Unmotivated Employees?  Might Be Your Fault
 The primary task of leaders is to take care of employees...to ensure their success,  so that they in turn can take care of our clients...our customers.  It's a major shift for a lot of leaders who still think that no one else can do anything without their intervention and oversight.  When you are intentional about taking care of employees you are going to beat the national statistics which indicate that only 30% of American workers are engaged and motivated to do a super job.  The rest are waiting for the next payday.  It's a tragic loss of productivity and you can be a hero if you can recover some of that loss.  Here is what you have to do.
1.  Make sure that only "can-do" job applicants are hired;  you want employees who are experienced at trying to overcome obstacles.  They may not always be successful but the point is they try.
2.  Teach.  Avoid being and enforcer.  Help people learn your expectations.   John Maxwell talks about how it is that people learn what you want them to do:  explain the behavior to them;  let them watch you do it; watch them while they do it; have them teach it to someone else.  Be prepared to repeat the instructions; repeat the learning exercise.  Learning doesn't happen immediately, but eventually.
3.  You are a teacher but also be a learner.  Underscore the importance of learning by getting involved in your own personal improvement project...and tell others about what you are doing.  Learning is not only something we do after we have made a mistake; it's integrated into our daily work life.
4.  Be accountable for your own performance and the performance of those who work for you.  If you expect others to be accountable, demonstrate it yourself.  When something goes wrong, face honestly your own role in the situation before pointing the finger at others.  
5.  Get to know your employees as persons.  Listen to what bothers them.  Learn about what they are good at.  Be supportive when they are involved in personal stress;  when they are stressed, it's your problem too.  
6.  Say "thank you...nice job".  Put yourself on a quota of at least 3 "thank yous" every day.  If  you are paying attention, it wont be hard; lots of your employees are doing wonderful things.
7.  Be determined.  Your strategy of taking care of employees will not always look like it's working.  Keep on!   Support from above is helpful but it is not essential.  Eventually, everyone will see that you have been a successful leader because your employees are accomplishing beyond what anyone would have expected.  
Are 70% of your employees waiting for pay day?  Without realizing it, the problem could be YOU.  
Don't get discouraged; you can learn to be a successful leader.  Most of us learned a lot by facing our mistakes and learning from them.  The seven steps above can get you back on track.