Hey guys, it's Hanna!
So as you probably already know, I'm a dancer and I dance in a team. It is important to keep your team motivated and here a few tips on how to do that!
☮ Discuss the benefits of success. If you want your team to be motivated, then you have to explain the positive outcomes of achieving the objective. By incorporating this team motivating step, you are putting the control over their future compensation or other rewards into their own hands. Your team should see how their success would benefit not only the company, but also each individual team member. If you really want to motivate them, then you have to make your goals as concrete as possible so they can feel a tangible reward.
☮ Keep your team interested. Build a sense of curiosity within your team members' mindsets so that that they are interested enough to want to achieve the goals you expect. By doing this, your team members will want to learn more. This can be achieved if you understand what excites or interests your team members. Get to know what matters most to the members as a team and as individuals. If you keep things interesting and exciting by mentioning concrete goals, changes, and improvements, they will want to keep working.
☮ Set realistic goals. Know what your team is capable of and set a goal that they can actually reach. It's good to be ambitious when setting goals, but if you make them so challenging that your team is destined to fail, then everyone will only feel discouraged. Establish a realistic goal and provide a tool that shows their progress as they get closer to attaining that goal. Setting micro-goals along the way is also a great way to ensure success, so your team doesn't feel like it's all or nothing.
☮ Create some friendly competition. Create a competitive environment that will inspire your team members to achieve their goals. Have small competitions with tangible rewards, even if it's just a free lunch, to get people excited about working their hardest. This can help your team exceed its own expectations, as long as you make the guidelines clear and make sure that people are getting along.
☮ Put your team members in control of their own destiny when instilling team motivation. You can have an objective that needs to be met, but passing that sense of control over each of your team members will give them the feeling that achieving the goal is something they want done. If they just feel like you're barking orders at them and that they're checking them off one by one, then they'll feel like they have no initiative or control over the situation.
☮ Design a tool for recognition when motivating your team. By doing this, team members know that their individual efforts will be noticed and not lost as a team effort. This will inspire all members to do their share. If members know that they will only be rewarded and recognized as a team, they may be more inclined to hide behind the efforts of others. This, in turn, may cause resentment amongst those who did all the work.
☮ Get the team members to work together. Establish a plan of action that requires cooperation between team members so that they are forced to work together to achieve that goal. If every team member is just working individually, then there may not be as much team unity or cohesiveness. No individual can make the team succeed, and optimal success comes from having all of the members of the team work together as well as they possibly can.
☮ Get to know each member of your team. Getting to know each member of the team and having an idea of what makes each person tick can go a long way in helping you motivate the team. If you have a sense of each person individually, you can see that some people are more visual learners, some are better at accepting criticism than others, some are born leaders, and that others work best under the guidance of more experienced team members. Taking the time to see each person as an individual will really make a difference in the team efforts you'll see.
☮ Recognize the members of your team. If it's somebody's birthday, or someone just got married or had a baby, make them feel special. Send an email. Bring in a cake. Give him or her a silly card -- do whatever is appropriate for the occasion, as long as you are respecting that person's privacy. It's important to make each member of the team feel important and like they are wanted and needed.
☮ Be friendly…but not too friendly. It's important to be on friendly terms with your team members, to make small talk, and to make them feel wanted and cared for, but you don't want to cross too far over that line. If you end up being BFF with your team members, then chances are that they won't listen to you or take you as seriously as they would if you maintained a respectable distance from them.
☮ Create social events outside of work. Motivate your team by not having everything be all about work, work, work. Have monthly happy hours to have the members of your team relax a bit. Have a Sunday softball league with interested team members. Have everyone in the team go out for lunch together every two weeks instead of everyone going their separate ways so people are more motivated to work hard because they'll know each other better.
☮ Create a comfortable environment. If things in the office are tense, impersonal, cold, and unfriendly, then yeah, your employees won't be as motivated as they would if they walk into the office feeling happy, safe, and warm. Okay, so some people will never love walking in to work, but you can do your best to make them like the experience as much as possible. Have treats at the office, windows that offer lots of sunlight, and a friendly, casual atmosphere where people feel comfortable.
☮ Keep things fresh and exciting. Though your job and your team's job may be pretty straightforward, try to mix things up as much as you can. Even if your team's job is really to write reports all day, see if you can find a way to be a bit more creative so they are not doing the same old thing every day, and so that they stay motivated and excited to be there. No matter what the task is, if your team members are doing the same thing 8 hours a day, every day, they are bound to get bored and to lose motivation.
☮ Stay positive. Maintain a positive outlook and a positive attitude as much as you can. Even if things aren't going well, keep your head up as much as you can, because positive -- and negative -- attitudes can be very contagious. If you keep up a positive attitude, the members of your team are sure to follow, and they will be more motivated for it. If everyone is down in the dumps, then they are guaranteed to get less work done.
☮ Be a good role model. If you really want to motivate your team, then you have to be a good role model and someone that each individual team member can look up to. You don't have to be perfect, but you should be hard working, reasonable, willing to communicate, and generally a smart, reliable employee. If you're not demonstrating the very traits you want your team to embody, then why would they follow suit?
I know that this is super long, but I hope it helps!
xoxo
-Hanna
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