How do you motivate yourself and your team to stick to your business plan and overcome challenges?

Motivating a team to stay aligned with a business plan often starts with clear, meaningful goals. Goal Setting Theory underscores this—when goals are specific, challenging, and aligned with team values, they act as a compass for motivation. They energize focus, encourage persistence, and inspire creative problem-solving. For our team, we build motivation by celebrating progress, providing regular feedback, and fostering ownership over outcomes. Challenges become milestones for growth when paired with a clear vision.

Goal setting theory, while useful, can oversimplify human motivation by treating goals as the primary drivers of behavior. Goals can indeed direct attention and energize action, but they can also create tunnel vision, causing people to overlook broader opportunities. As Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman suggests, “We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.” True motivation involves a mix of intrinsic drives and external goals, ensuring a balance between focus and flexibility.

Since we have set a Budget every year in November-December for the following year, practice discipline in holding quarterly KPI evaluations, & having weekly meetings to review pending issues, the company has been able to implement goal specific strategies to match the market shifts. We are in the Multifamily Rental Business and it is very important, not only to keep up with market rents, but to have a very clear vision of the specific finances for each property, so the whole business strategy follows. Having specific and measurable goals based on the company needs makes us leaders better than just followers in an ever changing economic environment. We not only strive to be profitable, but to be the optimum choice for our clients.

Maria has a great perspective. In this fast paced environment today, I would highly recommend monthly check-ins on the KPIs. Additionally in setting your goals ensure they are connected to your purpose and vision. If the goals are not aligned here, your team members will likely be confused and not be as productive.

I completely agree with the points raised. I would add that goals must be positioned as steps toward the ultimate vision, they must be sequenced accordingly and both management / employees must see how much progress is being made to stay engaged. Stated differently, I would never set as a goal what should be happening in 5 years time. It is about what needs to happen now, considering where the firm is.

I agree with this. I would provide a slightly different lens to this though; as a team leader part of a wider organisation, I get the team define the team vision and purpose in the context of what it brings to the wider firm and aligned to the firm's vision and values. This helps to make it more tangible for employees and create better buy-in.

Your goals should align with your story. When people, teams and staff get involved in the story, they become invested in the success of the goal. It ensures they feel a part of the process and that they are contributing to an end goal that has them in mind. Every good story has its ups and downs and yet we know that everything will be ok in the end.

In overcoming challenges in addition to what Bev shares, the art of listening to your team is one of the most important skills you could possess. When you listen to their ideas and envoke a response from them without judgement, the power of the team will be realized. Often, I will simply as what can we do to overcome the issue and then let every one share their ideas. Most times, ideas build upon ideas and team provides solutions instead of you needing to state the solution.