How can you inspire your team to find purpose beyond financial incentives?

For most employees financial incentives are the lesser reason to join a startup or in fact any company these days. Usually they want purpose and values that fits their own, and yes, they want the option to grow and have a career. So, one of the crucial capabilities of a founder is to share the story of their why, their purpose and their values. Make it as compelling as possible to find and keep the right people. Be a good storyteller. Excite them and make them feel part of something bigger. That also helps when looking for investors, by the way.

If you want an inspired team you want to involve them. Involvement starts with transparency about where your company / startup is right now, and where you want it to be. It does not stop here, though. You bring your team in to the process of finding out how achieve the goals. You will notice a different kind of buy-in for any action to be taken. This is because your team worked out the how to get there with you, and thus owns the process and its results. As a startup founder you have an idea and you want to push that idea forward. You have hired your team to support you. Involving them, listening to their input, and using their expertise will help you manage your workload, grow your business, and last but not least: staying sane.

Many startups do not have the luxury to pay their employees as competitively as companies such as Google and Microsoft. One way Array Insights' executive team inspires our employees is to highlight the positive impact of patient advocacy organizations - our customers and partners. By sharing success stories, we can reinforce the difference our team's work makes in people's lives, fostering a sense of purpose beyond financial rewards.

In my experience, when you are just everyone will want to participate in discouraging you. If you however keep communicating your milestones, you never know, some of these milestones may be the very thing that was lacking to help your team understand that you are actually leading them to success. Always remember that it may cost years to achieve you bigger goal. It will be these small battlea that you are winning that will help your team to understand that you are actually winning the war. Building a startup is like a battlefield, be strategic enough to have a soldiers who are ready and willing to fight at every cost. Amplify those voices to let your team enjoy the enemy crying.

There is a German saying 'Nicht geschimpft ist genug gelobt', meaning not scolded is praise enough. I have seen a lot of leaders acting accordingly. They are fast to sharply address mistakes but don't even notice any thing going smoothly and as planned. Being on the receiving end of this behaviour you become demotivated very fast. As a founder you don't want a demotivated team. In my experience, generously working with praise and constructive feedback brings more advantages than the scolding approach: - people feel seen and are motivated by that - people won't define themselves by their errors but by their achievements and engage more The one thing about praise: be real and mean it, for people to believe you.

One thing I have found helpful is to celebrate every milestone together no matter how small. When you have just started, it is likely that your team will loose hope very easily and this may lead to loosing focus. It is therefore very important to celebrate even the smallest achievement together in order to energize the team and help them refocus as they see things taking shape. We should always remember that people get involved more if they make the decision by themselves. These decisions are normally made when we are alone. Celebrating successes will trigger your team to continue talking about the project with friends and families and in the event become more commited to making the project a success. At least this is what has helped me.

You don't need a team. You need the energy from this team. Once your team is energized, you are going to be rewarded by a bigger voltage of power that will help you do much in the shortest period of time. This starts with inspiration. Start by helping each team member understand how the benefits are going to be. In my case I help my team to be mentored and improve their competencies. Everything that is added onto their lives will help them focus both on the project and their future. But these are not machines remember, always go an extra of understanding what hurts them. Know what may affect their ability to deliver to their best. Then sit with them to find a solution to it. Don't at anyone point appear to be a user.