Leadership and management skills are not coded into our DNA. Even the best leaders must hone their skills over time with hard work. You can do this through study, research, experimentation, and sometimes… trial and error.
Even during the optimal times, keeping a motivated team is one of the greatest challenges. And no matter how good things are right now, every company will go through some hard times. During those tough times, you’ll question everything you knew about how to motivate your team as a leader.
Great leaders separate themselves by remaining the driving force of a motivated team. In this blog post, we’ll go over the types of motivation, how to keep happy employees, and different ways to achieve employee satisfaction.
What Actually Motivates Team Members?
Ask any team leader what motivates workers, and they will often create a list topped by “recognition of good work.” Sure, that makes sense. We all love praise. But have you talked to your team about what truly makes a positive impact on their motivation?
Their answers may be very surprising and certainly enlightening. Understanding both intrinsic motivation (internal drivers like personal goals and sense of purpose) and extrinsic motivation (external rewards like bonuses and recognition) is a crucial first step for a good leader.
A few years back, a couple of writers from Harvard Business Review conducted an extensive study about this subject. The results were revolutionary and changed the way that we see managers and leaders. The researchers had hundreds of employees complete journal entries at the end of each workday. In this entry, they were asked to judge whether it was a “Good Day” at work or a “Bad Day.”
The results were quite surprising.
The Biggest Component of a “Good Day” at Work Is Progress Made in Meaningful Work
I’ve been a leadership coach for over 25 years, so knowing how to motivate your team as a leader was in my job description. When I started coaching high-level leaders and managers, my main coaching style focused on improving people skills. The reason was simple: people who work for you will always do a better job if there is a high level of trust and respect between each other and between them and the leader. A good leader who builds a high level of trust tends to have a more productive workforce and a positive work environment.
The HBR study took this to a much higher level. It explained why this coaching style works.
The “Good Workdays” most often included making progress in meaningful work. In contrast, “Bad Workdays” were those where the team member feels like they experienced setbacks. The happiness of the team members wasn’t related to the success of a meaningful project — just progress toward desired results. When people are moving toward a meaningful goal, they are happier than when they experience a setback. This sense of progress contributes to job satisfaction and keeps energy levels high.
How Managers Can Help Team Members Progress in Their Meaningful Work
The study also mentioned additional items that led to “progress” or “setbacks.” These are things that came mostly from the leader of the group or the other members of the group. Items related to the project or the meaningful work itself were listed as either a “Catalyst” or an “Inhibitor.”
A Catalyst would be any external thing that led to more progress on the project. An Inhibitor was any external thing that made the project harder. These would include adequate resources to do the job or support from other team members, which are essential for a healthy work environment.
The final item that either led to happiness was “Nourishers” versus “Toxins.” Nourishers included praise or positive comments about the work of the team member. Toxins included anything negative aimed at the team member.
To make this whole thing really simple, if you want to motivate your team, you want to encourage positive things related to the meaningful work and the person. You also want to diminish the negative things that can lead to a setback for the project and the team member. This approach is one of the best ways to ensure a motivated workforce.
Examples of How to Keep People Motivated in a “Normal” Time
If your team thinks that the work they do is insignificant, morale will always be a challenge.
For instance, when I was in high school, I worked at a fast-food restaurant. Serving fried chicken seemed pretty insignificant.
However, the store I worked in had scored 100% on the last five “secret shopper” visits. Our boss told us that we had tied the longest-running 100% results in the region. If we scored just one more, we would break the record. He worked out a trade with the movie theater in the mall to reward the entire team with a movie night if we broke the record.
When the boss pinned the 100% secret-shopper report to the bulletin board, the whole crew applauded. He had turned a typically mundane activity into a team-building event that enhanced employee engagement and offered development opportunities.
The key to making work significant is to do two things. First, you have to establish mile markers along the way. Second, as a leader, you have to encourage the sharing of success stories within the group.
It is great when the boss praises an individual, but when coworkers do it spontaneously, the praise is magic. Sometimes it is as simple as saying, “I’m glad you told me about that. Would you mind sharing that with the group at the next staff meeting?” This promotes a supportive team environment and a sense of ownership.
How Do You Motivate Your Team During a Time of Change or Crisis?
The opposite of everything we just covered is true as well. Making progress in a project, solving a tough challenge, or completing a difficult task can add to a team member’s satisfaction. However, experiencing a setback can be demoralizing. It often takes more positives to overcome even a single negative.
“Negative events generally have a greater effect on people’s emotions, perceptions, and motivation than positive ones, and nothing is more demotivating than a setback — the most prominent type of event on knowledge workers’ worst days.”
So, what happens when a series of negative setbacks are strung together? Keeping morale up can be more challenging, especially during difficult times.
Satisfaction Comes from Activities Like:
- Making progress at work
- Figuring something out
- Completion of difficult tasks
Luckily, difficult challenges are plentiful during a crisis.
Follow These 5 Steps to Motivate Your Team During a Crisis
1. Talk to Your Team Members One-On-One As Often as Possible
When your team members get discouraged, you as the leader have a powerful role in helping them stay focused. Sometimes it is just a simple positive affirmation like, “I know what you are required to do is hard, but I know you will figure it out.” However, when morale is low and stress is high, every day without a positive interaction with the leader has the potential to lead to a “Bad Workday.”
2. Set Mini-Goal Mile Markers
Break your big goals and projects into bite-sized pieces. As the team accomplishes these mini-goals, praise them. If a marathon only had a start and a finish, most people would quit very quickly. Mile markers are important to morale and are an effective way to keep motivation high.
For instance, one of my big company goals is to quadruple the size of our company in 10 years. (That’s a marathon.) But we also set a bunch of Mini-Goals along the way. We created a bonus structure for our marketing team based on the number of new in-bound customer requests we get each week.
So we keep track of every new inbound request and keep a running average posted in the office. Every time that average increases by another five requests per week, the team gets another bonus. Morale skyrockets because each marketing team member knows they played a part.
We created something similar for our consultants based on repeat business. If they can increase the number of clients who re-buy from us, then we don’t need as many inbound requests from new customers to increase growth.
Those mini-mile-markers are critical — especially in a crisis!
3. Make Sure Your Team Has the Resources and Support They Need
I did a virtual meeting for a team a couple of days ago for a client who wanted to improve team communication. One of my client’s the team members was using a laptop so old that it didn’t have a camera or an internal microphone.
It was embarrassing for both the client and the participant. But it also made a good point in the meeting. The client was trying to improve communication without investing in the proper resources to help her team members.
How can you expect your team to function without the proper tools? Providing the right resources is essential for maintaining a positive work environment.
4. Try to Minimize the Setbacks as Best You Can
In my company, I have created a ton of redudencies. Every process, no matter how well oiled, will have challenges.
A few years ago, I hired a new salesmanager. After a couple of weeks, he came into my office and said, “Holy cow! Why is my email and phone getting bombarded every time my team gets a Request for a Proposal?”
He seemed kind of irritated. I replied back by saying, “Well, those notifications are a result of the School of Hard Knocks. When a potential client requests information, you and I get the request immediately via email. A copy of the email goes to the consultant on duty. Just in case the consultant is away from his or her desk, the system also sends each of us a text to our cellphones. And a notification also goes to our Slack channel notifying the entire sales team.
“Since you and I are in all of those systems, we may get the same notification many times. Yes, it is annoying at times, but it also makes sure that if a part of the system breaks, the potential client still gets a quick follow up.”
He was even more irritated by my answer. However, a few weeks ago, AWS had a huge meltdown, and for a couple of weeks, none of the notifications via text or through Slack got delivered. They just stopped.
If we didn’t also still have the original email system in place, we wouldn’t have even known there was a problem. We would have just been wondering why sales had dropped off so quickly.
5. Be the Motivating Force in Your Team
Realize that your team will be deflated by things that are outside of your control. You as the leader can motivate your team by showing how even the negative things that happen can be either a learning experience or an opportunity for growth. This positive attitude can make a significant impact on team morale and productivity.
Now, go motivate your team!
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