Creating Unstoppable Teams

LEADERSHIP IS ONE OF THE GREATEST LEARNING CURVES, DO NOT BE AFRAID TO LEARN, UNLEARN & RELEARN FOR YOURS AND YOUR TEAM’S GROWTH.

‘Motivation’ is quite an important factor when it comes to achieving business success and realizing true potential at the workplace. While we, as leaders, do hire our staff based on their talent and expertise, it is important to recognize that these qualities can easily dwindle and take a back seat in a team or work environment that lacks a passion to get the work done well.

Motivation, in essence, can be of two types - extrinsic motivation which is created through factors like pay raises, bonuses, paid leave, etc. and intrinsic motivation which is one’s innate ability and personal desire to produce high-quality work. Now, as a Leader, how can you strike the right balance between the two types to keep your teams buoyant and successful through turbulent times?

Step 1: Analyse what drives your team members – do extrinsic factors affect their motivation?

Every team member is different, and will likely have different motivators that drive them to do better and work with passion. It is your task as a Leader to find what drives each of your team members and bring that to the table to amplify their motivation at the workplace. Furthermore, as a leader, you will also need to reflect on your Leadership Style and how affects your team’s motivation.

You need to be mindful and conscious about avoiding pitfalls in your daily leadership style. For example, a personal pitfall that I have learned from – your own expectations can affect your team members’ performance. If you doubt that your team member will succeed at the task at hand, you will make them feel undervalued and essentially undermine their confidence. The Pygmalion Effect reinforces the idea that you can motivate people to perform better at work by having and communicating high expectations of them.

This is where Transformational Leadership takes over as a key factor in keeping your teams self-esteem buoyant. This style of leadership encourages you to create a common vision for your team, one that will resonate as an inspiring path towards a meaningful future. This will help your team recognize the end goal and the ‘purpose’ behind their.

The next step is to encourage your team members to buy into this vision and execute its delivery while fostering trustful relationships with a sense of collaboration towards the common goal. This phase must and will include an essence of intellectual stimulation. Being a Transformational Leader, you will need to embrace failure as an opportunity to challenge assumptions, take risks, and create a safe space for diverse perspectives. This empowers your team members to ask questions, practice a greater level of autonomy and ultimately determine more effective ways to execute their tasks. Freedom and autonomy are key when it comes to motivating your teams for performance breakthroughs. Having said that, as a Leader, it is our job to set the expectations and timeline for the task, and it is our team’s role to ideate, collaborate and deliver the task under our guidance, and not under strict supervision. This is where teams can pull of the ‘daily grind’ mentality and show up at work with a drive and zest for success.

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