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04 Jul 09 5 Tips To Motivate Your Team

Increasing productivity means keeping the people you manage motivated to stay positive and accomplish their goals in a timely fashion.  The perfect employee team is a cohesive unit with a good morale about wanting to accomplish tasks quickly, and to the best of their abilities.  Sometimes, especially during an economic recession like this, it’s hard to keep your people properly motivated, and that’s bad for them and for the work that needs to be done.  A team with low morale is unlikely to meet deadlines on target, or is more likely to produce sub-par work.  You’ll find motivating your team is a constant battle, but one that you need to win, and in doing so remember these tips:

  1. Communication
  2. Involvement
  3. Setting Goals
  4. Manage Poor Performances
  5. Celebrating Performances

Communication is an essential element to any employee team, as it’s the most important aspect of working together to complete a project.  Keep communication channels open through team meetings, email, and conference calls.  This way everyone’s voice is heard, and nobody will feel as though they can’t get through if something is frustrating them.  Proper support will help that morale stay on the up.

Involve everyone as much as possible with every aspect of the project.  Listen to your team, and let them communicate ideas and suggestions into the development of your projects.  This way they stay motivated to always strive to be successful, as they know you’ll listen to their ideas for innovations.

Set lofty goals that your team can be proud to shoot for.  Don’t set them ridiculously high obviously, but find a comfortable middle ground above the standard, but not impossible to achieve.  This way you’re keeping your team motivated to be better and better, but not overworking them to the point they lose the faith.

Manage your poorer performers.  Not everyone on your team can excel like you would want them to, and some people will turn in a substandard performance from time to time.  But that’s where you take the time to personally manage them.  Work with them to help resolve any issues reflected in their performance, this way you can get them going on producing the quality of work you want them too, and their attitude will get better as they receive the help they need to achieve the goals you set.

And finally, celebrating individual and team achievement is crucial.  One of the oldest archetypes throughout nature, is doing work for a reward.  Yes your team receives a paycheck for their effort, yes technically this is their reward for their hard work, but that’s no reason not to throw in a thank you here and there.  Recognize your top performers, and make sure to congratulate your team when they work together the way you would like them to, as this will keep them upbeat, and motivated to keep your compliments true to their ability.

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