We all know that motivation is a difficult and often cruel mistress. It comes and it goes, and sustaining it over the long term can be hard.
While struggling with our own levels of motivation can be tough, things become ever harder — and arguably more stressful — when we have to deal with the fluctuating motivation levels of our employees.
If we don’t keep our team motivated, productivity and morale both go down and so does our bottom line. That’s how important motivation is, and as Forbes shows, motivating your employees needs to be one of your top priorities as a leader.
The thing with motivation is that it’s all about understanding basic human behavior. In other words, understanding what makes us as human beings tick, and what compels us to take action with relish and gusto. If you can do that as a leader, you and your team will be onto a winner.
Let’s take a look at how great leaders motivate their employees, whether in-house or remote teams — and what you can learn from them.
Share Your Overriding Goal With Your Team
If your team is left in the dark where your company’s overriding goal is concerned, their motivation will drop off.
As Dan Waldschmidt points out, motivation goes up when our goal is important enough.
However, your team won’t know how important your overriding collective goal is until you share it with them.
This is a simple case of sharing your company’s vision with your whole team. Where is your company heading? What does it want to achieve and how can each team member play a role in its long-term success?
It’s key that you involve your team members and make them feel as though each contribution they’re making is unique and fundamental. Without their involvement, your business wouldn’t be able to reach its goal.
More than anything, you need to make sure that your company’s goal means something to your staff. If it doesn’t feel personal, if a team member can’t claim ownership of a goal, their motivation will take a hit.
It’s a good idea, in this case, to clearly define each team members’ individual goals; to highlight their responsibilities, and to show how their individual goals — from writing copy to creating social media content — ties into your company’s main, overriding goal.
Make Their Work Meaningful
In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell asserted after heavy research that there are 3 things people need from a job if they’re to perform at a high level: Autonomy, Complexity, and Meaning.
When work is meaningful, it means something to the person who is carrying it out. It gives them purpose and makes them feel as though they’re making a genuine difference, both to your business and to the world at large.
This is incredibly motivating. But how to make your team realize this?
In his book Give and Take, Adam Grant suggests having your team members meet some of the people they are serving. In other words, introduce your team to your customers to see exactly what impact their work is having on people.
Praise Them
“Uh, I hate being praised.”
Remember when your graphic designer said that?
Me neither.
That’s because no one hates praise.
Some of us might find it hard to take compliments, but none of us despise them.
Praise is an excellent motivator, and yet 40% of leaders admit they never give it. This is not a good thing, and in fact, these leaders are missing a massive trick.
As Joe Folkman and Joe Zenger, president and CEO of Zenger/Folkman wrote, most leaders “vastly underestimate the power and necessity of positive reinforcement.”
Praise makes your team feel valued, and it boosts their confidence and their competence. This is what great leaders have long recognized, and as such, they have no problem with giving positive reinforcement once it’s been earned.
Moreover, a 2015 survey has shown that 31% of employees whose leaders focused on just their weaknesses were 100% engaged in their work, while 67% of employees whose leaders praised their strengths were 100% engaged in their work.
Praise helps with motivation a lot. It can be a simple compliment, such as “you’re an awesome copywriter,” or “so glad we have you around.” These comments go a long way to making an employee feel good, and when an employee feels good they perform a whole lot better.
And think about it: If an employee literally doesn’t know how you feel about their performance, they’re hardly likely to repeat any of the risks they’ve taken in the past. They won’t have the motivation to take the risks.
Believe In Your Team
Do you believe in your employees? Do you trust them to do their jobs without interfering every five minutes?
When a leader constantly asks for updates, it shows a lack of trust.
It’s the same if a leader is constantly reminding a team member of what is required of them, or if they literally take over their workstation for five minutes to “show them how it’s done.”
Remember that you hired each team member for a reason — because you believed in them and their skills. If you want to increase the number of employees you have, making sure you’re careful with the type of people you are employing is very important. Their personalities can determine whether they’re motivated and productive or not. Using a service like crbdirect.org.uk can really help your company.
So that they’re motivated to perform at a consistently high level, you need to back off and let them carry out their duties with confidence. Accept that they can do this. Give them the space they need, and show them that you have every faith in their ability.
A leader who is always on someone’s back shows a lack of trust, and this diminishes confidence and motivation.
These are the things great leaders do to motivate their employees. They share their company’s overriding vision and goals with their team, before assigning meaningful tasks that tie into their company’s overall mission. They praise their team members once it’s been earned, and they have the utmost belief in their employees. They trust their team to do their job and to do it well.
Once you do all this too, it’s then a matter of making sure that you sustain your efforts so that your team’s motivation is sustained.
