Employee Motivation..

I posted below as my response to Linked Question about Motivation for Employee on Knowledge based Industry.

Recently survey ranked order of motivating factors: good manager and team, interesting work, good wages & working condition, full appreciation of work done, promotions and growth in the organization, sympathetic help with personal problems...

I don't believe anyone can motivate people. they have to motivate themselves. You can't motivate people anymore than you can empower them. Employees have to motivate and empower themselves. However, you can set up an environment where they best motivate and empower themselves. The key is knowing how to set up the environment for each of your employees. Also, Motivation for me and my employee will be very different. And Certain things like money, a nice office and job security can help people from becoming less motivated, but they usually don't help people to become more motivated. A key goal is to understand the motivations of each of your employees.

Motivating self is first to motive others-- if you're doing a good job of taking care of yourself and your own job, you'll have much clearer perspective on how others are doing in theirs, it's much easier for others to be, too. A great place to start learning about motivation is to start understanding your own motivations. The key to helping to motivate your employees is to understand what motivates them. So what motivates you? Consider, for example, time with family, recognition, a job well done, service, learning, etc. How is your job configured to support your own motivations? What can you do to better motivate yourself? Again, Each person is motivated by different things. Whatever steps you take to support the motivation of your employees, they should first include finding out what it is that really motivates each of your employees. You can find this out by asking them, listening to them and observing them

Align goals of the organization with goals of employees-- employees can be all fired up about their work and be working very hard. However, if the results of their work don't contribute to the goals of the organization, then the organization is not any better off than if the employees were sitting on their hands -- maybe worse off! Therefore, it's critical that managers and supervisors know what they want from their employees. These preferences should be worded in terms of goals for the organization. Identifying the goals for the organization is usually done during strategic planning. Whatever steps you take to support the motivation of your employees , ensure that employees have strong input to identifying their goals and that these goals are aligned with goals of the organization.

Don't just count on cultivating strong interpersonal relationships with employees to help motivate them. The nature of these relationships can change greatly, for example, during times of stress. Instead, use reliable and comprehensive systems in the workplace to help motivate employees. For example, establish compensation systems, employee performance systems, organizational policies and procedures, etc., to support employee motivation. Also, establishing various systems and structures helps ensure clear understanding and equitable treatment of employees.

Soft Skills..matters..?

Recently study Men have higher IQ than women triggered many questions on the way, IQ are conducted, inequality, opporunties,,etc.. one that interest me is in this day and age.. is only IQ can be used for measurement for so-called "good employee"...!?

topic of the day - how important is Soft Skills (which females are very very good at..): I find increasely evidence its very important, just by notice power-puff ladies on boardroom. Needless to mention how talented they are but also they have advantage in soft skills. Are "soft skills" more important than actual knowledge?

Yes.. it may be Hard Truth but Soft Skills Matters...

to give an example from IT industry(to the most reader can relate too) - It's not enough anymore to be a crack programmer or a nimble network administrator. These days, CIOs need IT staffers to share more of the burden of business, to interact with other departments and to communicate effectively with colleagues. These non-IT skills (business acumen, communication, leadership, project management and so on), often called "soft" skills, are increasing in importance as IT becomes more strategic.

HBS Working Knowledge quotes - While top performance usually is what gets global managers their international assignments, soft skills may be more important.

Note of caution : We all want to hire "team players"...but where do we strike the balance? In my opinion the pendulum between hard & soft skills has swung too far in one direction. Among the rarest of traits is the ability to balance the need for consistent corporate practices with the need for regional uniqueness.

Although “Soft Skills” are required to be successful in any team-based or collaborative
environment, evaluation and discussion of them is often accomplished through vague terminology, nebulous examples, and recommendations which sound more like the innards of a fortune cookie than a specification for action. But the gap is not as wide as it seems. By using statistically validated assessment tools, and well-understood frameworks for evaluation and discussion, it is possible to bring some science to the human side of the workplace.