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Motivation Article
Motivate Your Team!
Eight Quick
Tips to Motivate for Success
By Ed Sykes
Motivation is the key ingredient for success in any organization.
You can have all the technical skills in the world; however, if you can’t
motivate your team, you will not achieve success. As a leader, a majority of
your job is to motivate others to succeed so that everyone’s goals are
accomplished.
The following are eight quick tips to motivate your team:
1.
Everyone Has Motivation
Your employees are motivated on some level. It
is your job to find the level of their motivation and move your employees to the
next level.
2.
Listen to WIIFM
I wake up every
morning listening to a very important radio station, WIIFM. I hope you do too.
WIIFM stands for What’s In It For Me? To truly be a motivator, you must
always be in tune to your employees’ WIIFM. Find out why it is beneficial for
your employees to do a task, etc. Once you find out the employees’ motives, you
find out how to motivate them.
3.
It’s about Pain or Pleasure
Motivate your
employees toward pleasure or away from pain. You motivate toward the pleasure
by providing recognition, incentives, and rewards for doing a good job. You
motivate away from the pain of a corrective action, losing a position, or doing
a poor job. The key to this motivation is to be consistent with all your
employees at all times.
4.
Give Me a Reason
Do it because I
said so! Well, with our educated workforce these days, that doesn’t work
anymore. Employees like to know why tasks are being requested of them so that
they can feel involved and that the task has worth. Let your employees know why
doing the task is important to you, the organization, and for them.
5.
Let Me Understand You
Take time to show
sincere interest in your employees as people. Understand what your employees
are passionate about in their lives. What are their special passions? What are
their personal needs? What brings them joy or pain? What are their short-range
and long-range goals? Once you understand the answers to these questions, you
can move them to a new level of motivation, because you cared enough to ask the
questions and show interest in their success. Once you understand your
employee’s needs and goals, they will take more interest in understanding and
achieving your goals.
6.
Make Me Proud
Napoleon
Bonaparte once said, “A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored
ribbon.” Give your employees the opportunity to be proud of their work. Reward
team members publicly for a job well done. Give them an opportunity in a team
meeting to explain how they accomplished the job. Have your organization’s
Director, President, Vice President, etc., give recognition to these employees
by personally sending a note, recognizing them in an organizational or team
meeting, or creating a “Hall or Wall of Fame” recognition for employees that
really have gone beyond the call of duty.
7.
Expect the Best
Expect the best
and your employees will rise to that level. How do you do this? You do it with
the words you use. Are you expressing positive expectations, or are you using
words (kind of, sort of, we’ll try, we have to, we haven’t done that before, and
that will never work) that communicate negative expectations? What does your
body language say about you? Does it say, “I’m ready to take on any challenge,
and I expect you can also;” or does your body language say “Please don’t give me
another problem. I can’t handle it.”
Do our
recognitions and rewards move our employees to do their best? Do we
consistently communicate our standards and expectations for the best? Do we
coach our team to always do better?
8.
Walk the Talk
Our employees
model our behavior. If we are confident about a major change in the
organization, our employees will follow our behavior. If we come in late and
leave early, guess what will happen? Remember, even when you don’t think
someone is watching…they are always watching. Set the example for others to
follow.
Apply these eight simple rules of team motivation
and you, too, will have the skills to motivate your team to be inspired,
innovative, self-directed, and highly productive employees.
Suggested Motivation reading:
Are You Singing Your
Song of Success? Five Secrets to Following Your Dreams and Achieving More
Success in Your Life
Leadership Starts with Tough
Decisions: Five Leadership Skills for Outstanding Team Building
JumpStart Your Employee
Motivation: Ten Motivation Secrets to Empower Your Team
Appreciate to Motivate
(The Key to Successful Team Building)
The Secret to Living Your Dreams: Five Success Techniques to Achieving More Success in Your Life!
Seven Change Management Secrets to Creating a Winning Culture of Change
Are You Building Your Foundation of Success: Six Secrets of Motivating Yourself for Success
Employee
Motivation, Don Imus, and Team Building: Five Secrets of Motivated Teams
Motivate Your
Customer Service Team for Outstanding Customer Service: Six Secrets of Customer Service Motivation
Life Before Downsizing: Six Secrets to Managing Change and
Creating Opportunities for the Future
Success Starts with a Can Do Attitude: Three Secrets to
Creating More Success
Coaching: How to Succeed in Half the Time Using a Personal Coach
Leadership Techniques for Anyone: How Kermit Shared
Five Leadership Secrets with the World
Eight Leadership Techniques for
Outstanding Teams
Adversity: Your Seed of
Greatness (Three Secrets to Using
Adversity to Become Great)
Connect the Dots! Your Roadmap for Success
Every Super Hero Needs Theme Music. What’s Yours?
Seven Secrets to
Being the Leader Everyone Wants to Follow
Have You Appreciated Someone Today?
Nine Ways Johnny Carson Can
Help You Run Outstanding Meetings
Five Secrets to
Gaining Credibility with Your Team for Outstanding
Results
How Appetizing Is
Your Feedback? (5 Steps to Giving Effective Feedback)
Ten Techniques for
Motivating Others Through Chaos
10
Action Steps to Motivate Yourself to Great Accomplishments
Eight Ways to Motivate
Part-Time Employees
Delegate to Accelerate Success
(How to Prepare
Yourself and Others for Success)
The
Greatest Gift of All - The Gift of Empowerment
Leadership Secrets for Challenging Times
Goal Setting Secrets to Jumpstart Your Life
Ed Sykes is a
professional speaker published in the areas of leadership, change management,
customer service, motivation, and teamwork. He works with business and government
organizations who want to reach the next level of success and individuals who
want to perform at their best. You can email him at esykes@thesykesgrp.com,
call him at (757) 427-7032 or visit his Web site at
www.thesykesgrp.com.
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