Some effective ways to motivate your team

Today, the concept of teams has set in. whether it is workplace, school or even playground, everything happens in teams. But for your team to be successful, it is important that all the team members may be motivated enough. Thus, as a team leader it becomes your sole responsibility to motivate different members of the team. So here are a few tips that will help you increase the motivation levels of your team members.

Creating involvement

Your team members are bound to be disappointed if they are not involved in the day to day activities. It is important that you involve all the members in various activities to ensure that they feel as a part of team. You can involve them in planning, organizing and even executing all the plans. And in this way they will become confident in operating any type of task.

Communicating

To keep all the members together; it is important that you communicate. Keep all the members in team updated of various happenings or the plans that you might want to implement. You can choose any mode of communication that best suits you and other members as well. E-mail, telephone, video conferencing, group meetings, and one on one interaction are some common communication types that you can put to use.

Rewarding

Nothing works better for motivation than a reward. Rewarding your team members for their good performance is an excellent way of telling them that their work is recognized. Throw in a part or give in a monetary reward for a good performance. Alternatively, you could even offer fringe benefits. Celebrating the success of the whole team is also a good idea.

Setting goals

It always becomes easier for people to work when they know the direction in which they are heading too. Thus, you should set goals for you team and make sure that all the members know of the same. Setting challenging goals is always a better option as they motivate all the members to work harder. However, make sure that the goals you set are realistic.

Providing aid

Your team members may need certain kind of aid or tools to achieve the goals that are set before them. It is important that you give your members the right aid to make things simpler for them. For instance, they may need additional labor or assistants to deliver a particular project. Marketing material, training, internal support, inventory, equipment etc are some other forms of aid that might be needed by your team members.

Try some of these tips and you are sure to set the motivation levels soaring. Remember, that a motivated team is synonymous to a successful team.

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Some Teamwork activities

Teamwork helps teams break down the barriers of time and distance. Shared-working experiences give team an instant access to any difficult problem.

A challenge for a leader of a group of people, such as in a work department or any sector, is to get everyone to pull together and build as a team instead of going in separate directions. There are many ways to foster a team. One way to foster teamwork is to involve the members in teamwork activities that require them to work together. Activities can be physical in nature or require the use of team brain power to solve any type of problem. Following activities are recommended:

Workplace Activities
Teamwork is important to a productive and healthy work environment, so teamwork activities should be a part of the workplace. Possible activities include starting a team newsletter that provides the latest information on activities and accomplishments of the team members, another one may be job swapping, where workers swap jobs with each other to develop empathy. It also requires workers to help each other to learn the jobs.

Social Activities
To develop teamwork is to get team members to become comfortable with each other. Informal social activities allow the team members to relax and have fun while developing the rapport necessary to function as a unit. Examples of social activities include a group picnic where every member is responsible for any type of task as example managing food or team sports such as volleyball or bowling, a lunch break or a dinner party may be arranged after a long tiring task.

Projects
Projects require that team member work together to achieve a common goal. Projects can involve assigning each team member a specific task that he is responsible for completing, another one is responsible for reviewing. Other activities may be like putting puzzles together or cleaning up or rebuilding a property which helps to develop trust among the team members.

Outdoor Activities
If members of the team are relatively fit, outdoor activities are a way for the team to get away from the "formal" environment. Activities such as camping, hiking, mountain biking etc allow the team members to relax while enjoying the fresh air and the sense of being "away from it all" can lead to bonding within the team.

There is never just one way to look at something – there are always different perspectives, meanings, and perceptions, depending on who is looking-unknown author.

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Motivate the team by exposing them!

Self-motivation is by far the most powerful and sustainable form of motivation. That said we don’t always have all doors open to us. As a manager of an effective team you can help keep individuals highly motivated by opening doors for them. Give high performance team members exposure to your management team or an area of the company that they aspire to be promoted or move to in the future. Keep the following points in mind though to ensure all involved get the most out of the experience:

      1. Determine your team members comfort level in presenting:

• Some will love to be on stage and simply need you to open the door – review in advance their role and guidelines on “airtime”.

• Some will love to be “in the room” but need multiple visits to feel comfortable presenting – bring the team member along and introduce them as a significant contributor and with you to hear feedback, give the credit and acknowledgement but don’t push for too much too fast.

      2. Be respectful of the audience – gain their buy in, in advance to ensure you aren’t bringing a team member to a meeting that was planned to review confidential information.

      3. Plan out your opportunities in advance but don’t “fill the slot” if the fit between the person, role and meeting is not the right match.

This form of recognition will both motivate individuals and demonstrate your commitment to the development of your team members.

Employee motivation is of great significance in enhancing an organizational performance. The level of employee efficiency and output will be tremendously increased due to employee motivation that will lead to higher profitability of the organization. More precisely, it is a vital factor in enhancing customer satisfaction since the employees are more overwhelmed and efficient in executing their duties.

In the recent past there has been increased concern regarding the role of employees' motivation in organizational performance. The business sector has received tremendous changes based on the increased competition for the last three to four decades. This has largely been influenced by the aspects of globalization. Due to globalization, business organizations have been forced to ensure the adoption of the best business practices that ensure efficiency and effectiveness. Corporate organizations ensure adoption of the most efficient human resources management strategies that will help in ensuring satisfaction and motivation of the employees.

With regard to the increasing competitors, every single business organization has switched out into investment considerably throughout staff motivation. There is certainly fantastic value throughout assuring complete worker motivation. This is essentially in the aspects of output along with customer pleasure. Research shows that there is a positive correlation between the actual degree of worker motivation and their particular performance and also output. Additionally, specific care can be paid on the role of employee motivation throughout boosting customer or client pleasure. Employees who are highly motivated have been determined to attempt their particular duties and responsibilities patiently. So employee motivation is important.

• Make time to motivate the team

Motivating each of our team members is something worth making time for. However, false praise is worse than no praise at all, it re-enforces bad behavior and most importantly demotivates the team members who do deserve accolades for their efforts and achievements. By motivating team members individually will be a superb way to motivate the whole team. So make a plan:

• Create a weekly plan – put together a chart of all the team members.

• Note for each team member how they would like to be praised/recognized – publicly or privately.

• Each week challenge yourself to recognize at least one team member- in the team members preferred way.

Rotate through each of the team members, key rule – do not praise/recognize unless fully deserved you don’t have to go through the list in a linear manner, just be cognizant of how often you have recognized or not recognized each individual. If you find there is someone that you are never in a position to praise/recognize, take steps to rectify by digging deeper into why that is and manage through to end up with a team of self motivated individuals that make your motivating job an easy one.

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