How do I motivate my team?

Motivation is required mainly in two important situations, mentioned below.

1. When they lack momentum
2. When they face hurdles.

They could lack momentum because of office politics, micromanagement, or don’t show much improvement.

They could face hurdles when they experience stiff competition, have personal life problems, tight schedules, or high work pressure.

It’s a really complex job to decode the reason as human brains are highly complex. Thus, following the below-mentioned measures can help anyone eliminate these hurdles and help the team to gain momentum. The pointers suggest an outside-in approach, that helps to address various reasons and bad practices- which are to be avoided, gradually boosting the team’s performance and motivation.

• Talking with the team. Talking to team and understanding the team well with genuine interest helps a lot. Most of the time, the team just wanted someone to hear them, and you be it. Managers or leaders should be more empathetic and sympathetic towards the team.
• Avoid micromanagement. Make the team own the program or job with clear deadlines and goals.
• What they do outside of the office is none of your business unless it affects the security or HR policies of the company.
• You hire a smart person not to tell him what to do, but to learn from him what can you do. Just remember.
• Give your team a sense of responsibility. Don’t act like you are the one who’s responsible and you are just getting the job done. Instead, act like you are transferring or giving responsibility to them.
• Don’t play politics. Of course, its a lot of content. But, important kinds of stuff like- stealing credits, gossips, not being transparent, talking different to different people, talking at back, insulting, criticizing and all such can be avoided.
• Don’t get into too many details of employees’ work- like details to the amount of work done or progress every single day or personal works. Be happy as long as it is delivered on time. Everyone has their own working style. They will be best at it and never force your style of working on them. If it's not delivered well or if you find lacking productivity, don’t jump into conclusions. Instead, listen them out and understand their situations. A story on the next point will help.
• Based on a true story. Once a leader of a company was walking by HR bay at his office. He heard the HR screaming at the woman who was crying. HR was screaming at her for not being productive over a month. He stopped the quarrel and took the woman out and genuinely asked her what was going on. She opened up saying, she lost her husband very recently. Her finance and family is totally wrecked. She was going through a depression. But HR didn’t care anything about it. She was just screaming at her. How the hell one can be productive despite having so many personal problems? It’s ridiculous not to understand and expect results during plight. Some wish not to open up and don’t push them to a place where they open up, it's embarrassing for them. We don’t know what kind of problems one is going through, just BE KIND. Later, the HR was fired and she was granted a leave of month. She came back and showed super improvements. Sometimes, all they need is ‘Small act of kindness’ remember this.
• Criticize privately, appreciate publicly.
• Appreciate real efforts, with words, mails, and awards. Don’t appreciate each and every act. Be realistic, appreciate things which need to be appreciated. Same time, be careful you don’t appreciate team too much.
• Give the necessary training or at least guidance to team. Don’t expect them to learn something totally new which is out of their stream and implement it unless it’s a startup or the role demands it. Conduct frequent knowledge sharing sessions and fetch them access to various learning sites. Lead them to collaborate with the company’s social media platforms. If you don’t have one, invest to build one, suitable for big companies with 1000+ employees and various business divisions.
• Stay with the team when the team is facing hurdles. Don’t hideaway. Stand in front and lead them.
• When they fail, when they learn, a team leader should take the blame.
• When they win, give all credits to them and stand back and just watch.
• Listen to them. Understand their thoughts, problems, ideas, suggestions, or whatever. They could be worth it or not. If its worth, try to put them into action. If not, talk them with empathy so that they feel that at least their words are treated with respect and importance and make them understand why it won’t work politely so that they don’t get offended.
• Empower them with roles and responsibilities.
• Make sure they are well paid and deserving of it. It’s ridiculous to pay the same or few pennies extra to the most hardworking/smartest person compared to someone who’s least motivated or productive. Obviously, we all work for money too right?
• Treat them the way you wanted to be treated by them.
• Understand their personal life goals, career interests, and allocate work accordingly. You may get the job done by forcing, but remember you will very soon lose them too. It's like investing in companies who earn a lot of profits but don’t innovate much to compete in the market. Your investments may gain profit right now, but definitely not in the future.
• Arrange leadership talks, communicate to the lowest of team the business vision, plans, or goals.
• Conduct a meeting once in a month, just to understand how things are going and for genuine feedback.
• If made a mistake, or received bad feedback, make sure the concerned accepts it genuinely and works on it to change it. Be the change you wish to want to see in this world. This is the mantra for feedbacks givers as well as feedback takers.
• Treat your employees same as you treat your clients. Your clients are not assets of your company, but your trained, skilled, experienced, loyal employees are! Once you lose them you are zero and clients jump.

Bringing all together:

This article not just talks about how to boost motivation, but also to cut off the factors or practices that may result in lack of motivation. Motivation is not about awards or salary. Most people quit jobs because of poor leadership and treatment. Thus, following all these measures will make sure the team doesn’t lose momentum because of various reasons, ensuring integrity and responsibility. Motivation doesn’t make any sense by addressing requirements when team is happy and successful. It's a daily routine, in various ways and perspectives. Trying to avoid various root causes or simply standing with them during tough times, helps a lot!

Sairam.