A warm welcome to the team motivation tips section of the web site. On this page I list a number of tips and techniques for keeping your team highly motivated.
As managers we all occasionally feel that were not getting the best out of our teams. Perhaps it’s the middle of the summer and people are leaving early from work to catch the last of the day’s sunshine or maybe you’re just noticing a lack of drive from your team with some core projects missing deadlines.
(Photo Credit: Nono Fara)
It’s down to you to try and get them back on track. Get that super star team back. The team that you need in order to start getting the results and to start adding value back to your organisation.
Team Motivation Tips and Techniques
1. I think the first on the list should be to step back and take a look at yourself, are you treating your team the way you would want to be treated yourself?
2. Most people love the opportunity to learn so take a look at your budget and invest in some training and development. If the budget is a bit tight and you don’t have much room for instructor lead training courses then consider investing in some electronic, computer based training courses. These days with the advancements in sound and graphics they are often as good as the instructor lead courses.
3. Vary your team’s experiences. Speak to your team members and see if they like to mix up the tasks a bit that they each perform. This will enable them to step out of their comfort zone for a while and enable them to gain valuable new experiences.
4. Delegate some decision making to your team. Value your team’s intelligence. Most will have much knowledge and experience, so draw on that by picking their brains and letting them make some key decisions. Most people love to have the responsibility to make their own decisions.
5. This is a pretty obvious one but you may have overlooked it due to the stresses and strains of a typical working week… Make sure that the work tasks that you request from your team are meaningful. Meaningful work should energize them.
6. Split your team into two separate teams and then try and think of ways that the teams can compete against one another on work based tasks. Adding an element of competition can bring extraordinary productivity improvements.
7. Take a metric that you are keen to improve. Publish it on the company intranet for all to see and update it on a weekly basis naming team members that have helped to contribute towards any improvement.
8. Share your future vision with your team, gain buy in and then get all to help you to make a plan in order to realize the vision. When people are involved and have an understanding of what and why they’re doing something they’re likely to be more motivated.
9. Are there any tasks that your team members perform that you don’t fully understand? If so, ask them to arrange a meeting session where they teach the task to you and the rest of the team. This will a) give you knowledge of the tasks and b) give the team member chance to show off his or her knowledge and skills in relation to the task.
10. Create a blog on your company’s intranet system. Request your team members to post either daily or weekly blog entries. It will add transparency and visibility to your team’s efforts. It may also kick start your team into action as if they need to be doing stuff in order to write about it!
11. Listen to your team and act on what you hear. Have weekly team meetings were you all get together and weekly one-on-one sessions too. In the one-on-one sessions try and determine what drives each of your team members as individuals.
12. Try and make work projects and tasks into a bit of a game. Look up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification for more info.