Motivation is crucial sustained individual and team performance at your in-plant printing operation

By Wes Friesen

About the Author

Wes Friesen is the manager of Billing, Credit and Special Attention Operations for Portland General Electric. He manages CIS billing, specialized billing, electronic bills and payments, credit and collections and OPUC and special attention operations. Wes and the PGE print and mail team have earned many national awards, such as the IPMA Management Award, four NAPL Gold Awards and numerous PCC awards. Wes received the Franklin Award in 2010 for his contributions to the mail industry. For the past 27 years Wes has been a university instructor and a speaker at conferences. He has written numerous articles for trade journals. Wes earned a B.S. in Business Administration from George Fox University and an MBA from the University of Portland. He can be contacted at Wes.Friesen@PGN.com

Can we directly motivate another person? Not really. But we can intentionally foster a climate that helps people motivate themselves. President Dwight D. Eisenhower said it well: "Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it."

Wes Friesen

Putting Satisfiers Into Practice

Here is a table of principles to help us enrich jobs and make them psychologically appealing:

Principle:	Motivators Involved:
Remove some controls while retaining accountability.	Responsibility & Achievement
Increase the accountability of individuals for their own work. Greater personal responsibility for quality of work. Less scrutiny by supervisors.	Responsibility & Recognition
Give a person a complete natural unit of work (e.g., let employees present reports they prepared).	Responsibility, Achievement & Recognition
Grant additional authority to employees; job freedom.	Responsibility, Achievement & Recognition
Share some reports and information directly with workers rather than through supervisors.	Internal Recognition
Introduce new and more difficult tasks not previously handled.	Growth & Learning
Assign individuals specific or specialized tasks, enabling them to become experts.	Responsibility, Growth & Advancement
Bring employees to some meetings; give employees credit for their work that goes to people outside the team.	Recognition, Growth
Give a person opportunity to lead special projects and assignments.	Recognition, Growth, Advancement

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Wes Friesen Author's page

Wes Friesen is a proven leader and developer of high performing teams and has extensive experience in both the corporate and non-profit worlds. A former in-plant manager, he is also an award-winning university instructor and speaker, and is the president of Solomon Training and Development, which provides leadership, management and team building training. His book, Your Team Can Soar! contains 42 valuable lessons that will inspire you, and give you practical pointers to help you—and your team—soar to new heights of performance. Your Team Can Soar! can be ordered from Xulonpress.com/bookstore or wesfriesen.com. Wes can be contacted at wesmfriesen@gmail.com.

How Do You Motivate People?