Most executives assume the biggest motivator at work is compensation.
They’re wrong.
Research—and decades of organizational performance data—show something far more powerful: the feeling of progress every single day.
When employees believe they are winning—moving the needle, improving, mastering something meaningful—their motivation skyrockets. Yet most banks fail to define what “progress” actually means for their teams.
The result? Talented employees feel stuck. Lower performers stay disengaged. Leaders mistakenly assume capability is the problem—when in reality, the system is.
In this video, Roxanne Emmerich reveals why progress is the hidden driver of performance—and how leaders can activate it inside their organizations.
You’ll discover:
Why compensation and appreciation alone don’t sustain motivation
How undefined progress quietly creates disengagement in your team
The simple “one-needle” mastery approach that turns struggling employees into top performers
When leaders create visible progress systems, something remarkable happens: people begin to believe they can win.
And once they believe they can win, performance accelerates.
Watch this week’s episode to discover how to build a culture where progress fuels performance.
Watch now.
Trick question for you. What is the number one motivator for employees?
Every time I ask executives, they say pay, up to a certain level. Yes, the research shows that—but that’s not it.
Feeling appreciated? Yes, that’s important—but that’s not it.
Are you ready for the answer?
The answer is the feeling of progress every single day.
But what is progress?
That is the question that needs to be solved. For many people, as we established last week when I was talking, we mentioned that they think they’re tied to profit in such a way that they believe they’re performing in the top ten percent. So perhaps they do not truly tie to profit.
What we have to figure out for them is: progress on what?
Here’s what I’m going to suggest.
When I did graduate work in organizational development, I discovered the concept of making sure you never get ahead of your skis. You take people from learned helplessness—the belief that “I could never do that”—and you give them one thing to do.
You guide them to mastery.
You celebrate it. You high-five them. And you make sure the system is in place to keep that needle up.
Then you show them another needle to move.
You put a system in place after they move that one up to make sure it stays there. Then you add another.
Here’s why this matters.
Some of your lower performers are actually high performers who have simply not been properly groomed because they cannot answer the question: progress on what?
But people get energized by the feeling of making progress every single day.
Once they start to feel like they’re winning, suddenly some of your lower performers become some of your higher performers—and you didn’t think that was possible.
But here’s the real miracle.
They didn’t think it was possible either.
Next week, join me as we cover the next piece: How do we create a workspace everyone wants to be in—one that supports high performers and doesn’t allow low performers to suck the energy out of the room?
Who hasn’t seen a salesperson, fresh from a seminar on cross-selling, suddenly spread a dozen different account options like a Japanese fan in front of the poor customer, whose expression falls into a blank and frightened stare?
Who hasn’t seen a salesperson, fresh from a seminar on cross-selling, suddenly spread a dozen different account options like a Japanese fan in front of the poor customer, whose expression falls into a blank and frightened stare?
We’ve all been there. The car salesman slides the paperwork across the desk at you, pointing at the signature line. Just this one last step, he says, and there’ll be no way out.
You’ve decided to create and implement a killer strategy. So where do you look for ideas?
There are hundreds of tried and true strategies out there. Some have taken companies from just marking time to the big time in no time. But which ones should you consider?
one company does something different and effective, then everyone imitates it. Then you’ve got yourself a field of purple cows. That’s when it’s time to go white. Or brown. Or zebra-striped. If they zig, you zag.
Here are three of the seven most effective secrets to finding and catching the hungriest fish—the customers who will add to your bottom line instead of nibbling from it:
Are you playing the wrong game?
Are you playing the wrong game?
Are you as good as you think you are? Whether the economy gets better or not is out of your control. But YOU getting better—that’s entirely in your control, and it’s non-negotiable.
You’re doing the old “Mission Statement, SWOT, and Goals” thing. That’s fine. I’m SURE you don’t think that’s the same thing as strategic planning.