How to make positively motivating your business team a daily event.
How to create a permanent positive environment for your employees
Here are 10 integrated methods that are proven to work. Naturally, there are other approaches that also work, but then this article would become a book and you would possibly never even have got to read it if this was any longer.
I give out of the box support along with traditional no nonsense help to top leaders in Global Business. In particular with Britain’s biggest company along with the worlds second biggest bank (so I have to try harder there). Some of what I have written to help you, you will recognise, elsewhere I hope it will be new and inspiring.
1. Be Personally Inspired
Question: If you are half asleep with boredom and you are trying to inspire and motivate someone to do something, what is the most likely result?
This No Brainier is actually one of the most obvious yet overlooked of all factors. Your excitement or lack of it has a huge impact on other people’s reactions. Take the following example. In school, how much did you learn from teachers who enjoyed and were inspired by the subjects they taught, compared to the ones who were more bored than the pupils? A curious aside to this is that sometimes bored teachers do wake up when it comes to other subjects. Then pupils learn plenty, but generally not about the original subject.
2. No Need To Over Use Fear
Fear is very tempting to use when you want to threaten someone. Particularly if the person you wish to motivate is annoying or upsetting you, because then you will want that person to be unhappy.
A good way to understand this is in terms of outcome. Whatever the focus is, tends to be the outcome. So if the focus is something you don’t want to happen, don’t be surprised when it becomes the outcome. Small children offer their own education service in this area by doing precisely what their parents have directly asked them not to do. Adults on the other hand are just more subtle in their disobedience.
Fear, however, is great as an alternative to something good. When use sparingly it can be a great motivator. Observe the efficiency of the Inland Revenue or IRS when it comes to getting most people to pay their taxes correctly. In practice they harass people relatively little yet collect vast amounts of money.
3. Focus Beyond The Initial Gain
Big mistake potential exists here. Getting one urgent thing done rarely of itself solves significant anything in the long run. Yet the tendency to loose touch with the big picture is legion. The initial gain needs to be seen in context.
The reasoning here is simple, chances are you are going to wish to see your worker, team member, etc, motivated on some new subject in the future. If they think along the lines of “one last burst of energy and I can retire” you will have a hard time motivating those people in the future. You will get better long term results if those people are motivated to keep fulfilling a long term goal. Then short term goals are natural progressions that can be carried out in context with energy and enthusiasm.
4. Get Fulfilment From The Doing As Well As The Achieving
To continuously deliver great results over the long term will be difficult if you are basking in past glories. For many people or even civilisations that can be the beginning of the end.
If you like what you are doing the chances are you will want to do more of it. The objective here is to help the person or people you want to motivate to get greater job satisfaction out what they are doing or you want them to do. Even the “crappiest” of jobs becomes more satisfying when it is part of accomplishing a great challenge.
5. Lots Of Praise Is Very Cost Effective
Early motivational experiments showed that workers would perform better if you simply paid attention to them. But chances are you don’t have all day to do that, and praise is a great alternative.
Not only is it effective but is cheaper and a great way of retaining good staff. Appreciation of someone can often do more for their self esteem than a cash bonus.
The mistake that many people make is to combine praise with criticism in unhelpful combinations. To verge on the over simplistic notice the effect on you of:
You are great but you failed ultimately = de-motivating.
There is more development to do, but this is a success = motivating to do more next time.
6. Have A Clear Objective
Again obvious but easily overlooked. One of the most effective techniques you can ever use is to have someone repeat back to you what the objective is. People like to look smart and intelligent, this has the effect that when someone is asked “do you understand” the default answer is “yes”, even if the real answer is “no”.
Make your objective as clear as possible. If there is any potential for complication, write down what is agreed and give all the concerned parties a copy ASAP. For example, if you are having a meeting and can bring a laptop computer. Write down whatever is agreed and email it there and then. The temptation is to do it later. However, later often includes new points or objectives that were not originally agreed. No agreement causes de-motivation.