Tips on How to Motivate Your Team from the Pros

In a recent study by The Hay Group, as many as 71 percent of American workers reported feeling disengaged and unmotivated. That translates into an estimated $300 billion worth of lost productivity for American businesses every year. Maximize your company’s productivity with this list of the top tips on how to motivate your team from the pros.

Get Feedback from Your Team (Paul Slezak, Co-Founder and CEO, RecruitLoop)
The only way to know what really motivates your team is to ask them! You’ll be surprised. What you might think pushes their buttons may in fact be as far from the truth as possible. They will all have intrinsic as well as extrinsic motivators. Some will thrive on having a carrot dangled with promises of financial reward; others will thrive on spontaneous recognition or a simple email praising them for a job well done.

Give Your Team Members Autonomy (Jeremy Greenberg, Founder/Web Designer, 97 Switch)
If members of your team feel like they have autonomy, they will feel like they have ownership over a specific project. This total control over something allows people to feel like they want to do their best work because the work will represent them. This kind of opportunity attracts top talent as people who are great at what they do are often inspired by being able to showcase their work. With the right people in place for specific projects, it will inspire a lot of positive momentum for the entire company. This allows people to take chances and run with different ideas that they have in a way that can create a lot of new opportunity.

Rotate Repetitive Tasks within the Team (Nora St-Aubin, Officevibe Content Marketing Team, Officevibe)
Employees can quickly lose motivation for completing tasks that are repetitive and tedious. Assign these types of tasks in rotation whenever possible so that one employee doesn’t end up doing it every time. If only one employee has the skill or expertise to complete the task, be sure to give that employee recognition for their dedication and commitment. Remind your employee why the task is important by showing them the positive impact of their work. This could mean reviewing data that’s been tracked or sharing a testimonial from a client expressing their appreciation.

Hire People Who Are Passionate About Their Work (Sandra Rodgers, Community Manager, Cometdocs.com)
The first ones who should be in love with your company are your employees. There is no easy way to motivate a team if its members are not on the same page as you and your company. Here, at Cometdocs, we start by employing people who are passionate about the work we do and who clearly understand our mission and vision. Our short- and long-term goals are defined to be as clear as possible in a way everyone can understand them. Once that is done, motivating employees shouldn’t be a difficult process.

Change Their Roles (if Necessary) - Kristina Martic, Head of Marketing and Employer Branding, TalentLyft
Do you know if your employees love what they do? Motivation and job satisfaction are highly correlated. That being said, you first need to ensure that your employees are satisfied and that they love their jobs. If you find out that your employees are not happy with their jobs, don’t try to motivate them.

Change their roles! This doesn’t have to be a complete role change. You can just try adding some tasks they find interesting. Who knows, you can also discover some of their hidden talents! If your employee, for example, is a developer who loves to talk with people and customers, don’t just lock him or her up in front of a computer. Extend their role to a Customer Success or Sales Manager.

Help Your Team Visualize Personal Goals (Rob Knott, SEO Manager, Thomson Local)
If your goal is to increase motivation to improve sales, then don’t just rely on a sales target on a dry wipe board to get the job done. Instead, give each member of your team a reason to care about their personal contribution towards that sales target. A great way to do this is to ask each member of your team for a picture of something that they need money for. For example, one person may want a new car, another a beach holiday. Place these visual cues on the dry wipe board above the sales target and remind your team that hitting targets means getting closer to having those things. This works because you’re not just placing the focus on earning more money to spend.

You’re placing the focus on having the things that they want to own. “Owning” feels like you have gained something of value. “Spending” makes you feel like you are giving away something of value. Never underestimate the power of appealing to a person’s desires to get a job done.

Use Big Five Performance Management as a Motivational Tool (Roger Ferguson, Principal and Lead Consultant, iSi Human Resources Consulting LLC)
Most motivational tips are conceptual… “As a manager, be a better listener…,” for example. Great idea but lacks in being executable. How do I become a better listener? What do I actually do to become a better listener? Big Five is different. It is a simple process requiring each employee to submit a half-page report, each month, detailing their five most significant accomplishments from last month and their five highest priorities for the current month.

Managers respond with praise/affirmation (Go get ’em!), coaching (Don’t forget about the Ferguson account), or correction (See me, we do not seem to be aligned on priorities). These reports are usually due on the fifth day of the month and managers usually have five days to respond, further installing the Big Five process into the culture. Benefits of this process:

• Gives employees an opportunity to tell their story, taking credit for their contributions.
• Gives managers a great tool to help them plan and prioritize, improving productivity.
• Increases coaching quality and frequency… everyone wants feedback on how they are doing.
• Can totally eliminate the tedious, year-end, annual appraisal process, saving time and money for all.

Share Your Purpose and Set Goals with Your Team (Ruth Ullmann, Founder, My Elder Care Journey)

People want to belong to something bigger than themselves and make a difference in the world. When business owners share their purpose with their team, and everyone understands why they are in business, people’s devotion to that business and to the purpose become a driving force. People are proud and dedicated to be a part of these types of companies. 

Then identify a few achievable challenges towards that purpose and have your team put steps into place on how to achieve that in the next 12 weeks. At the same time, develop a celebration for your success. Rotate the roles in these challenges to help people develop new skills. Every quarter, create another challenge towards achieving your business purpose.

Remove Roadblocks That Discourage Team Productivity (Jon Brodsky, Country Manager, finder.com)

A major source of frustration amongst teams I have worked in has been an inability to get things done. So as a manager, I’ve made removing roadblocks a core focus. Each meeting I have with team members, I ask them if there is anything preventing them achieving their goals, and we work together to find a solution. I’ve seen firsthand how enabling easier access to success can have a dramatic impact on motivation.

Create a Safe Learning Environment for Your Team (David Niu, CEO & Founder, TINYpulse)

One of our major goals in the coming two years is investing in our people through coaching and career pathing. This initiative is called TINYcoaching, where we create a safe environment for peer-to-peer coaching. They now have a safe place to share anonymous feedback, lead with solutions, and provide recognition to their peers. By creating a safe learning environment, we’ve found a flywheel effect that not only motivates our employees to share knowledge, but also supports them in their long-term careers.

We measure the success of this program by reviewing quantifiable KPIs per team, and have already seen positive results both quantitatively and qualitatively: Sales Development Representative calls connected to SQL conversion rates increased in September by a whopping 83 percent, and then by another 80 percent in November.

Over to You

The right motivation ideas will help sustain your team’s dedication and willingness to work. Try these team motivation ideas from the pros and watch how they improve productivity and benefit your bottom line. Do you also have a go-to tip on how to motivate your team? Share it with us in the comments.