How To Motivate People (TMS Insights)

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Last Updated on January 21, 2025 by Bill Truby

Can you really motivate someone? Yes, and it’s not just about rewards or surface-level tactics. Discover the five powerful motivators backed by research that inspire deep, lasting motivation and build stronger relationships with your team.

This video is a full video training of one of the tools in the Truby Management System. It’s a sample of the quality, commonsense teaching, and non-time-consuming way Truby Achievements trains its members. The Truby Management System (TMS) is a training program developed by Truby Achievements, Inc. To explore the full curriculum and enhance your leadership skills, visit https://TrubyAchievements.com.


Video Transcript:

Can you really motivate someone? There are people that say no. I say yes.

I’ve done a lot of research about this, a lot of reading about it, and pulled together the elements that do indeed motivate people. And the reason they motivate people is because they touch you on a very deep level. They’re not just behavioral. Obviously, you can give somebody motivation by saying, “If you do that, I’ll reward you with money,” but that’s not sustainable.

The things that I’m going to teach you now are actually sustainable. They go deep and they actually build a better relationship with you and your team member.

Now, it’s difficult to give you this tutorial because telling you what to do is what to do, but there’s so much involved with each one, it goes really deep.

So I’m gonna give you the five elements that motivate people that come from Harvard studies, MIT studies, and so on, but realize that there’s a lot you can read about each one of these.

The first one is to give people purpose. When people have the why for the what, the spiritual aspect, even the purpose for doing what you do, they are motivated. There were studies that showed that people have fewer sick days, they’re more productive, they’re more energized if they’re doing something where they feel a sense of purpose to it.

And you can give a sense of purpose to anything, any business, as long as people understand what that purpose is. It doesn’t have to be a big thing like solving world hunger. It could simply be helping someone understand what tool to get when they come into the hardware store to buy it. You’ve made that person’s life, their project, their home better simply by helping them. So the purpose can be small or it can be big, but if it’s there, it begins to motivate people.

The second motivator is membership. At a deep level, we want to belong. We want to be accepted and belong. That’s why gangs, conservative churches, Navy SEAL teams—the teams that are hard to get in—when you are a member, you are loyal because you have this sense of belonging.

So your hiring process, your orientation process, your assimilation process, your inclusion of people on the team—give them a sense of belonging. That membership is motivating to people.

The third motivator is ownership. You give ownership by helping people own what they do. And you do that by giving them parameters within which they work. There’s some freedom. Here’s the outcome that’s needed. Work within these parameters and do your job, fulfill your role, and you acknowledge that. You give them recognition for them owning their role on the team.

The next motivator is mastery. That means people need to know how to do what they do. They need to have mastery of it. When someone doesn’t know how to do their job, how to fulfill their role, they feel insecure. They’re not motivated if they don’t have the training, the mentorship, the support to do what they’re supposed to do.

The next motivator is feedback. People want to get feedback. They wanna know how they’re doing. They wanna be recognized, appreciated, and yes, even corrected. People want feedback on how they’re doing.

Now, if you can think about those five things as you connect with your team, as you engage with individuals, then you will give them deep motivators that are not just behavioral—they’re not on the surface. They go deep in that individual. They’ll have a sense of purpose, a sense of membership, a sense of ownership of their role, a sense of mastery of how they do what they do, and a sense of security that they’re getting the feedback that they’re doing their job well.

Those are the five motivators that you can use as a leader to cause people to be inspired to do what they do and motivated as you go along your journey to lead your team toward their achievements.

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Bill Truby

Founder and President of Truby Achievements