I attended an early morning networking event the other day. The event followed a lean coffee framework, where participants brought topics, voted for the ones to discuss, and then discussed them. Our host prepared stickies and Sharpies for a Kanban board. It board had a column named “Epiphanies” where participants could share the insights they got while engaging in the discussion. I had one around the topic of motivation and incentives, and I was ready for some collaborative decision making.
The face of privilege
The sticky that started a discussion was “How do we incentivize growth with leaner teams?”. The questions reflected my experiences as a middle manager at 2 scale-up companies in Berlin. While the venture capital money kept flowing, we were all growth-focused: more projects, more teams, more impact, more steps in the ladder to climb. It was common to reward high performance with promotions or at least a salary increase. More money or a new fancy title. This changed around 2023 when the economic downturn led to layoffs across the tech industry. The incentives are no longer there to freely give as companies entered cost-saving mode.
What’s the biggest cost? People, obviously. The teams got leaner, the workload spread across remaining employees, and the two most common incentives — money and promotions — were no longer possible to give. This created a lot of frustration in my team, back when I was still a manager myself. Curious to hear others’ perspectives, I’ve asked the group about their experiences in helping team members thrive within this new world. How could we promote growth without these clear extrinsic incentives? That question is coming time and time again in my manager coaching sessions.
The question was simply about us, managers, what can we do, how can we adapt. It was about the people we lead, what we can give, and what they can get in this already unfair transaction. What surprised me was the reaction of one of the participants.
He’s an older man than me, way more experienced, a multiple-time CEO before.
His perspective shocked me.
“Why does it have to be about what employees get?” he asked.
“What about what they can create instead? he added.
“Maybe it’s better to ask: does this job make them a better person?” he concluded, full of passion and conviction.
He was not willing to go into the giving topic, as he was at the top of the food chain already.
I’ve seen this before, a small group of leaders hoards wealth, power, and sets itself up comfortably at the top. To keep what they have, they would turn down the conversation about a more equitable structure. What I saw in his reply to my question was the ugly face of privilege. He swiftly changed the topic from the very clearly extractive nature of the situation into a topic of intrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic motivation can be a weapon
While intrinsic means “internal”, “self-created”, and “inherent”, the way he was speaking about it was more like a command. It was about what employees should care about, instead of a more equitable share of profit in the company.
The problem I have with this narrative is that someone’s intrinsic motivation is not ours to manage. As leaders, we can listen deeply and support each individual in aligning what they want to do with what needs to be done. But let’s not act like it doesn’t matter because we’re beyond it!
The fact that the speaker who lectured me was a multiple-times ex-CEO made me wonder if the Maslow pyramid is at play here. I’m not sure how easy it is to empathize with a worker whose salary increase is lower than inflation growth that year, when you, as a manager, are financially set for life.
My experiences as a middle manager have taught me that where we sit in the org chart changes everything. Each time an executive-led initiative turned out to be a flop, it was their team that was penalized, not the executive. If only they had a more motivated team to lead. I call bullshit! The C-level, as power-holders, would gather assets that would keep them free from worry about basic needs. Then, to keep it to themselves, they would turn the conversation towards aspirational, intrinsic topics like: motivation, mission, and values alignment.
It’s all smoke and mirrors
It’s unfair to take a high moral ground against the transactional aspect of work. As managers, we can indirectly affect the intrinsic motivation of our teams. Great leaders will spend time listening to individuals and help them see how their inherent motivators, day-to-day job, and their professional growth ideas connect. The debate I’ve participated in was not about that.
It felt more like a diversion tactic: let’s not look at what we could do to systematically change how the wealth is shared; instead, keep the status quo, and move the debate to a topic of motivation.
The worst part? Motivation or the lack of it could always be used to exercise power over people.
- Low-performance review score — you are not motivated enough.
- No salary increase to match at least an inflation raise — you need to prove you’re aligned with our mission.
- Not happy with leadership decisions that are harming you and others around you — I don’t think we share the same values.
These are simple ways to weaponize these topics I’ve seen in companies I’ve worked at.
While I would love to believe we can all find jobs that “make us a (better) person,” where we focus on creation and shaping the company’s destiny, at the basic transactional level, the needs of our employees need to be met first. That goes beyond money, titles, and growth opportunities, but also equity, sense of agency, and respect for the boundaries of their personal lives.
