Mal Fletcher comments

This is the core of leadership motivation. Essentially, motivation is providing people with the right motive for taking a certain course of action.

While hype can be based on little more than shallow platitudes, motivation channels heart-felt conviction combined with well considered strategies in response to honestly described problems.

Hype may sugar-coat a bitter-tasting pill, but motivation shows the benefits of swallowing the pill and moving on. It also celebrates and affirms the courage that this may require in people.

In times of economic strain, people need to feel that they're being treated as thinking adults, not small children. In the face of challenges, people need to feel that their managers are entrusting them with unvarnished and up-to-date information.

There are times when a management speech will inspire motivation - provided it is more than a 'pep-talk' filled with false hope. Yet there are more effective ways to motivate people, methods that help to fuse motivation into the very core of the team's DNA.

According to Sigmund Freud, one of the major causes of human anxiety is what he called 'social aggravation', the ability of groups of people to talk themselves into a collective state of fear.

Language is an important reflector of cultural values. Language also reinforces culture; if people talk a certain way long enough, their thinking aligns with their conversation. That's true on a national level and it's true within businesses.

Yet some managers are totally ignorant of the conversations taking place around their office water cooler and the tone those conversations are setting for the enterprise as a whole.

Many studies into human sociability have shown how susceptible we are to the power of suggestion. Recent research shows that peer pressure has as much impact on adults as it does on adolescents.

This research into positive peer pressure is the basis of the so-called 'nudge power', which is now so beloved of marketers and politicians alike.

Nudge power tries to shift people's perceptions about what others are doing in order to guide them toward new norms and healthier forms of behaviour.

In recent times, peer pressure has nudged public attitudes to shift when it comes to such pressing issues as AIDS infection and climate change.

Wise managers will find ways to nudge their team members in certain directions, using language as a starting point. The will regularly monitor the words and phrases people are using in the work space, asking certain questions.

Are the most common words and phrases reinforcing or working against the type of culture that will lead to problem-solving?