The Only Way To Motivate Your Team In 2019

Motivating a group of people means understanding why they’re demotivated.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about what qualities I want to possess in my role, and I came across a short video detailing the difference between empathy and sympathy. The video, which you can watch here, explained how empathy fuels connection, while sympathy drives disconnection. There are four qualities within empathy: understanding others’ perspectives, refraining from judgement, recognising emotion in other people; and communicating that. It’s all about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and opening yourself up to them, whereas sympathy only requires you to agree with that person, sugar coat their problem or try to make someone feel better simply by agreeing with them.

Though it’s often meant with good intentions, the latter can be extremely counterproductive, yet it’s a common mistake made in business. Leaders are expected not to get too involved; don’t bring personal feelings into work. Sympathise, but keep a safe distance. But here’s the thing: sympathy only leads to a disconnect between you and your team, and if you really want to keep people motivated, enjoying work and staying happy in their job, I’ve learned that you sometimes have to sacrifice your pride to make a meaningful connection.

It can be tough, because empathy is a choice. It requires you to actively relate to whatever a person is going through, meaning you’re exposing your own vulnerabilities in the process of comforting someone else’s. Anyone can sympathise - it’s definitely easier, but only empathetic leaders are able to motivate their employees. So, the week before Christmas, I made a conscious choice to empathise with the team, who I knew were feeling tired, restless and ready for a break. But, going beyond the last week before Christmas, there’s one thing I always keep in mind to ensure I’m being the most empathic leader I can be: think about meerkats.

The meerkat method

Yeah, you read that right. It sounds strange, but essentially it just means keeping a watchful eye. Being present and observant is another quality which I think is instrumental to good leadership. If you aren’t paying attention, you won’t notice when a member of your team is acting out of character, is unusually quiet or seems withdrawn. And if you don’t notice that change in behaviour, you can’t empathise with them, you can’t help them and you certainly can’t motivate them.

I always make sure I’m checking for people who I can see might be struggling or might be making decisions that they wouldn’t normally make. I always try to understand when a reaction is out of character - especially at this time of year - and give people that little bit of leeway, realise that everyone’s tired and just try to keep everyone excited.

Celebrating your achievements

For Social Chain, one way we keep people excited about work throughout the year is by celebrating our achievements. Recognising what you’ve accomplished is important all year round, but at this time of year in particular, businesses have a habit of wiping the slate completely clean on the 1st of January. I’m all for fresh starts, but I strongly believe that we should never forget or disregard all that we’ve achieved in the past. A new year doesn’t make those successes redundant.

As I write this, we’re approaching our final day in the office. And we have a special something planned to remember all of the amazing things we’ve achieved over the last 12 months. 2018 has been a breakthrough year for Social Chain and, to celebrate that, we’ve spent the last few weeks creating a video compilation of everyone’s favourite work-related moment from 2018, which we’ll play on our last day. The video is over 7 minutes long and I for one can’t wait for everyone to watch it. I know that it will make us all feel proud, excited and act as a reminder to return in 2019 ready to accomplish even bigger and better things.

Empathy, observation and celebration are three things I’ll be taking with me into the new year and I hope you do the same, because if there’s anything I’ve learned in 2018, it’s that the only way to motivate your team is to understand them. I hope you had a great Christmas, thank you so much for your ongoing support and I’ll be back in the new year with a very special podcast episode with our very own Steve Bartlett. Until next year!

Click here to listen to episode 6 of my new podcast: I Shouldn’t Say This, But… I Have No Motivation