How to motivate as a project leader?

Question

Ok so some of you might think this is not stackoverflow related, but since I got a similar question during an interview (for a J2EE dev position) I think you guys will help me in the end.

The situation is simple: you're working on a project in a small group (4-5 people), you're the project leader and the guy who's the most competent (technology wise) is also slacking the most. What do you do to motivate him? The problem is, I'm having the same issue at the university - this semester we have a lot of projects going on (6 to be exact) so we decided to dived the work so everyone will do 1-2 projects in a technology he knows/wants to learn. It's been working well for the most part, the problem is the person whom we thought would finish his project way before us as he's the most experienced among us. How am I supposed to make him do his share properly? Till now he was just half assing his part by doing the bare minimum, with which the professor wasn't really pleased to say the least...

Now it's only a university project, but in the future I might have the same problem in a real job and losing a really smart and experienced worker (as firing him is the only solution I can come up with now) would really be a waste. Aren't there any better ways?

p.s. now that I think about it, are there any books that would help me in becoming a better project manager?

@EDIT: I can't really agree it's a duplicate, as I'm not talking about motivating people in general (or during long lasting projects), but I'm interested in motivating a specific type of people - ones that are smart and experienced, yet lazy. And I don't mean lazy because they are bored of what they are doing. I mean lazy because they prefer doing other, not work related things, like playing games, partying etc.

Answer 1

1. Communication!!!

   • Talk to the person.

   • Indicate upfront that you are aware of their technical expertise and value them as a team member.

   • Politely indicate that the performance does not quite match your expectations.

   • Ask if there's anything that can be done to help? Any issues? Something you can change? Resolve? The under-performance can be for MANY reasons, some of which CAN be fixed. Sometimes it only appears to be due to laziness, or laziness can merely amplify other existing issue.

   • Lack of sufficient tangible motivation (think "would you consider some sort of profit sharing" scene from "Office Space" :)

   • Some kind of in-team tension/politics. The guy wasn't praised for his part of some achievement while co-worker was. Someone got promoted over him - in his mind undeservedly - and that might have happened previously in a different team (or could have been you).

   • Lack of intangible motivation. May be they're just bored with low-level stuff and would perform better if they'd be given more responsibility for overall design/architecture or harder task.

   • One way to help a start is sometimes to offload some boring monkey work on others. As an example, I recently personally managed to deliver a very big milestone in about a week, which I put off for 1/2 year before - right after a new bushy-tailed analyst who wasn't afraid of grunt work was assigned to do the boring work of implementing the details of the milestone-related changes that I was drearing.

2. Positive motivation.

   In real setting, make sure they're aware there's bonuses/promotion hanging on X achievements. Make certain it's actually backed up by facts, not just motivational speech.

   Positive feedback. Almost everyone likes their ego stroked.

   Set up expectations. E.g. praise their expertise and something like "I'm sure Joe can do this in 1 hour with his hands tied" in front of the whole team...

   Nice touches. Many people tend to be "cheap" - I will admit that my productivity can get a boost just 'cause some Managing Director splurged on pizza for the team today. Take the team out to lunch. Bring donuts one morning. Not only an extra nice feeling, but saves the team members 15 mins to go out to breakfast :)

   This is a bit harder in college setting but you can try some of these anyway.

3. Negative motivation.

   In real life situation, make sure they have written performance goals, and know the consequences - in advance, in writing, possibly involving higher management/HR - of not meeting them. Not a best way to run shop, but in certain situations, fear will realistically be the only motivator. Not always, of course, but not an impossible scenario either.

   In college setting, it means having a serious chat with him about talking to Professor, then talking to Professor. A sensible Prof will actually sometimes accomodate you if you show proof and only grade "ex-bad-guy" parts of the project for the rest of the team.

   Another option not often recommended but sometimes effective is public shaming. Few people like seeing a listing - in a public meeting - with their name dead last and many will try to avoid repeating the experience.

   However, please be careful about firing/overall negative motivation. Sometimes "just enough to get by" performance from really good developer might still surpass the best performance you'd get from any replacement you'd be able to realistically get.

Answer 2

I mean lazy because they prefer doing other, not work related things, like playing games, partying etc.

You shouldn't try to motivate these types of people. You should fire them. A smart person who is lazy and doesn't contribute to the team is a liability, not an asset. The other team members will resent them, and then resent you (the team leader) because you let them get away with it.

Answer 3

This is the basic challenge for managers, for employees who don't self motivate, finding a way to motivate them in a way that doesn't impact the balance of the entire team. In my opinion and experience, this is a case by case decision. I usually am pretty straightforward in my approach, communicating that I'm concerned that we aren't going to meet our deadline with a high quality product if he/she doesn't step it up. What happens from there depends on their reaction.

In the end, you can't force someone to become proactive, and sometimes people need a change of scenery to become productive again, but the three basic ideas outlined by DVk are the three main options, what each manifests itself as depends on the environment, company, etc.

In your particular case, which is really a simulation of the work environment, I would approach him head on. It's a challenge if you don't handle conflict well, but that's part of the deal when you are managing people. If he doesn't seem to respond, let him know that you will be forced to discuss this matter with the professor (aka the next level manager). That's the only legitimate leverage you seem to have to motivate him.

Answer 4

you're the project leader and the guy who's the most competent (technology wise) is also slacking the most

Is he really the most competent? I've worked with "geniuses" who think they know everything, but really don't get much done, and what they do get done isn't designed to be maintainable. That doesn't add up to 'competent' in my book.

If they're slacking like this, you've got to pull them aside, ask them what the problem is (it could well be that they are seriously unmotivated or demoralised due to something that has happened - like you being promoted for a job he considered he deserved), see if you can fix or reassure about those problems, and if you can't then it's time to move them along, whether out of the team or out of the organisation doesn't matter.

Answer 5

In my experience, this very rarely happens at work. More likely, the unmotivated but talented worker will perform adequately -- it's just that you know they've got potential for more than that. Unless they're paid significantly more than their peers, though, you can't really demand more from them.

Workers like that do tend to be driven and self-motivated, so the situation might be indicative of a larger issue at the workplace. You might want to talk to the person in question, then look at the bigger picture. Maybe you have an opportunity to improve things for everyone.

On the other hand, I've seen a fair share of this with student group assignments. The problem is lack of commitment -- they're not feeling the consequences. They'll probably pass either way, and possibly they're feeling that they're not really learning anything new.

I get that the assignments often aren't motivating, but now they're putting their peers in a position where they either have to carry extra weight, or do something more drastic. I'm definitely in the latter camp. If part of the problem is that lack of consequences leads to lack of commitment, it's time to introduce some consequences, and fire the person from the group. Now, they're the ones having to do extra work.

Answer 6

In a peer situation, there is really not much you can do. As a team you may be able to talk to the slacker to get them to snap out of it. You can try to find out why this person is not living up to his or her potential and then try to help them find better motivation. Is it really a motivation problem? What else is going on in this person's life? Can you or someone else team up with them to provide a more personal committment? You can try to help, but in the end personal motivation is just that, personal.

In more corporate situations, motivation is based on many factors including goals, compensation, sense of purpose/ownership, common vision and values, and personal and professional growth.

Most project management books and most PMI materials are going to stress procedural techniques that have little to do with topics like "motivation." However, I have found that motivation is a very important topic that more project managers should study. Check out information on Organizational Development (OD). OD deals more with developing organizational and individual capability. How an organization is managed has big implications on individual motivation.

I highly recommend "The Empowered Manager" by Peter Block. Follow that up with his newer book "The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters."

Today, agile project management is much less about control than facilitation and empowerment. People with traditional project management "command and control" backgrounds are having to learn new techniques and discard many "proven" illusions. As Peter Block points out, it is often better to have a common vision and an empowered team than to have a Work Breakdown Structure and a Gant Chart.

If you want to be a great project manager and a great manager, learn how to coach, empower, and inspire people.

Answer 7

As someone who tends to be unmotivated at work i would can only suggest you find out why he is unmotivated.

The reason why i'm unmotivated is a serious lack of challenges and having to work with a seriously bad codebase. If the slacker is remotely similar to me he might just be bored of the work. Try to find some challenges for him, pick the hardest tasks and hand them to him and tell him that you trust him most that he will solve them best in the time constraints.

Showing trust will give him positive feedback and the challenge will allow him to do what most programmers love to do: Solve hard problems.

In case of your slacker for the university projects the problem is harder to solve. Depending on what type of guy it is, you might change the structure of your assignments, instead of everyone doing 1-2 of them, do them all together and let him delegate the easier parts to the others (documentation, UI, ...).

For the projects i had to do i usually acted as some sort of project manager, i designed the outline and structure of the project, wrote all the glue code and handled the specific tasks to the teammate i though is most suited for this task (the best coders got the hardest tasks, the unskilled one got the jobs where he could do the least damage).

Answer 8

Are there any books that would help me in becoming a better project manager?

Yes. Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister is a classic book intended for a technical lead who suddenly (urk!) finds himself or herself in charge of a project. Highly recommended (five stars at Amazon, if you like that sort of thing).