156 Motivate Employees Quotes

Following is our list of motivate employees quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about management motivation.

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Famous Motivate Employees Quotes

True motivation comes from achievement, personal development, job satisfaction, and recognition. — Frederick Herzberg

Nobody motivates today's workers. If it doesn't come from within, it doesn't come. Fun helps remove the barriers that allow people to motivate themselves. — Herman Cain

Understanding your employee's perspective can go a long way towards increasing productivity and happiness. — Kathryn Minshew

Motivation is everything. You can do the work of two people, but you can't be two people. Instead, you have to inspire the next guy down the line and get him to inspire his people. — Lee Iacocca

Start with good people, lay out the rules, communicate with your employees, motivate them and reward them. If you do all those things effectively, you can't miss. — Lee Iacocca

Frederick Herzberg, asserts that the powerful motivator in our lives isn't money; it's the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements. — Frederick Herzberg

Call it what you will, incentives are what get people to work harder. — Nikita Khrushchev

Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Your employees are your company’s real competitive advantage. They’re the ones making the magic happen-so long as their needs are being met. — Richard Branson

The way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers — Richard Branson

You cannot love an employee into creativity, although you can ... avoid his dissatisfactions with the way you treat him. — Frederick Herzberg

No company, small or large, can win over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it. — Jack Welch

When employees are happy, they are your very best ambassadors. — James Sinegal

Treat employees like partners, and they act like partners. — Fred A. Allen

Recognition is the greatest motivator. — Gerard C. Eakedale

Short Motivate Employees Quotes

  • Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated. — Lou Holtz
  • Motivation is the fuel, necessary to keep the human engine running. — Zig Ziglar
  • If you must have motivation, think of your paycheck on Friday. — Noel Coward
  • If your employees are not happy, nothing else at your company will go well. — Eric Yuan
  • If you treat staff as your equal, they'll roll their sleeves up to get the job done. — John Ilhan
  • Make your top managers rich and they will make you rich. — Robert H. Johnson
  • Highly engaged employees make the customer experience. Disengaged employees break it. — Timothy R. Clark
  • Our philosophy is to attract top talent and incentivize them to succeed. — Vivek Ramaswamy
Motivate employees quote You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.
You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

Team Motivation Quotes

Trample the weak. Hurdle the dead. — Attila the Hun

The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team. — Phil Jackson

Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way. — George S. Patton

Motivate employees quote Be not afraid of going slowly, Be afraid of standing still.
Be not afraid of going slowly, Be afraid of standing still.

Winning as a team is better than anything. It's great to share success. — Jim Harbaugh

Goals aren't enough. You need goals plus deadlines: goals big enough to get excited about and deadline to make you run. One isn't much good without the other, but together they can be tremendous. — Ben Feldman

I don't believe in team motivation. I believe in getting a team prepared so it knows it will have the necessary confidence when it steps on a field and be prepared to play a good game. — Tom Landry

Motivate employees quote Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no mater how slow.
Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no mater how slow.

Synergy - the bonus that is achieved when things work together harmoniously. — Mark Twain

The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot. — Bill Russell

When building a team, I always search first for people who love to win. If I can't find any of those, I look for people who hate to lose. — Ross Perot

The team with the best athletes doesn't usually win. It's the team with the athletes who play best together. — Lisa Fernandez

Management Motivation Quotes

What gets measured gets managed. — Peter Drucker

As a goalkeeper you need to be good at organising the people in front of you and motivating them. You need to see what's going on and react to the threats. Just like a good manager in business. — Peter Shilton

There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened. To be successful, you need to be a person who makes things happen. — Jim Lovell

Motivate employees quote There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's book and write your ow
There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's book and write your own.

Organization doesn't really accomplish anything. Plans don't accomplish anything, either. Theories of management don't much matter. Endeavors succeed or fail because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best people will you accomplish great deeds. — Colin Powell

If you ask managers what they do, they will most likely tell you that they plan, organise, co-ordinate and control. Then watch what they do. Don't be surprised if you can't relate what you see to those four words. — Henry Mintzberg

If you can hire people whose passion intersects with the job, they won't require any supervision at all. They will manage themselves better than anyone could ever manage them. Their fire comes from within, not from without. Their motivation is internal, not external. — Stephen Covey

You're at your best when you don't know what you're doing. - Paul Stanley

You're at your best when you don't know what you're doing. — Paul Stanley

Be the change you want to see. - Mahatma Gandhi

Be the change you want to see. — Mahatma Gandhi

If you want to manage somebody, manage yourself. Do that well and you'll be ready to stop managing. And start leading. — Mark Gonzales

It is not so much where my motivation comes from but rather how it manages to survive. — Louise Bourgeois

Work Motivation Quotes

If I have accomplished anything in life it is because I have been willing to work hard. — Madam C. J. Walker

In time, all things work to your advantage when you pursue them with an open heart. — Miyamoto Musashi

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. - Harry S. Truman

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. — Harry S. Truman

Motivate employees quote Getting knocked down in life is a given. Getting up and moving forward is a choice.
Getting knocked down in life is a given. Getting up and moving forward is a choice.

If you don't go after what you want, you'll never have it. If you don't ask, the answer is always no. If you don't step forward, you're always in the same place. — Nora Roberts

Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes. — Benjamin Franklin

We all have to work in our respective spheres with the same dedication, the same zeal and the same determination which inspired and motivated the warrior on the battle front. And this has to be shown not by mere words, but by actual deeds. — Lal Bahadur Shastri

Motivate employees quote Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tip
Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tip top if you must, but take the step.

People sometimes attribute my success to my genius; all the genius I know anything about is hard work. — Alexander Hamilton

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Success isn't about how much money you make, it's about the difference you make in people's lives. — Michelle Obama

Do more than belong: participate. Do more than care: help. Do more than believe: practice. Do more than be fair: be kind. Do more than forgive: forget. Do more than dream: work. — William Arthur Ward

Employee Engagement Quotes

When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute. — Simon Sinek

To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace. — Douglas Conant

Today, no leader can afford to be indifferent to the challenge of engaging employees in the work of creating the future. Engagement may have been optional in the past, but its pretty much the whole game today. — Gary Hamel

Motivate employees quote It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.

Connect the dots between individual roles and the goals of the organization. When people see that connection, they get a lot of energy out of work. They feel the importance, dignity, and meaning in their job. — Ken Blanchard

Your number one customers are your people. Look after employees first and then customers last. — Ian Hutchinson

I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among men the greatest asset I possess. The way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement. — Charles R. Schwab

Motivate employees quote A little progress each day adds up to bg results.
A little progress each day adds up to bg results.

Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems. — Peter Drucker

Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers. — Stephen Covey

Dispirited, unmotivated, unappreciated workers cannot compete in a highly competitive world. — Frances Hesselbein

Business and human endeavors are systems...we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system. And wonder why our deepest problems never get solved. — Peter Senge

Motivate Students Quotes

There is no elevator to success, you have to take the stairs. - Zig Ziglar

There is no elevator to success, you have to take the stairs. — Zig Ziglar

Study while others are sleeping; work while others are loafing; prepare while others are playing; and dream while others are wishing. — William Arthur Ward

If you can dream it, you can do it. Your limits are all within yourself. - Brian Tracy

If you can dream it, you can do it. Your limits are all within yourself. — Brian Tracy

Motivate employees quote The hardest walk is walking alone, but it's also the walk that makes you the strongest.
The hardest walk is walking alone, but it's also the walk that makes you the strongest.

Don't take rest after your first victory because if you fail in second, more lips are waiting to say that your first victory was just luck. — Abdul Kalam

It Is Very Easy To Defeat Someone, But It Is Very Hard To Win Someone - Abdul Kalam

It Is Very Easy To Defeat Someone, But It Is Very Hard To Win Someone — Abdul Kalam

The wrong kind of praise creates self-defeating behavior. The right kind motivates students to learn. — Carol S. Dweck

Motivate employees quote Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass
Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass away.

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. — Thomas A. Edison

Never follow anyone else's path, unless you're in the woods and you're lost. — Ellen DeGeneres

Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress. — Nicholas Murray Butler

I know there were students in my class who were smarter than me, but I don’t know if there was anybody who worked harder than me. — Michael J. Massimino

Positive Motivation Quotes

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. — Steve Jobs

When the world pushes you to your knees, you're in the perfect position to pray. — Rumi

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined... — Henry David Thoreau

It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. — Swami Vivekananda

Happiness doesn't depend on what we have, but it does depend on how we feel toward what we have. We can be happy with little and miserable with much. — William D. Hoard

The most reliable way to predict the future is to create it. — Abraham Lincoln

Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day. — Dalai Lama

Rules for Happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for. — Immanuel Kant

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore. — William Faulkner

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us. — Henry David Thoreau

Employee Appreciation Quotes

It is up to us to give ourselves recognition. If we wait for it to come from others, we feel resentful when it doesn't, and when it does, we may well reject it. — Spencer Tracy

There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread. — Mother Teresa

The honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action. — Aristotle

(A manager) once confided in me she liked to picture in her mind's eye that every employee was wearing one of those sandwich billboard signs. On the front side, the sign would read 'Appreciate Me' and on the back side 'Make Me Feel Important.' — James Hunter

When someone comes along who genuinely thanks us, we will follow that person a very long way. — Alan Loy McGinnis

Stop waiting for a producer. Produce yourself. — Marianne Williamson

On what high-performing companies should be striving to create: A great place for great people to do great work. — Marilyn C. Nelson

If you work in an urgent-only culture, the only solution is to make the right things urgent. — Seth Godin

The bottom line is down where it belongs – at the bottom. Far above it in importance are the infinite number of events that produce the profit or loss. — Paul Hawken

Take time to appreciate employees and they will reciprocate in a thousand ways. — Bob Nelson

Motivational Business Quotes

I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. But I made it! Don't sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them. — Madam C. J. Walker

One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again. — Abraham Maslow

Life is not a problem to be solved, but an experience to be had. — Alan Watts

If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. — Albert Einstein

People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success. — Norman Vincent Peale

The biggest risk is not taking any risk. — Mark Zuckerberg

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving. - Albert Einstein

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving. — Albert Einstein

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death. — Leonardo da Vinci

Poor people have big TV's. Rich people have big libraries. - Jim Rohn

Poor people have big TV's. Rich people have big libraries. — Jim Rohn

Motivate Athletes Quotes

Somewhere behind the athlete you've become and the hours of practice and the coaches who have pushed you is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back... play for her. — Mia Hamm

You have to believe in yourself when no one else does. - Serena Williams

You have to believe in yourself when no one else does. — Serena Williams

God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure. - Eric Liddell

God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure. — Eric Liddell

Champions aren't made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them-a desire, a dream, a vision. — Muhammad Ali

When I'd get tired and want to stop, I'd wonder what my next opponent was doing. I'd wonder if he was still working out. I'd tried to visualize him. When I could see him working, I'd start pushing myself. When I could see him in the shower, I'd push myself harder. — Dan Gable

It's not the will to win that matters-everyone has that. It's the will to prepare to win that matters. — Bear Bryant

Talent is never enough. With few exceptions the best players are the hardest workers. — Magic Johnson

When you fall, get right back up. Just keep going, keep pushing it. - Lindsey Vonn

When you fall, get right back up. Just keep going, keep pushing it. — Lindsey Vonn

Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. - Ross Perot

Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. — Ross Perot

You can motivate by fear, and you can motivate by reward. But both those methods are only temporary. The only lasting thing is self motivation. — Homer Rice

People Writing About Motivate Employees

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Read quotes by Frederick Herzberg

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Read quotes by Lee Iacocca

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quotes on leadership, family and teachers

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Read quotes by Richard Branson

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Read quotes by Herman Cain

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Read quotes by Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Khrushchev
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More Motivate Employees Quotes

You have to look at leadership through the eyes of the followers and you have to live the message. What I have learned is that people become motivated when you guide them to the source of their own power and when you make heroes out of employees who personify what you want to see in the organization. — Anita Roddick

I learned early on that if you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers, and the business will take care of itself. — Glen Bell

Show me an organization in which employees take ownership, and I will show you one that beats its competitors. — Michael Abrashoff

Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear. — George Adair

In order to attract and keep superior staff, I paid wages and bonuses well above the market rate. This actually saved money because my employees were far more productive than average. — Edward O. Thorp

If the employees come first, then they're happy. A motivated employee treats the customer well. The customer is happy so they keep coming back, which pleases the shareholders. It's not one of the enduring green mysteries of all time, it is just the way it works. — Herb Kelleher

Employees who are controlled cannot respond caringly, you need superior knowledge and real leadership, not management. Because of this we specifically developed a selection process for leaders; we don't hire managers. — Horst Schulze

For a company to excel, employees must be reassured that self-interest, not the company's, is their foremost priority. We believe an employee who puts himself first will be motivated to perform. — Ricardo Semler

The basic idea that incentives can be used to motivate behavior is a powerful one. It works for employees, and it has a clear place in parenting, as anyone who has tried to potty-train a recalcitrant toddler with sticker rewards knows. — Emily Oster

Work hard at work worth doing. — Theodore Roosevelt

Customer service is just a day-in, day-out ongoing, never-ending, unremitting, persevering, compassionate, type of activity. — Leon Gorman

Just as important, we need a new dedication to opening avenues for employee participation and motivation through profit-sharing and innovative programs of job enrichment. — Charles H. Percy

It's for management to enthuse & motivate employees towards excellence in service; the profit incentive doesn't last — Phil Harding

Some entrepreneurs have a bad habit of taking personal credit for all improvements and innovations at their startups. If you penalize or ignore employee initiatives, you can be certain that they won't be repeated, and motivation for more conventional performance will suffer. — Martin Zwilling

When a manager openly expresses his faith in an employee's skill, he doesn't just improve mood and motivation; he actually improves their likelihood of succeeding. — Shawn Achor

Motivated employees are crucial to a company's success. — Anne Rice

Engaging in social business is beneficial to a company because it leverages on business competencies to address social issues, involves one-time investment with sustainable results, and produces other positive effects such as employee motivation and improved organizational culture. — Muhammad Yunus

An employee's motivation is a direct result of the sum of interactions with his or her manager. — Bob Nelson

Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that's so important that it supersedes everyone's personal ambition. — Ben Horowitz

Without a compelling cause, our employees are just putting in time. Their minds might be engaged, but their hearts are not. Meaning precedes motivation. — Lee J. Colan

If a student takes a Stanford computer class and a Princeton business class, it shows they are motivated and have skills. We know it has helped employees get better jobs. — Daphne Koller

Money is not the only thing that motivates employees. It's about making them happy. — Barbara Corcoran

The best motivation for anyone-including employees-is to hear or see our name as often and in as many places as possible. Our name is the most potent sound we can hear and see. If you want to motivate someone put their name up in lights and/or sing it from the rooftops! — Vicki Donlan

A strong player, which has the sufficient critical mass, can withhold pressure better and create a more stable environment that benefits shareholders as well as employees. — Lakshmi Mittal

The profit motive is not only fundamental to our ability to reward shareholders and pay employees; it's fundamental to excellent journalism. Far from corrupting the craft, profits enhance it. Expansion drives diversity and diversity protects and strengthens our craft. — Lachlan Murdoch

Motivate them, train them, care about them and make winners out of them...we know that if we treat our employees correctly, they'll treat the customers right. And if customers are treated right, they'll come back. — J. Marriot Jr.

Exporting Church employees to Latin America masks a universal and unconscious fear of a new Church. North and South American authorities, differently motivated but equally fearful, become accomplices in maintaining a clerical and irrelevant Church. Sacralizing employees and property, this Church becomes progressively more blind to the possibilities of Sacralizing person and community. — Ivan Illich

Everyone, you know, during crises times, is much more focused on, okay, how do we get the boat completely seaworthy, sailing along well, and everything going well? And so as long as you're communicating how the general strategy of the company and how the work they can do to add to that and to make that more successful and the thing that they can contribute to that, that is generally very motivating for employees in crisis times. — Reid Hoffman

If it annoys you when team members ask about their next promotion or talk about other job opportunities in the industry, you have motivational problems in the making. You need to build a habit of proactively seeking employee interests and suggesting follow-up steps. — Martin Zwilling

The common wisdom is that ... managers have to learn to motivate people. Nonsense. Employees bring their own motivation. — Tom Peters

What do you really believe makes a difference in the company? For me it's really clear. It's about customers and employees. Everything else follows. If you take care of your customers and you have motivated employees, everything else follows. — Anne M. Mulcahy

I am very confident that we will be able to convince all the stakeholders - the shareholders, the governments and the employees, that this is in their best interests. — Lakshmi Mittal

Motivate them, train them, care about them and make winners out of them. We know if we treat our employees right, they'll treat the customers right. And if customers are treated right, they'll come back. — J. W. "Bill" Marriott, Jr.

Industry suffers from the managerial dogma that for the sake of stability and continuity, the company should be independent of the competence of individual employees. — Edsger Dijkstra

I think when people say they dread going into work on Monday morning, it's because they know they are leaving a piece of themselves at home. Why not see what happens when you challenge your employees to bring all of their talents to their job and reward them not for doing it just like everyone else, but for pushing the envelope, being adventurous, creative, and open-minded, and trying new things? — Tony Hsieh

In my organizations I don't have employees; I have teammates. Yes, I do pay people and offer them benefits. But people don't work for me. They work with me. We are working together to fulfill the vision. Without them, I cannot succeed. Without me, they cannot succeed. We're a team. We reach our goals together. We need each other. If we didn't, then one of us is in the wrong place. — John C. Maxwell

Typical pay increases are not enough to motivate employees, but they are enough to irritate them. … Even when companies create seemingly significant pay differentiation between low and high performers, the actual cash increase is insufficient to sustain performance – or it drives the wrong behaviors. … Effective management is a system, not a pay plan. The mistake is that companies try to solve all their problems with pay. — Jeffrey Pfeffer

Companies, however unintentionally, choke the motivation out of their employees. — Dan Ariely

If employees need to stay late in order to curry favor with the boss, what motivation do they have to get work done during normal business hours? After all, they can put in the requisite 'face time' whether they are surfing the Internet or analyzing customer data. — Robert Pozen

They say first impressions mean everything, so we make sure new employees went home smiling. — Cliff Lerner

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