Incentivizing Behaviors: The Hidden Power of Motivation in Leadership

By: Stephanie Bickel

What You Reward Shapes Your Culture

Most leaders believe they’re motivating their teams through clear goals and performance reviews, yet the true motivator is what they consistently reward.

• If you celebrate results but ignore collaboration, people will focus on individual wins.

• If you praise speed over accuracy, mistakes multiply.

• If you only notice the “big saves,” you teach people to wait for crisis before acting.

  
  

As the year ends, your team is taking cues from everything you praise, recognize, and reward.

Those incentives are shaping your culture whether you intend them to or not.

The Leadership Power of Incentivizing Behaviors

Many leaders think incentives have to be financial to matter: bonuses, raises, or awards.

But the truth is, people crave meaning far more than money.

When recognition is purely transactional, motivation fades as soon as the reward is received.

When it’s personal and purpose-driven, it builds commitment that lasts all year.

Great leaders use incentives to reinforce their values, not just their targets.

They know every “thank you,” every public recognition, every moment of praise, is an incentive that teaches the team what matters most.

How Great Leaders Use Incentives to Build Trust

Leaders create culture by what they highlight.

Every compliment, shout-out, and “thank you” tells your team, this is what matters here.

Strong communicators don’t just incentivize outcomes, they incentivize the behaviors that lead to those outcomes:

• Consistent follow-through

• Collaboration under pressure

• Ownership during uncertainty

• Listening before reacting

When you reward these behaviors, you build a culture rooted in trust, composure, and shared accountability.

How to Incentivize for Sustainable Motivation

Leadership Focus What You’re Really Rewarding Shift to This Instead

Speed	Urgency over accuracy	Reward thoughtful preparation and quality execution
Results only	End goals	Acknowledge learning, teamwork, and adaptability
Compliance	Obedience	Recognize curiosity, feedback, and initiative
Heroics	Firefighting	Celebrate systems and foresight that prevent emergencies

Leadership Tip: Review your year-end recognition messages.

If all the praise goes to “big wins,” you may be unintentionally rewarding burnout. You need to balance the narrative by naming and valuing the steady, disciplined behaviors that make success possible.

How to Realign Your Rewards Before the New Year

Take 10 minutes this week to reflect:

1. Write down three behaviors you want to see more of on your team next year.

   
   

2. Identify how you’ll recognize those behaviors when you see them.

   
   

3. Share your list publicly at a team meeting or in a year-end message.

When leaders name the behaviors they value, they turn motivation into a shared mission.

Lead a Culture That Motivates Itself

What gets rewarded gets repeated.

When you reward the right behaviors - progress, consistency, and courage - you build a culture that motivates itself.

As Robert Greene reminds us in The book 48 Laws of Power, power often lies not in the actions themselves, but in the behaviors you choose to reward.

When you reward loyalty, initiative, and trust, you multiply them.

As you head into the new year, let your incentives tell the story of what matters most.

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