In any business over a period of time, motivation levels within the team wax and wane. However, you need the business working at its optimum consistently, and can’t afford to have team members taking their foot off the accelerator, becoming a dead weight, or even worse- becoming toxic.
As a leader, you need to realise where you might be inadvertently damaging your team’s motivation.
Once you know the mistakes you are making, you can then work to successfully motivate your staff in the long-term.
Poor communication
Nothing frustrates a team member more than poor communication from ‘above’. Tasks get needlessly duplicated and people’s time is wasted when there is a failure of communication and job allocation.
Information doesn’t get circulated and instead stagnates in dead ends, and good ideas struggle to get off the ground without a united team effort.
People’s responsibilities get confused, power struggles occur, and rumours often circulate within a team which lacks clear direction and focus.
Tip: Communicate relevant information to all parties as a matter of routine. Utilise task management software such as Asana or your own in-house system to eliminate task duplication and keep track of progress.
Give regular updates to your team about strategy and goals to keep the team in a state of forward momentum.
This communication is particularly important when you are managing teams remotely, as your communication skills need to be well honed in order to keep the team running as a highly functional whole.
Failing to listen and challenge
Communication goes both ways, and nothing will stifle motivation more quickly than an authoritarian attitude that doesn’t make the most of individual talents and skills within the team.
Those employees who are listened to and challenged tend to flourish, while those who are not are firmly at the other end of the spectrum.
Suggestion: As a leader, make sure you are listening to the ideas of your team members. Make a point of being open to ideas and actioning good ones.
Encourage creativity of ideas and be generous handing out credit and praise to those who get involved. Challenge your employees to keep them motivated.
Wasting people’s time
There is nothing more frustrating for a dedicated team member than being called away from a vital project to sit in on a meeting where nothing of great importance is said.
The same goes for being cc’d on endless email exchanges that aren’t directly relevant and simply waste time better spent elsewhere.
Communication within a team is vital, and good leaders have the ability to strike the balance between keeping the team informed and bogging them down with extraneous information.
Suggestion: When it comes to scheduling meetings and cc’ing people in on email exchanges, keep in mind whether the information being imparted is really of any benefit to them and to the business.
When you do call meetings, deal with the general information that applies to everyone first and then move onto specific projects- allowing anyone who isn’t involved or are involved in more pressing business to leave the meeting early.
Failing to explain the ‘Why’
When you make a decision- whether it’s to pull someone off a project, change a strategy or even let someone in the team go, it’s crucial that you explain your actions.
Don’t get bound in the old paradigm of ‘I’m the boss, you don’t need to know why’; that mindset is old-fashioned and has the effect of flushing loyalty and motivation away.
As human beings in today’s connected world we need to understand the reasons behind why decisions are made.
By explaining your actions in the wider scheme of where the team and business is headed, you have provided the ‘Why’ your employees need to keep motivated towards a common goal.
Keeping the dead weight
When you retain a poor performing team member, you not only undermine business performance, but also de-motivate your other employees by demonstrating to them that they actually don’t need to work as hard as they do to keep their jobs.
In their rationale, ‘Bob’ is getting away with doing very little for the same salary, so why shouldn’t they? Motivation plummets when employees identify favouritism or unfairness from leaders towards other members of staff.
Additionally, when it comes to negative or ‘toxic’ employees, inaction from you as a leader both allows the negativity to spread unchecked amongst your team, as well as showing the team that negativity and toxic talk is tolerated against management.
Suggestion: Act when team members are not meeting your standards. Discuss with the employee to fix the problem where possible, then implement any necessary actions.
Explain to your team what has happened in order to steady the ship and get the team back on track.
Looking carefully at suggestions you’ll realise that every single one of them boils back down to your power to communicate with your team.
If you keep the lines of communication open and act in a decisive manner when the team starts to show signs of wear and tear, then your team will remain in a stable, motivated and successful state.
Until next time,
Julia
