Why this common expectation creates bad leadership, disappointed teams, and the wrong conversations
Every founder and leader knows the feeling:
“My people just aren’t motivated. What am I supposed to do about it?”
And every employee has felt its mirror image:
“I’m not motivated. My manager should help fix that.”
On the surface, this looks like a reasonable conversation.
But underneath, it rests on a flawed idea — one that shapes behaviour, expectations, and performance in unhelpful ways:
The belief that managers should motivate employees, or that employees should expect motivation from their managers, is simply wrong.
Not morally wrong.
Not philosophically wrong.
Factually wrong.
Modern motivation science, adult development theory, and organisational psychology all point to a much more accurate — and far more useful — understanding of where motivation truly comes from.
Let’s unpack this, because it changes how leaders lead, how teams function, and how organisations grow.
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The First Mistake: Treating Motivation as a Manager-Delivered Service
The classic view imagines motivation like electricity: managers generate it, employees receive it.
It’s a tidy metaphor. Yet it is unsupported by evidence.
The most robust motivation framework we have — Self-Determination Theory by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan — is clear:
Motivation is primarily an inside-out process. It emerges when certain psychological needs are met, not because a manager installs it.
Those needs are:
- Autonomy — “I have a say.”
- Competence — “I’m capable and growing.”
- Relatedness — “I matter here.”
You’ll notice something:
These aren’t things a leader does to someone.
They are conditions a leader helps create around someone.
This distinction matters.
When managers try to motivate people through pressure, pep talks, or incentives, studies show it often reduces intrinsic motivation (Deci, Koestner & Ryan, 1999).
So the more leaders try to “motivate,” the less motivated people actually become.
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The Second Mistake: Treating Employees as Passive Receivers
The belief “my manager should motivate me” places the employee in a fundamentally passive role.
But everything we know about adult motivation says the opposite.
Adult development research (Knowles, Kegan & Lahey) shows that adults:
- are self-directed,
- pursue goals that align with their own values,
- and cannot be motivated toward something they don’t personally find meaningful.
Meaning cannot be outsourced.
Motivation cannot be given.
When employees expect motivation to come from their manager, something subtle and dangerous happens: they outsource a psychological function that should remain theirs.
The result is a fruitless dance:
- Leaders try harder.
- Employees feel unchanged.
- Everyone wonders why nothing shifts.
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The Third Mistake: Misdiagnosing Motivation Produces Bad Leadership
When leaders believe their job is to “motivate,” they reach for predictable (and unhelpful) tools:
- more enthusiasm
- more incentives
- more pressure
- more slogans
- more pep-talks
These are not motivational strategies; they are coping mechanisms.
Research by Amabile, Herzberg, and Edmondson shows that low motivation is rarely a willpower issue. It’s more often a design flaw:
- unclear goals
- poor role-person fit
- lack of autonomy
- missing feedback
- inconsistent leadership
- unfairness
- no sense of progress
Trying to “inspire” someone whose environment is broken is like urging a runner to go faster while tightening the laces around their ankles.
The problem isn’t will.
It’s the system.
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A More Accurate and More Powerful Model: Will–Skill–Hill
This is where your Will–Skill–Hill framing becomes extremely useful. It matches the science and gives leaders a practical diagnostic.
- Will = the individual’s internal drive
- Skill = capability, co-owned by employee and organisation
- Hill = the context, barriers, and environment the organisation controls
From a research perspective, this is exactly how motivation divides in real life:
1. Will = Employee-owned
It’s shaped by personal values, identity, goals, sense of purpose, and internal narratives.
A manager cannot give someone will. They can only create space for it.
2. Skill = Co-owned
The organisation provides training, coaching, feedback, and opportunity.
The employee brings initiative, learning efforts, and intention.
3. Hill = Organisation-owned
This is where leadership has the most leverage:
- clarity
- fairness
- psychological safety
- workload
- priorities
- role design
- resource allocation
These environmental factors either enable or suffocate intrinsic motivation.
A leader’s real job isn’t to motivate.
It’s to reduce friction, create clarity, enable autonomy, and support growth.
Motivation follows.
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So What Should Leaders Actually Do?
1. Stop Trying to Motivate. Start Trying to Understand.
Ask:
- What matters to this person?
- What conditions help them feel at their best?
- What gets in the way of progress or meaning?
The conversation becomes diagnostic, not inspirational.
2. Focus on the Hill: Remove Obstacles
Most motivation issues are environmental.
Fix role clarity, priorities, workloads, and fairness before looking at mindset.
3. Support Skill Growth in Partnership
Give people the coaching, feedback, and development they need, but let them own their learning.
4. Treat Will as Sacred
Do not try to manipulate it.
Do not try to manufacture excitement.
Protect it by creating an environment where it naturally emerges.
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What Employees Should Do
Motivation isn’t a favour leaders grant.
It’s a responsibility adults carry.
Employees must:
- articulate what matters to them
- understand their own sources of meaning
- seek clarity
- pursue mastery
- communicate when conditions are undermining their performance
This is not selfish; it’s part of being a grown-up contributor in a modern organisation.
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The Shift That Changes Everything
When both sides let go of the myth “my manager should motivate me,” something important happens:
Leaders shift from cheerleaders to designers of great environments.
Employees shift from passive recipients to active agents of their own motivation.
Teams shift from dependency to ownership.
And motivation, which we’ve been chasing in all the wrong ways, finally shows up — as a natural by-product of a well-designed system and meaningful work.
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The Core Message
Managers don’t motivate employees.
They create the conditions in which employees can motivate themselves.
This isn’t softer. It’s sharper.
It’s more honest.
And it points both leaders and employees toward the responsibilities that actually matter.