Motivate And Inspire Your Team
Welcome to May!
Since January, I have elaborated on each of the “Six Tips to Elevate Your Leadership & Retain Talent”, a free resource you can download from our home page.
In April I shared tips on how to “Nurture Inclusion and Belonging”. This month we will explore how to “Motivate and Inspire Your Team”.
What motivates and inspires people at work? While compensation is certainly a motivator, it’s not the only one. People also want acknowledgment and growth opportunities and to feel valued, trusted and empowered. People seek purpose in their lives, and that includes work. Employees expect deeper relationships, a strong sense of community and purpose-driven work.
How can we expect employees to be motivated and inspired when they are not clear on their organization’s purpose, their own goals and roles, or how their work contributes to their organization’s success?
Here are some tips that can help leaders in motivating and inspiring their team.
1. Communicate The Organization’s Purpose, Core Values & Goals
According to Gallup, nearly 60% of employees don’t know what their organizations stand for. What does this look like for your organization?
The key is communication. Strong leaders engage their teams by clearly discussing their organization’s purpose (or mission), core values, and goals (or strategy) before establishing their own team goals.
A best practice is for leaders to reinforce their organization’s purpose, core values, and goals by consistently repeating them in their messaging and team meetings. It is also important to create space and spend time asking their team if they have any questions, thoughts, or perspectives on their organization’s purpose, core values, and goals.
The objective is for leaders and their teams to “live” their organization’s purpose, core values, and goals in the work they deliver everyday. Any lack in clarity contributes to the risk of team members feeling confused, disengaged, or not fully understanding the purpose of their own work.
2. Describe How Their Work Connects To The Organization’s Overall Purpose
Effective goals are clear, understandable, meaningful, and align with one’s ability. As goal effectiveness increases, performance increases.
One approach for goal setting is to use the SMART (specific, measurable, agreed upon, reasonable, time bound) goals framework as a guide. Make goal setting collaborative, ensuring goals are meaningful for team members and acknowledging each team member possess a distinct set of knowledge, skills, and abilities.
To help the team establish goals aligned with the organization’s overall purpose and strategy, strong leaders understand their employees’ diverse roles to provide direction that enables employees to see the link between their work and overall company purpose and strategy. This will help team members connect how their own expertise and responsibilities contribute towards the performance of their team and organization and how to best approach each person for assistance or collaboration.
3. Reinforce The Value Of Each Team Member’s Contributions And Impact
Ask team members to share their goals with the rest of the team. This helps to ensure that everyone understands how their goals relate and that they are jointly accountable for achieving results. Team members also learn the value of everyone’s contributions and impact to team and organizational results.
A powerful and simple approach to reinforce the value of team members’ contributions and impact is regularly sharing stories.
Stories have strong influence on our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors — including our desire to contribute to a team. Share stories that connect the team’s efforts to the people who benefit from their contributions. Whenever possible, gather specific instances of how your team positively affected colleagues, clients, or the community. If you come across an instance when your team's work assisted another group, note it and save it. This way, when you're about to start a team meeting, you'll have a range of stories to choose from that can set a compelling tone.
Now what?
In this newsletter we discussed how to motivate and inspire your team by clearly communicating the organization’s purpose, core values and goals, helping employees set effective goals that align with the organization’s purpose and strategy, and reinforcing the value of your team’s contributions and impact through story telling.
Leaders who consistently practice these skills improve employee experience and drive higher team and organizational performance.
My last of the “Six Tips to Elevate Your Leadership and Retain Talent” is to “Foster a Learning Culture”, which I will share in June. I look forward to diving into this topic further with you. Until then, be well and keep shining!
We at Cultivate and Thrive help women leaders by providing guidance on strategy and culture so that they gain clarity, work smarter, improve experience, and optimize their organization’s performance. Book a call so we can learn more about you and how we can elevate your organizational culture and performance.
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