It's not going to come as a big surprise to you that we are all motivated in different ways which is one of the biggest challenges for Leaders when it comes to offering performance incentives. Getting your strategies wrong can lead to losing key people and the added cost of replacing them.

I was feeding back some motivational maps a few weeks ago and the conversation was around their role in the organisation and how they contributed. The message coming down from above was all about the financial success of the business which is important but the message wasn't motivating the team because they weren't motivated by money. However they were motivated by security which a financially successful organisation gave them but unfortunately that message wasn't landing. Just changing the language to include a mention of the stability of the organisation would have had greater impact down the line.

We all tend to offer incentives that appeal to ourselves, I was as guilty as anyone of this...