We often hear from our clients that motivation is something internal and managers do not need to invest their time in efforts to engage their team members. Of course, engagement is an emotional and deeply personal experience, and it is not simple or straightforward to address.
However, study after study shows that employee engagement is not just an organizational nicety. It is a business imperative linked to a number of performance outcomes, including profitability, customer satisfaction, and turnover.
According to Harvard Business Review, an engaged employee is 45% more productive than a merely satisfied worker.
When people are motivated, they are personally invested in their work and will make extraordinary efforts to contribute time and energy to business activities. A high-performance team is made up of motivated people. Motivation becomes the fuel for performance.
What benefits having an engaged and motivated team will bring to you as a leader?
Greater things can happen when people are engaged. Their work behavior is energized, focused, and more aligned to the needs of the company. This can improve profitability, quality, productivity, revenue, customer satisfaction, innovation, and retention.
Once you co-create an environment that brings out the best in employees, they begin to view the company’s problems as their own and take personal responsibility for its success. As a result, you may enjoy more freedom while your team operates with a high level of autonomy.
What is the cost of doing nothing?
Think of motivation like the battery of your phone. You want to keep charging it. Every action you take to motivate one team member may create a temporary spike in motivation, but then the charge begins to drop again over time.
You should make sure your team’s charge level does not drop too far. As the level gets close to zero, performance problems and conflicts start to appear, and people may even leave the team.
Eventually, you may find yourself surrounded by apathy. Nobody takes initiative. Employees simply show up, go through the motions, and collect a salary. Disengagement negatively affects productivity, turnover, and the overall health of the company. It is not a small problem.
What might be some steps to engage and motivate your team?
1Start with yourself
To keep your organization engaged, you must remain engaged, curious, and connected yourself. If you are lacking engagement, it will show on your face and affect your behavior and communication.
Get your own house in order. Figure out what will excite you again and get involved.
2Tell inspiring company stories
If we are told something through narrative, we are more likely to connect with the message. Stories are easier for the human brain to process and they help bridge facts with emotion.
Compare a manager who simply congratulates the team for achieving its goals with a manager who tells stories about how specific individuals helped push the company over a difficult goal line. Stories make recognition more human and memorable.
3Share the big picture
When employees can relate their daily tasks to the overall purpose of the company, they understand the importance of their work. It is the difference between laying bricks and building the cathedral.
Leaders can make each person feel that the work they do has meaning. When people understand the purpose of their work and its contribution to colleagues, the organization, and society, motivation becomes stronger and more sustainable.
4Allow bigger autonomy
Teams often respond positively to more responsibility and authority in their daily work. This connects strongly with self-determination theory and the universal human need for autonomy.
Ask for opinions, invite ideas, do something with those ideas, and give recognition when people contribute meaningfully.
5Find out what engages your employees
Each person has different motivational factors. The first challenge is to discover what these are for each member of your team.
The best way to understand what motivates someone is simply to ask them directly. Observation helps over time, but few things are as valuable as an honest conversation focused on what really matters to that person.
6Appreciation
Recognize effort, progress, good work, results, and improvement. Leaders need to constantly look for reasons to acknowledge the members of the team.
It is easy to focus only on faults and what needs improvement, but positive reinforcement matters deeply. People like to be recognized in different ways, but when done well, recognition helps people feel seen and appreciated.
7Having fun at work
There is a direct connection between fun at work and productivity, creativity, morale, satisfaction, and retention.
Teams can play, enjoy themselves, and still remain serious and professional about their work. Fun does not reduce standards. In many cases, it strengthens connection and energy.
