Financial targets don’t motivate employees Would you be excited if your boss started a meeting saying: “I want to remind you that you’re a cog in a machine whose primary purpose is to hit our financial targets”? It’s natural for leaders to emphasise the importance of hitting financial targets but making numbers the centrepiece of your leadership narrative is a costly mistake. Financial results are an outcome, they’re not a root driver for employee performance, and a growing body of evidence tells us that over-emphasising financial targets erodes morale and undermines long-term strategy. Leaders looking to motivate employees must instead use their time with their teams to build belief in the organisational purpose, the intrinsic value of the employees’ work, and the impact they have on customers, and each other. To do so, I recommend three tactics: 1) Re-evaluate how you use your leadership airtime. 2) Discuss your customers with specificity and emotion. 3) Resist the urge to widely share every measure of financial performance. |
