open Leadership”.

Key Four: With the energy to lead by example, you yourself are the ceiling of the team

The last one is the hardest to fake.

Emotions are contagious. The moment a supervisor walks into the office, the team reads his state: anxious or determined, complaining or committed. This stuff seeps into the entire space within minutes. You can’t bring out a team that is more enthusiastic than yourself, because your energy is the ceiling of the team.

I’ve seen two types of supervisors. A kind of management that treats people as objects, watching, guarding, and calculating everything, and the team also becomes conservative, evasive, and more things are worse than less things. The other way is to bring people into comrades-in-arms. You burn first, shoulder the responsibility first, and take on the difficult things first. Then the team slowly develops an aura that wants to get this thing done together.

There is no skill to practice in this one, but there is a question you can calibrate yourself: How many times have you complained about the company’s decisions in front of your team this week? Every complaint tells them: The person taking responsibility here is a fool.

The fairest thing about bringing your heart is this: you can’t fake it. You say “we are a family” ten thousand times, it’s better that you actually took a bullet for him once.

Even if you are alone, these four things are still your business

After reading this, readers of One-Man Company may be thinking: I have no one under me, so this article has nothing to do with me.

Actually more relevant. A one-person company never means doing everything yourself. You will be surrounded by outsourced designers, cooperating lecturers, co-taught course partners, and assistants to help you process orders. These people don’t have performance appraisals to tie you down, only their will. Whether you can see what they care about, whether you let them know the significance of the case, and whether you dare to actually hand over the matter will determine whether they will take your case next time. Without the insurance of organizational structure, leadership will only become more difficult.

After AI takes over the execution, taking care of your heart becomes the only ability you can’t hand over.

We are entering an era where execution costs are approaching zero. Writing copy, running numbers, making presentations, scheduling, and customer service—all these execution tasks that used to take up most of the team’s working hours are now being taken over by AI one by one.

The World Economic Forum (WEF)‘s January 2025 “Future of Work Report” gave a signal: the proportion of employers who listed “leadership and social influence” as core skills increased by 22 percentage points from the 2023 edition, which was the largest increase among all rated skills. The better a machine can do things, the more scarce and expensive its ability to guide people will be.

AI can optimize processes and produce beautiful reports for you, but it cannot help you see that the fire in a partner’s eyes is about to go out, nor can it help you gain the trust of a team. I have written before AI raises the floor for each of us, but it is always people who determine the ceiling. Bringing people’s hearts is the ceiling that machines cannot build.

There will be more and more people who know how to use AI. That is technology and you can learn it. People who can win people’s hearts are always scarce, because the test is whether you are willing to treat people as human beings.

A little thing you can do this week

Find a partner of yours and ask him a question that has nothing to do with work performance: “What do you want yourself to be like in three years?” Then shut up and listen carefully. Don’t rush to give advice or bring the topic back to KPIs.

You don’t need words to show your heart, all you need is your willingness to see the other person first. After all, the heart is never “brought” by anyone. If you see him first and trust him first, that heart will grow on its own.

And AI can never do this for you.