Inspiration vs Motivation: Where Do Future Managers Shift Their Focus?

You want your employees to produce the best result, pump them up with motivation. 

How often have we heard this statement? If you ask me, we listen to it just about every other day. 

As a manager, we are tasked with the responsibility of coaching our subordinates to the level they give the best of who they are. If they want to see them give results that are exceptional, they have to lead by example and deliver them all the resources which they require in order to progress forward in life. 

Hence, they try their level best to motivate and inspire their employees with their lessons and actions. While this is a great step but only a few managers realize that motivation and inspiration are two different things. Many of the managers still perceive motivation and inspiration pretty much the same. 

Today, I am going to explain to you guys the difference between both. Let’s understand what is needed for future managers to develop in order to train their employees and assist them in moving forward. 

How Managers Can Motivate Employees? 

Motivation, without a doubt, is something that many modern-day leaders have adopted in order to make their employees work towards their goals and objectives. They usually invest their time and focus on introducing external forces to motivate their employees so they can perform at their tasks. 

Motivations usually come from rewards. Motivations with benefits are called Extrinsic motivation. The other type of motivation is intrinsic which usually comes from inspiration so we will talk about it later. 

According to a Leadership survey performed in Australia, it has been found that 79% of employees believe that training and career development opportunities play a significant role in motivating them. 

Such forms of external forces play a major role in motivating the people towards achieving their respective goals & objectives. By promising a certain reward or outcome for their performance is a great tactic that managers can do in order to motivate their players to move in the right direction. What many managers don’t realize is that by threatening them or scaring them that they can lose their job if they don’t perform is a poor way. Such a tactic will only create resentments and anxiety in them.

How Managers Can Inspire Them? 

Indeed, motivation is a great way to keep the employees on the right track of achievement but the effects of such a tactic are short-lived. A person who’s motivated by external forces such as rewards may often stop achieving once they get the reward. And, as human nature, they will eventually expect another reward in the near future. Until then, they may stop performing & delivering adequate results. 

So if you want to see a lasting impact, you need to do something more than just offer motivation. 

What makes inspiration any different from motivation? 

The best explanation we have extracted so far is from an article published on Entrepreneur, where the writer had a conversation with Sam Taggart of The D2D Expert and explained the difference in them. 

Sam said, 

 “It’s an outside force that is compelling you to take action, even if you don’t necessarily want to. Inspiration, on the other hand, is more of a pull or driving force. It’s something that comes from within that gets us to proactively give our best effort. When someone is inspired, they’re with you for the long haul.” 

Inspirational leadership focuses on the individual employee and at the same time, place emphasis on the core company’s mission and values. Managers who are aiming to inspire others try to instil their organization’s core values within their employees with every interaction they make with them. 

Leaders who want to stem inspiration in the heart of their employees often pay attention to the need of their employees. By identifying what they need, they are more compelled at fulfilling their requests. In doing so, they often win their team members with a positive attitude and here’s what usually compels the sub-ordinates to think out of the box and deliver quality service. Also, at the same time, they get to understand their subordinates on a personal level which enables them to motivate them. 

Where Do Managers Need to Focus?

While both, motivation and inspiration have their own benefits, there is no denying the fact that inspirational leaders are much better motivators than those who leverage the power of extrinsic motivation. Instead of motivating employees extrinsically, if they use a different more subtle approach to motivating such as intrinsically motivating the individuals, it would certainly have positive effects. 

Such motivation can only come from inspiration. Therefore, future leaders should be more inspirational than motivational. Did you find this piece of information helpful? Talk to us about it.