10 Secrets to Help Motivate Your Team

Building great teams starts with great leadership. As a manager, your job is about more than just delivering results. Your team members depend on you to help them keep their eyes on the prize. They look to you for support, encouragement, and most of all, for the motivation to deliver more than what is expected of them. Your passion for the work will inspire theirs, and by helping your team stay energized, positive, and driven toward your shared goals, you can position yourself and your team members for unprecedented success.

Here are 10 easy ways to motivate your team:

1.  Listen Up: It’s easy to make assumptions about what employees want and who they are, but to truly motivate your employees, you’ll have to start listening. Spend one-on-one time with each team member to learn more about their goals, dreams, and challenges. Take a pause before responding with your own ideas to ensure you’ve fully absorbed what they’ve told you.

2.  Ask Questions: Ask team members questions to help figure out what motivates them and what is holding them back. Instead of telling them why they should care, help them discover for themselves what drives them.

3.  Create a Positive Work Environment: It’s simple. Happy employees are motivated employees, and unhappy employees find it challenging to stay engaged. Examine the culture at your office, and ask yourself if you were a team member, would you feel supported and excited to come to work? If the answer is no, start brainstorming ways you might be able to change things. If you get stuck, enlist the help of your employees. The simple act of including them in the process may motivate employees to work even harder.

4.   Take a Personalized Approach: One size does not fit all when it comes to motivation. Relate to your employees on an individual level and adjust your leadership approaches according to what works best for each of them.

5.   Set High Expectations: It’s hard to feel motivated when your supervisor does not seem to believe in you and expects you to fail. Instead of focusing on what the employee is doing wrong, reassure your team member that you know he or she can blow it out of the water.

6.   Earn their Trust: Employees need to believe you when you say you have their interests at heart. Managers who expect employees to work hard just because it makes them look good, quickly foster resentment that can infect and demotivate the whole team. Make it clear that you want them to succeed, not for your benefit, but for theirs.

7.   Offer to Help: Setting clear expectations is great, but employees also like to know that their managers have their backs. Let employees know you’re there to support them in any way they need.

8.   Focus on Growth: Studies have shown that money alone, is not an effective incentive to drive performance. While it may seem counterintuitive, employees are far more motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose. To get your employees charged up, talk about their hopes and dreams for the future, recognize their improvements, and rally around your purpose as an organization.

9.   Check in Often: Motivation is not something you can set and forget. Let employees know you’re paying attention. Acknowledge progress, praise accomplishments, and help team members look for potential solutions to their challenges.

10.   Be a Good Example: Wanting your team to perform is a no brainer, but are you leading by example? You can’t expect your employees to feel motivated if you’re not fully invested too. Give employees something to aspire to by maintaining a positive attitude and by constantly looking for ways to go above and beyond.

Remember that high-performing, motivated teams start with great leaders. Most employees want to do well. They just need good managers who can help them keep their eye on the things that matter. Following these simple steps can help fuel your team members’ drive to succeed.

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We are Cydcor, the recognized leader in outsourced sales services located in Agoura Hills, CA. From our humble beginnings as an independent sales company to garnering a reputation as the global leader in outsourced sales, Cydcor touts having exceptional sales professionals and providing our clients with proven sales and marketing strategies that get results.