A one-stop guide to inspire and motivate your team members

July 13, 2023

To ensure business goals are met and the organization remains on the growth trajectory, professionals in leadership roles have to focus on teamwork. If you are diligent and focused on work but the team morale remains low, growth will get bottlenecked. Successful professionals in various niches manage to do well because they succeed in bringing out the best in people in their departments and teams. To ensure your team members are productive and give their best, it is necessary to inspire and motivate team members.

Why do you have to inspire and motivate team members?

It is not just enough to have employees in your department who are highly qualified and have a long experience in the sector. It is quite important that you do the needful to motivate team members and serve as their inspiration.

When employees in your team are driven, they tend to give their best to work. This helps in meeting targets and the company grows with its people. It helps good performers exceed their targets and average performers meet their targets easily.

Inspired and motivated teams are less likely to be affected by the menace of attrition. In sectors that cope with high attrition rate, the importance of motivating employees is profound.
When your team members remain motivated, work-related conflicts are less likely to take place. Reduced stress and a positive outlook in the employees foster a positive work atmosphere in the organization.
Motivated employees find it easier to interact with the management and this helps in resolving work-related hassles and factors that often hamper and delay work progress.

When we started PeopleNorth, one of our purposes was to support our clients in building a culture which prioritizes people and naturally is focused on performance. This can be achieved with a strategic approach to building both process and mindset which are pro-people.

Effective measures to inspire and motivate team members

To motivate team members and become an inspirational leader, you need to deploy certain tried and tested strategies.

We emphasize on a strong feedback culture

Managers often talk about tasks and assume they have given a feedback. When it comes to uncomfortable truth, a lot of leaders shy away till they can! Yet feedback is a powerful tool to motivate and drive people’s performance. A combination of ‘what feedback I am giving’ ‘why am I sharing this feedback’ and ‘how can this be done better’ , can create a clear sense of direction for the team. Of course, it goes without saying, it is a 2-way street. In a formal or informal feedback talk if there is no conversation or discussion or questions, we may not be actually sharing feedback.

You also make yourself accessible when you offer and seek feedback. Your team members can use the channel to reach out to you for various needs, including discussing unprecedented problems or giving their suggestions on an issue.

Do remember feedback is not always corrective, it can be appreciative and affirmative. Don’t miss out on telling your star performer – “ your work in the data analysis, created a great deal of trust with the client, keep inspiring us with your attention to detail”.

Your team is a reflection of you

Your words, thoughts, subconscious beliefs, and body language impact your team, more than you know. If your target is to build a more positive environment, where performance and camaraderie strike a balance, you have to start displaying such behaviour. Another simple yet effective mechanism is to appreciate behaviours that you want your team members to follow.

In one of my coaching engagements, my client wanted his team to be more forthcoming and take more chances at the workplace. While his team was good at what they did, their risk appetite was so low, they wouldn’t even volunteer to share ideas, unless pushed to do so.

We discussed taking 2 steps – appreciate any team member who takes any form of risk, from highlighting corrections, to doing something differently. The 2nd step was for the manager to take opportunities to share his ‘fears’ with his team and how he worked through those fears to ensure he keeps growing as a professional. 2 months into this, and he could see his team becoming stronger and willing to go beyond what is obvious.

Lead with Example

If you want your team members to adhere to specific practices for better productivity and outcome, ensure you follow those practices personally. Team members are more likely to follow a leader who adheres to the practices advised. For example, if you want everyone on the team to be on time for weekly or monthly meetings, make sure you reach the meeting venue before the time. If you advise your team members to improve their demeanour and body language, ensure you tick those boxes personally.

Focus on Employee Development - Does it really motivate?

In the range of workshops that we do, there are often participants, who are there because they have been forced by their manager or the HR team. What has never happened is, at the end of such programs, someone said, it was a waste of my time, or I feel the same. Almost always people are grateful and excited to try a different approach.

From certifications to exposure to learning new approaches and skills, all drive your team’s motivation level.

Summing it all up

To Motivate team members and make them inspired to work with you, it is necessary to develop and deploy some effective strategies. You have to act with integrity, remain consistent about your approach and communicate with the team with clarity.