Challenging Your Team To Achieve Motivation
By Leanne Crain
One of the toughest things leaders face, both personally and in the team environment, is motivation. Often it can become a struggle to keep yourself motivated, and balance keeping your team motivated at the same time. It's a hard line to walk, and yet it's crucial for leadership, and team, success.
We have spoken in past articles about different ways of keeping your team functioning well - such as positive feedback, aligning them through a common vision and mission, and encouraging them to win as a team, not individually. Today, I want to talk to you about motivating your team by challenging them.
It's easy for leaders to fall into the trap of taking everything on themselves. When there are important tasks to be done, a feeling can arise of needing to handle things personally, or perhaps that it's too tough for your team to handle. While there is always going to be tasks that no one but you can do, we must consistently try to remind ourselves that we are equipped with a very capable team as well. Remember, each team member has a set of strengths that vary from the next, and as leaders we need to tap into that.
Let's get back to challenging your team. I will tell you a secret. Your team WANTS to be challenged. They WANT to be motivated, and they really do want to be excited to come to work every day. They love to have tasks that make their minds come alive and stimulate new ideas. There is a flip side to this though, and one we need to be mindful of. We must make sure the challenge is not an impossible challenge. When you task your team with what they perceive as an impossible challenge, you will have the opposite reaction of what you are looking for. Again, it's a tough call, but if you really feel it's going to be too much for your team, why not break it down into smaller tasks that you can work towards in order to achieve the overall end goal.
As I mentioned above, it's easy for leaders to feel that they need to take everything on themselves. Instead, why not take some of your challenging tasks, and give them to your team to help you with. Let your team show you how creative they can be, and how many different ways they can come up with to get to the best solution. Explain to them why it needs to be accomplished, what is so important about it, and set deadlines that things need to be done by. Encourage them to work with each other and bounce ideas off each other to find the best solutions. By aligning the team with a common goal, giving them a challenge to motivate them, and empowering them to work with each other to become more effective as a whole, you will start to see that spark in their eyes again - that spark that tells you they are motivated and connecting. Of course, the company will also be reaping the benefits as new ideas and solutions come forth that may not have been found otherwise.
For more ideas on leadership and team work, please contact Gary Gzik at ggzik@bizxcel.com
Leanne Crain is a Marketing Assistant for BizXcel. Her background is marketing and tourism, and she has over 12 years experience in the sales and marketing field.
