Top tips to motivate your team

When it comes to motivation, do we start with relationships or results?

CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on Management Today

Is your team motivated, working at their best for themselves and the company?

Do you know how to get your workers to perform at the peak of their ability, as part of a well-functioning machine and reaching their targets? To do this, and ensure put your organisation in the best position for success, you need to know when to reward your staff and when to deliver firm feedback. An understanding of which side of the line your management style typically falls is the best place to start, before figuring out how to motivate your employees.

Rather than feeling as though you must motivate each individual, the manager should create an environment which facilities self-responsibility; this is especially the case since the pandemic now that flexible working has become the norm. Granted this may seem more difficult to achieve over Zoom, so how do we go about it?

Your relationships are vital. Focus less on task achievement and more on creating genuine connections. This will help build psychological safety among your team and a willingness to contribute. Here are four tips to help you achieve this.

1. Collaboration

Create opportunities for your team to work together, even virtually, to share ideas and find solutions to their daily work challenges. Have conversations on both your individual and team goals, in which you are the conductor of the discussion rather than the main player. 

2. Let people share their ideas

There will always be some members of the team who speak more than others – but the loudest people do not always have the best ideas. Cultivate situations where everyone feels that they can contribute by dividing your team into smaller groups or breakout rooms, each with clear and specific goals. In a group meeting, call people by name to make sure they are accountable and know you want everyone to be involved.

3. Games?

There are not many things worse than ‘forced fun’ – awkward team games and ‘ice-breakers’ at work. However, facilitating an environment where people can experiment, and have the freedom to follow a hunch or take a risk, will breed creativity and prevent your staff from feeling stifled. If your team enjoy what they are doing, more diverse and creative ideas will flow and, ultimately, better results will follow.

4. Taking pride

Make sure you celebrate wins before moving on to the next project or task. This will give worth to your projects and give your team opportunities to learn from success, as well as failure.

It is very important to understand the positive impact of what you’re doing at work, to feel rewarded and then invest even more going forward.