One of the best ways to achieve your objectives is to keep your troops motivated and, even better, make them able to move mountains. How to do it: By learning a few simple tips and tricks that we will tell you about below. This advice comes from a selection of Web articles on the topic that we have read for you.
“Know thyself”
Socrates’ maxim applies precisely to you, the manager. Getting your team members to follow you means knowing how to move them to action and directing them to the goals you set. If you look at it this way, your role is to be a coach, a leader, and to play it, you need to know yourself thoroughly and how to use your people skills.
Communicate with your team
- Make sure you know their profiles and talents.
How to do it:
1. Take a personalized management approach. Find out if they’re go-getters or fighters, identify their strengths. This will help you communicate more effectively and better inspire them. They will feel more confident and perform their tasks with greater enthusiasm.
A useful tool: the personality test, free on 16Personalities.com.
2. Have informal discussions with each team member. This will help you sound out your troop’s morale, find out how each member is doing and tackle upcoming projects. It’s an opportunity to neutralize any reticence or fear when dealing with thorny issues.
Take a sincere interest in these quality interactions. To help things along, put your computer to sleep, put away your telephone and close your office door so you won’t be disturbed.
Exchanges like this will make your employees feel respected and valued.
- Communicate your vision and your objectives.
How to do it: First explain to your team – as well as each member individually – their role in company operations, and then their more specific roles in achieving your objectives. Everyone should know what each person does and why they do it.
Support your team
- Help your team accomplish its tasks by implementing good planning, taking stock of steps taken, and providing clear descriptions of your expectations.
- Make your team members aware of their responsibilities. Let them make their own decisions or find solutions to problems by themselves. This way you demonstrate your trust in their skills and potential while developing their independence.
- Encourage focus, because constant interruptions while working can be demotivating.
How to do it:
1. One way is through telework. If you let your team members work at home they will be subjected to less pressure and feel less stressed, which will in turn make them more productive. You will also be letting them know you trust them.
2. Another is flextime, so employees can work during calmer periods.
- Foster your team’s development.
How to do it:
1. Help them develop new skills and competencies by letting them participate in learning activities like training workshops and work-related events.
2. Let people make mistakes. Keep your comments constructive so team members learn from their experiences without becoming bitter.
Break the routine
- Encourage creativity and innovation. There’s nothing more boring than doing the same thing in the same way over and over again. Get off the beaten path, invite your team to brainstorming sessions — you can even hold them outside of the office, why not? — and test the ideas you come up with. Your employees will be even better prepared to take on the resulting projects.
Develop team spirit
- Cooperation among team members is preferable to competition (or isolation). The process fosters feelings of goodwill and contributing to a common goal.
How to do it:
1. Organize group activities. This is an excellent exercise for validating each individual's aptitude for teamwork. The activities can be playful or designed to contribute to a good cause. Were you aware that rallying around a good cause makes people feel that they are part of something greater than themselves and that their actions have an impact on the lives of others? They will feel motivated and ready to breathe new energy into efforts to achieve common work objectives.
2. Encourage employees to work in twos or threes on some projects.
Show your appreciation
- Expressing your satisfaction with a job well done is important. Employees who feel appreciated are all the more motivated.
How to do it:
1. Say thank you in person or by mail, or by offering something small but thoughtful like a gift card or a specialty morning coffee.
2. Celebrate achievements, both major and minor, as a team.
3. Celebrate birthdays, births, marriages, etc.
These six points show that productivity is born of enlightened leadership by managers who know how to motivate their troops, strengthen team unity and ensure their employees’ personal development.
Sources :
Développement du leadership et exercices de soi explicites, CERAP, 2013.
Sept conseils pour gérer votre équipe comme un vrai coach sportif, Bpifrance, 2016.
12 attitudes essentielles de leaders qui savent motiver leurs équipes, Presse-citron, 2015.
15 effective ways to motivate you team, Huffington Post, 2016.
5 ways to motivate your team, Entrepreneur.
10 unique ways to motivate you team, Forbes, 2016.