The Key to Motivating Your Team
Why is it that some of your employees are super motivated, while others seem quite the opposite? This can be one of the most frustrating things to navigate as a leader! Shouldn't every paid employee show up each day, eager to do great work?
The truth is that a lack of motivation often stems as much from the manager's approach as it does from the employee's disposition.
One of your greatest responsibilities as a leader is to understand and leverage the unique motivation styles within your team. This likely feels daunting—perhaps even unfair—but once you figure it out, the return on this investment of time and effort becomes exponential.
Not sure where to start? Check out the BONUS guide below.
Need help getting started? One of the best ways to motivate is to show meaningful appreciation. Check out this cheat sheet — a guide that will help you learn how to show appreciation to others in a way that actually resonates.
Download The Languages of Appreciation Guide now to get access to:
A 5-minute assessment that identifies your appreciation style
A step-by-step plan for discussing assessment results with your team
Practical strategies for skillfully communicating with different appreciation styles that you can apply immediately
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My two girls are very different and as such, they have gravitated toward different activities.
One of them, the younger one, prefers contact sports and she has chosen soccer as her favorite sport. And what motivates her in soccer? It's the competition. Specifically, it's winning. She is always keeping track of the score, even at practice when they're doing little drills and nobody else is keeping track of the score between the little teams doing the drill, in her head, she is very diligently keeping track of it and that is what motivates her to continue to work hard and improve.
My other daughter, the older one, has chosen gymnastics as her sport and she is also extremely motivated, but in a totally different way. She very diligently sets specific goals for herself and then works hard toward those goals, but could really care less about how she stacks up against everyone else. It's pretty interesting. She has another meet in a couple weeks and she just told me last night her specific goals for every single one of her events and how she is training to achieve those goals in this next meet. So specific, but really intrinsically motivated.
It's the same thing with your team members. Leaders, every single one of your employees is motivated in a different way. Every employee feels appreciated in a different way. And it is your responsibility and privilege to figure out how to uniquely and specifically motivate every employee on your team in a way that is meaningful to them.
And so if you don't know how to do that, and if you are not adapting your style in that way, it's time to start to dive into that. And if you really don't know where to start, simply ask them. Ask them to share a time when they felt most appreciated or most motivated in their work. Ask them what you are doing as their leader that helps them feel most appreciated and motivated. And what kind of dampens that for them.
Just ask and they'll tell you, and then you can start to tap into that even more.