7 Techniques To Motivate Your Team Members
You can motivate your team members externally or internally. External motivation relates to the working environment. However, internal motivation relates the interests, values, aptitudes and dreams of your team members. Here you shall find seven critical motivational techniques to get the best out of your team.
1- Reward and Punishment
It is the most popular technique being used by the managers. When you give a reward that is tangible, i.e. promotion, a raise or award it seems to increase the energy of the individual, however understanding their true core motivation can have dramatic effects. Fear of punishment can play an important role. You need to be careful here too. A wrong punishment at a wrong time may backfire. Just create a balance.
2- Setting of Goals
Setting of well-defined goals helps your team members to do their best. Set meaningful and justified deadlines to get the project finished within time, i.e. SMART. You need to work at two levels. First, set your objective and make sure this is Results orientated not process driven, second, divide that objective into goals and sub-goals that meet the overall goal.
3- Advisory Techniques and Performance Coaching
No one is perfect. Being a team leader you must always be ready to offer advice when your team members face some stumbling block in their performance. Encourage them to remove their weaknesses and continue what works for them. Performance Coaching can have a massive beneficial impact on performance, allowing solutions to come from within. Empowering the individual will enable them to take ownership.
4- Praise and Criticism
This motivational technique is similar to ‘reward and punishment’ technique. A word of praise or criticism shall have definite results upon your team. However, like rewards and punishments, this technique should also be used carefully. Sometimes your team members will do better with criticism and other times they will stop working. To understand what language patterns will tap into their motivational type click here
5- Success and Failure
To motivate your team members, you could analyze their successes in the office environment. Most of the people like to continue doing what is working for them, this is their comfort zone. However if you want something different don’t keep on doing the same thing.
6- Competition
It is the one of strongest motivational technique to get the best out of your team. You can use this technique very effectively when combine with setting of efficient goals. Competitive circumstances can help your team members to perform the best.
7- Know your Team.
Do you know what interests your team? Just find out those interests and entrust them with tasks that they love to do. It will increase their efficiency on one hand and speed of the project on the other. Random allocation of tasks may not be too helpful to all of them.