A leader’s influence motivates and encourages. A manager plans organize, assigns and follows-up.
Good leaders want to ensure their team is engaged in their work, feeling satisfied, and performing at their personal best. Your employees are a valuable asset, and managing them well is one of your most critical business challenges. But for those team members who seem to be lagging behind, what can a concerned leader do to help improve employees’ performance? Once leaders recognize who these team members are, they want to re-engage them as quickly as possible in order to keep the team moving forward. Here are some effective ways to motivate employees.
Recognize a Job Well Done
Appreciation is a fundamental human need. Recognition creates an emotional connection between employer and employee – a critical piece of employee engagement – and fulfills employee’s basic needs of esteem and belonging within a group. When employees and their work are valued, their satisfaction and productivity rise, and they are motivated to maintain or improve their good work.
Gamify your Most Important Tasks
Gamification should help increase productivity levels by increasing the emotional connection everyone has with their role, it should make employers care about what they do each day and strive for continual improvement. It might not be the best solution for every business, but if you feel productivity slipping at your organization, gamification might be the perfect solution to your productivity woes.
Focus on Intrinsic (NOT Extrinsic) Reward
The intrinsic rewards are strong predictors of retention. Employees with high levels of intrinsic rewards also become informal recruiters and marketers for their organization. The intrinsic rewards seem to create a strong, win/win form of motivation for both an organization and its employees – and one which suits the times. This type of motivation is focused on the shared desire that employees’ work makes an effective contribution to meaningful purposes so that it is performance-driven.
Give your Team Autonomy
Autonomy is not total independence – it’s a collective mindset that increases team performance. Great teams are like tribes. When teams behave like tribes, they increase their chances of success.
Figure Out what makes your Employees Tick
Employees are all different. Some are introverts, some are extroverts. Employees have different backgrounds, are at different stages in their lives, and are motivated by very different things. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is trying to force a one-size-fits-all solution to your diverse workforce. It is better to set aside 30 minutes to get to know each person on your team on a personal level. Don’t just ask about career goals, but find out what motivates them outside of work.
Focus on the WHY
Having a strong ‘why’ behind your company’s mission will help motivate every action your team takes. Challenge your employees to identify the ‘why’ behind their most important task. This exercise helps clarify the reasoning behind their day-to-day activities and helps separate essential tasks from non-essential ones. Connect all their tasks with the ‘Big Why’ that underlies your company’s mission. This will serve as a major motivator in the long run.
Create an Awe-Inspiring Work Environment
Motivation and mood go hand in hand because your mood affects your energy, ability to concentrate, and overall sense of wellbeing. Employee motivation ideas that work, then you might want to invest in your work environment.
Champion Friendly Competition
Competition can be a great motivator but if you let get out of hand, the conflict will rise as you see morale and teamwork deteriorate. Decide to engage your team in some competition make sure it stays in the realm of fun and not cutthroat. The challenge is not to get your top performers to perform better, it is also to train them to pull up everyone around them and build a well-oiled machine.
Don’t Pit Employees against one another
Friendly competition can be a good motivator for your team. Things start to go awry when that competitive spirit morphs into a cutthroat culture of self-interest.
Lead with Vision
Employees need to know that all their efforts are driving towards something. They need to know that there’s a destination in sight. That’s where vision comes in. Make a visual reminder of your company’s roadmap.
Remember the Golden Rule
“If you want motivated employees—remember the Golden Rule,” she says. “Most managers/bosses were once employees. Remember all the things your boss did that drove you crazy/enraged you/made you quit? Don’t do them.”. According to Rieva Lesonsky, the CEO, President, and Founder at GroBiz Media remind us that we’d all do well to remember that most of us were once employees too.
Give your Employees Ownership in the Company
When employees feel a sense of ownership over their company and their work, they’re more likely to do their best. Ownership is also important because it gives employees a sense of autonomy. Employees will focus on what the company needs overall rather than just what’s required of them. That’s because they feel invested in the team’s success. Contrast that with employees who do what they’re told and nothing more, and you begin to grasp the true importance of an ownership culture.
Offer a Clear Path for Advancement
Careers’ advancement is one of the most important elements for employee satisfaction and retention at a company. In today’s economy, it’s essential to value “graduation” over retention. Because the growth of your business depends on the growth of the individuals at your company, it’s inevitable that people will grow out of their roles.
Create Stretch Goals
A stretch goal pushes people to continue performing. Stretch goals act as a motivational tool for employees. Best practices dictate an effective goal is both specific and challenging. Company goals give employees a better understanding of what they’re working towards, and how their job contributes to a greater cause. A stretch goal will inspire a new level of commitment, effort, and performance.
Break Big Goals into more Manageable Chunks
Even if everyone on your team can’t wait to tackle a massive new project, when the time comes to get to work, motivation can falter. This doesn’t mean employees don’t care about the project; it might just seem too aspirational—so big that employees can’t imagine completing it. Consider S.M.A.R.T goals the individual rungs on the ladder leading to your loftier goals. While S.M.A.R.T goals are in fact smart, the name is first and for most an acronym (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timeline) that tells you all the features your incremental goals should incorporate to get results.
Introduce Novelty
Innovations are based on the good ideas of individuals; therefore, it is very important to better understand the role that individuals and their personal characteristics play in innovative initiatives. Innovation in organizations includes the introduction not only of big ideas that significantly change existing practices but also of small, incremental improvements in coping with daily challenges at work.
Change Locations
Our brains get excited by new things, including new locations and surroundings. When we go to new places, everything about our lives seems new, including our creativity and passion for work. When your team gets excited about ideas generated during a free-form brainstorm, up the ante by challenging everyone to come up with ways to apply their innovative ideas to an existing company project.
Express Gratitude
Gratitude creates good feelings, cheerful memories, better self-esteem, feeling more relaxed and more optimistic. With employee appreciation, you’re not only boosting performance and engagement but the employee’s well-being and health.
Practice Transparency
Workplace transparency is proven to breed long-term success. Transparency creates trust between employers and employees, helps improve morale and lower job-related stress while increasing employee engagement and boosting performance.
Get in the Habit of Self-praise
Praise is one of the most powerful things a leader can offer their team. People who hold themselves in high esteem tend to be more optimistic about the future. As a team motivator, you can have a lot of influence on your colleagues. Make sure that you give off feel-good vibes by practicing self-praise. Effective praise will help you motivate your team. This improves their engagement and retention in the process, among other great benefits.
Celebrate Wins
Gratitude and appreciation can go far, but don’t forget to take the moment to celebrate your success. The celebration will motivate your team to reach goals and engage in challenging initiatives, it will help keep the positive vibes rolling into the next project.
We all know that happy employees are more likely to stay in the company. One of the key factors in running a successful business is knowing how to engage employees. Employee engagement is more than just knowing whether someone likes their job or not. Measuring employee engagement lets you know how committed they are to the business and its success. For an employee to be engaged, they are motivated to work hard towards a common goal that is in line with the company’s vision. Engage employees will have a clear view and understanding of the objectives of the work they are doing.
