7 Ways to Motivate your Employees

Being a people leader is one of the most fulfilling yet most challenging role one can take on in his/her/their career. When you are tasked to manage and lead people, you have to deal with heaps of priorities not to mention the daily challenges in keeping your team driven in achieving both individual and collective goals.

Below are ways, based on my personal and professional journey, to help motivate your team. These are not absolute and the only methods for sure and be reminded that some might work for you and some might not. Some of them you will probably be able to relate with and some might even give you a "WOW" moment.

Read on. Share your thoughts and your personal experiences in the comments section.

“Don’t count the days, make the days count.” — Muhammad Ali

1. Know your Team.

One of the first, if not the actual first, steps in motivating your team is to know them. Uncover basic information about them such as work experience, professional achievements/milestones, personal background, and cultural or diversity profiles. These will absolutely have an influence on how you will be able to drive both individual and team outputs. Making an effort to know more about your team will not only help you understand what will make them driven but this will also help you strong relationships with them built on trust.

During individual conversations with team members, make an effort to get to know them more. Ask relaxed and open-ended questions to ensure they will feel comfortable about the conversation. One of the things you need to be mindful of is to know your boundaries when treading around professional and personal matters--this will also help to send a message that you would like to preserve professionalism while intending to know more about them.

2. Set expectations.

When one works with people, it is second nature to expect on what he/she/they will get out of working with you. Setting expectations is key to establish ground rules in terms of how you and your team member will be partnering to achieve work goals.

Being able to set the tone in working with your team member will not only help you identify irks and ticks but this will also aid in driving a message that as his/her/their manager, you will be there to direct and to drive their performance and ultimately achieve their career aspirations. Make sure to leverage this opportunity since this is mostly done in the beginning of working relationships though there will be a need to revisit expectations as needed.

3. Establish performance objectives.

Knowing what one has to achieve at work has been proven to support driving positive outputs and motivation within teams. Most organizations have a performance review cycle and setting performance objectives is the first stop in the process. Setting objectives is believed to be paramount in performance management as this sets the tone on what a team member has to work on throughout the review period.

Being able to set clear and detailed performance objectives will help you drive performance, ultimately supporting your effort to motivate your team. This also helps in making your team members appreciate how their outputs relate to the greater goals that your organization is aiming to achieve.

Surely you must have heard about setting S.M.A.R.T. goals--Specific, Measurable, Achievable/Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. This was formulated in a way that it helps to excite team members since it provides concise information on what is expected from him/her/them while also knowing how to go about it.

4. Coach and Support.

One of your key responsibilities as a people manager is to empower and enable your staff through coaching. There is no way for you to motivate your team if you are not spending time with them to provide support and letting them know how they are doing with their work.

Most organizations have employee coaching incorporated against operational shrinkage and in these instances, there is no reason why one cannot make time in coaching his/her/their team members. Also, governance around adhering to these set schedules to drive accountability at the level of a people manager--some groups enforce internal audits while some establish processes to document the session.

There have been claims that people managers who do not make time to coach have the lowest team morale and employee satisfaction scores within organizations. This is not surprising at all as again, one of your roles as a people manager is to steer the careers of your team members.

Simply said, coaching is perceived to be spending time with your employees so whether be it that the session is geared towards performance conversations or a simple catch-up, MAKE IT HAPPEN and make it valuable for you and your team member.

5. Drive Accountability.

As per Henry Evans, "A culture of accountability makes a good organization great and great organizations unstoppable."--this remains true as efforts to achieve performance outputs is worthless without accountability.

Driving a culture of accountability within your team not only keeps folks responsible for their actions and behavior within the workplace but for some individuals, this excites them while they pursue performance objectives. Knowing the corresponding rewards of achieving goals is tantamount to knowing what consequences will be in place once one fails to deliver on expectations or even how it is done. Be reminded that behaviors and how results must have greater bearing versus what the actual results are.

Remember, motivation must be anchored not only on goals and expectations but more on driving responsibility on behaviors and actions.

6. Communicate.

In working to motivate your team, you have established efforts in knowing your team, setting expectations, providing support, and enforcing accountability. What's next? You guessed it right--communicating.

"The art of communication is the language of leadership." — James Humes

As a people manager, you must be able to harness your communication skills as this is instrumental in supporting all the other five points in this article. Once, a mentor mentioned that an effective leader is an effective communicator--I have always been an advocate of this concept since then.

For your to be able to keep your team going against your collective goals, you must be able to invest time in communicating factors which influence their outputs such as best practices, hurdles, or learning points. This way, you will be able to continue working with your team to address them and go forward seamlessly.

Most importantly, all efforts to communicate must be done in a timely manner. Your purpose of communicating is defeated entirely when timing is disregarded.

7. Reward and Recognize.

Simple as it might seem but this is one of the most neglected points in this list. When you work to motivate your team, always bear in mind that humans are beings of excitement. This means that you must create opportunities for your team members--opportunities that will get them all fueled to achieve your team goals. Whether be it a simple, "Good job!" or a grandiose effort to recognize an individual in a town hall, you have the discretion on how to create an environment that will excite your team.

As you continue to pursue efforts in rewarding and recognizing your team members, remember that there is a link between this point and the very first point--Know your Team. Without establishing a good knowledge of who your team members are and how they operate, it will be a pointless effort to continue pursuing this. Make sure that this is linked to their reason for working and for sure, they will value it.

Lastly, remember to make it sincere. People know when people only do it for show so make sure to do this with 100% authenticity.

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Paul Michael, fondly referred to as "PM" by his team and colleagues, is a contact center professional for a nineteen years bringing diverse experience and expertise in leading teams. He is enamored with sharing his insights and knowledge which led to him creating this newsletter.