Inspiring The Best In People

By Nathaniel Branden, Ph.D

People are most inspired to give their best when-
  1. People feel safe: secure that they will not be ridiculed, demeaned, humiliated, or punished for openness and honesty or for admitting "I made a mistake" or for saying "I don't know, but I'll find out."
  2. People feel accepted: treated with courtesy, listened to, invite to express thoughts and feelings, dealt with as individuals whose dignity is important.
  3. People feel challenged: given assignments that excite, inspire and test and stretch their abilities.
  4. People feel recognized: acknowledged for individual talents and achievements and rewarded monetarily and nonmonetarily for extraordinary contributions.
  5. People receive constructive feedback: they hear how to improve performance in nondemeaning ways that stress positives rather than negatives and that build on their strengths.
  6. People see that innovation is expected of them: their opinions are solicited, their brainstorming is invited, and they see that the development of new and usable ideas is desired of them and welcomed.
  7. People are given easy access to information: not only are they given the information (and resources) they need to do their job properly, they are given information about the wider context in which they work-the goals and progress of the company-so that they can understand how their activities relate to the organization's overall mission.
  8. People are given authority appropriate to what they are accountable for: they are encouraged to take initiative, make decisions, exercise judgment.
  9. People are given clear-cut and noncontradictory rules and guidelines: they are provided with a structure their intelligence can grasp and count on and they know what is expected of them.
  10. People are encouraged to solve as many of their own problems as possible: they are expected to resolve issues close to the action rather than pass responsibility for solutions to higher-ups, and they are empowered to do so.
  11. People see that their rewards for successes are far greater than any penalties for failures: in too many companies, where the penalties for mistakes are much greater than the rewards for success, people are afraid to take risks or express themselves.
  12. People are encouraged and rewarded for learning: they are encouraged to participate in internal and external courses and programs that will expand their knowledge and skills.
  13. People experience congruence between an organization's mission statement and professed philosophy, on the one hand, and the behavior of leaders and managers, on the other: they see integrity exemplified and they feel motivated to match what they see.
  14. People experience being treated fairly and justly: they feel the workplace is a rational universe they can trust.
  15. People are able to believe in and take pride in the value of what they produce: they perceive the result of their efforts as genuinely useful, they perceive their work as worth doing.
Nathaniel Branden
The Branden Institute
P.O. 2609, Beverly Hills, California 90213
Phone: (310) 274-6361 Fax: (310) 271-6808
Email: NathanielBranden@Compuserve.com