Edit: I was right, this article is simply a content marketing piece.

My full analysis is below:

Let's look at their list.

1. Ask them ‘how motivated are you’ before the meeting

Only possible in organizations with amazingly high trust. If people have an inkling of a fear to lose their jobs, this won't work. Otherwise it would work because it will add some self-reflection to the both of you. I think the employee should also ask it back to the manager! The reason: being self reflective on each other's motivation allows you to understand it and influence it for being more productive in a way that you feel happy about.

2. Start with a check-in about their general well-being

This a variant of #1, this shouldn't be a different point.

3. Provide personalized feedback

This also has the "requires super non-toxic" working culture requirement. The idea works though, I think self-determination theory explains it quite will in their "competence" part.

4. Discuss the performance blockers and challenges

should be lumped together with 3, it's part of feedback or the feedback is part of this discussion.

5. Follow up on previous action items

This improves reliability. I think this works in both toxic and non-toxic cultures.

6. Discuss career growth

Anecdata: in my case I left a job because they offered me the position of backend developer after being a freelance full-stack developer for 3 months. I like full-stack and front-end if you can't figure that out after 3 months, then you haven't been paying attention and you don't care about me. In hindsight I was right.

7. Be their mentor

This is also the fastest way to demotivate someone if the mentor doesn't fit or is a bad mentor. I have both had good and bad mentors in my life. As with anything social, it's an amplifier, what the sign of that amplifier is depends on the relationship you have with those people.

8. Make them feel valued

#5 should be in this one as well.

9. Accountability matters

Yea this is called healthy collaboration (FYI: they mean the manager must be accountable). It's good to say it though! Despite it being so simple, one could forget it. A non-toxic work culture is required.

10. Recognition is important

Well yes, rewarding fairly is super important. Not only is it important for extrinsic motivation but if you're crossing the sense of justice with an employee, then you're screwing with intrinsic motivation as well! I wonder why the article didn't say that. We all know that if someone feels not being fairly judged they start to rebel either covertly or overtly. I had this a lot in high school and I'm sure it wouldn't be any different in the workplace, especially when I read all the HN comments that contain the phrase "butts on seats".

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In conclusion: this article is mediocre. By skimming it I pointed to some structural issues it had. Moreover, most tips require a non-toxic work environment.

This should be actively stated as such! Because I think in some cases it's simply not possible, some places are so financially tight that based on that you can simply deduce it's going to be a lot of stress to work there for anyone.

Nevertheless, I think tip #5 while basic is really valuable since it's a tip that could always be implemented to quite a high degree. Moreover, the tips themselves are important to be stated and none of the tips were wrong. In my opinion, a subtle wrong tip would be: always smile to your employee! They need to feel your positivity. <-- That's wrong because while positivity is important, so is vulnerability at times and this tip destroys it. They never erred like that.

And despite giving it perhaps such a "harsh" conclusion, I do still think the article has value. I simply don't think there's any unique value that someone like Simon Sinek wouldn't be able to give you in a more clear and coherent manner.

After reading this, I feel like I could've written a better article and I suspect this is simply a piece of content marketing for the company.

If so, then I dare the people of peoplebox.ai to hire me. I dare to put the money where my mouth is. I think I could do better. (I think a lot of people on HN could do better for that matter. But I think it'd be actually fun :P)