The role of the manager includes the responsibility of making the employees want to do what he wants them to. Your manager has doubtlessly attended some classical management course and learnt that her most important mission is to enthuse, engage and motivate you as employees. The advice given at management courses usually goes something like this: See the potential of every employee, reinforce their strong sides and develop their weak, listen and empathise with their needs, coach them to think about what they want, allow failure, help to create a happy, pleasant, open atmosphere, and so forth. Such advice is good. But the danger of putting too much emphasis on it being the manager’s role to develop and make others grow is that the employees become passivated and prevented from seeing their own part in their motivation and development.
Many employees I meet find that what motivates them most at work is being treated as adults. Motivation usually comes from how we do things and how we treat each other, not what we do. If you feel that you’re being belittled at work, you must act to reassert your adulthood. Talk to your manager as an equal. Just because you have different roles at work doesn’t mean you have different statuses as human beings. Ask your manager to set up reflective dialogue meetings and talk about workplace motivation as adults. “What is it that motivates us here?”, “What are we lacking?”, “What do we need from each other?”, “What do we need from the manager?”. This involves us all in a genuine, honest way. It motivates.