Keeping yourself and your team motivated
Motivating employees is vital if employers are to achieve maximum performance, productivity, loyalty and levels of engagement. Motivation is not just a management tactic; it’s a personal responsibility in any individual’s life. In business the overall culture and quality of the organisation’s management are key drivers, there are lots of other ‘carrots’ available to employers to help them improve motivation.

There are a wide variety of methods available for motivating staff, at prices to suit all budgets. These range from recognising employees’ achievements by simply saying ‘thank you’, to team building events, individual incentives, staff and team awards, social events and financial recognition.

The great thing about employee motivation is that it can be researched and recorded using techniques such as a motivation questionnaire. We’ve got a great survey available for your teams to use at www.illumine.co.uk/motivate-survey.

Our top tips to motivate
1. The link between innovation and motivation – your employees will have ideas about how to improve the organisation. Unfortunately, many managers fail to encourage the contribution of these ideas, sometimes they can inadvertently discourage this. By giving your employees access to creativity tools and techniques, and encouraging them to use them and share their findings you’ll motivate too.

2. Motivate yourself - a great place to start learning about motivation is to start understanding what motivates you. ‘Passion’ is contagious. If you’re passionate about your job and the organisation, others will become more positive too. Also, if you’re doing a good job of taking care of yourself and your own job, you’ll have a much clearer perspective on how others are doing in theirs. Find out what motivates you and your people by completing our motivation survey at www.illumine.co.uk/motivate-survey.

3. Know and agree on what’s required of you – team and individuals objectives and goals should be aligned to the goals of the organisation. Otherwise you’ll be wasting time and possibly changing the direction of the organisation. Goals and objectives will normally have been decided during strategic planning, and then delivered during individual appraisals and job reviews. A good way of motivating employees and teams is to ensure that they have input when identifying their goals. After all, people own what they help to create. Difficult situations can be resolved through the use of facilitators or facilitation skills – see www.illumine.co.uk/facilitate.

4. Understanding what creates ‘passion’ in your employees - Even though it sounds simple, creating passion at work requires skill and mastery to change behaviour patterns, and start your people thinking consciously and acting in a manner that will create passion in the workplace (we call this PassionFlow™).

We all know (hopefully) what it feels like to be passionate about our work. But few people can tell us what gives rise to that feeling. Our research reveals to us the “magic formula” for passion: “Passion is a strong emotion that happens within each of us when we are doing meaningful work that makes us feel better about ourselves at a pace that feels like real progress.”

We offer a programme called PassionWorks!™. It’s a programme that de-mystifies passion at work. Passionworks!™ will ensure individuals, teams and leaders find their passion in their work. This then ensures that they move towards PassionFlow™ (see figure 1). In doing this they will influence others around them to feel the same. Find out more at www.illumine.co.uk/pasw.

5. Support and endorse employee motivation – By recognising motivation and motivating from the top down you’ll see the results as they filter back up.

Established motivation schemes (such as performance and compensation systems, regular training, motivational policies and procedures) will ensure that you don’t just count on strong interpersonal relationships with employees to help motivate them. You need to remember that the nature of any relationship can change during times of change and stress.

6. Reward and celebrate - past, present and future – If someone does well they should be rewarded. Whether it’s a financial reward or just a ‘pat on the back’. You should be careful not to keep rewarding the same employees, as this breeds discontent. You should also be careful not to ignore what someone has done well, as this also breeds discontent. Rewards can be given in a public forum or in a private meeting.

Celebrating success is a good idea to generate team and individual motivation. The celebration could be at a company or team meeting; it could be at regular social events. Without ongoing acknowledgement of success, employees become frustrated, sceptical and even cynical about their efforts for the organisation.

This article features in our ‘Do More WIth Less’ Guide that was first published April 2009. Download your copy here.

Tags: Engagement and Motivation, PassionWorks! (Training)

Author's Bio: 

Clive Lewis is one of the world's leading experts in Mind Mapping, speed reading, creative thinking and understanding what motivates and engages people in the workplace.
He is also the Managing Director and co-founder of Illumine Training.

Clive has unparalleled experience of delivering keynote speeches and practical breakout sessions to diverse groups and organisations throughout the public and private sectors in the UK. He has developed a reputation for delivering entertaining and inspiring keynote speeches and presentations.

Some recent engagements have included:

A Mind Mapping and Problem Solving Keynote for The Bank of America (delivered over 3 continents through live audience and video conferencing).
Creativity for the Managers Conference at Royal Bank of Scotland Assistance.
Professional Institute Conferences and branch events for CIPD, ACCA, CIMA and Junior Chamber of Commerce International
Drawing on his strong business background (along with a business degree and Accounting qualification he has worked to FD level in the IT industry, and as Senior Management Consultant) Clive creates customised interactive experiences to ensure meaningful dialogue among attendees. Sessions can be based around key themes, current issues or shared working experiences. His business understanding is reinforced with his regular training and coaching of a range of clients in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. He works at all levels within organisations and his experience of and enthusiasm for his subjects shines through in all of his speaking opportunities.

Clive is also a highly experienced executive coach providing one to one coaching to senior business professionals.

Clive's profile is such that he is frequently asked to comment in the media. He has been interviewed for news programmes on BBC Radio 2, the World Service, Channel Five and Five Live as well as most of the major national newspapers. In addition he has written many articles about managing information overload and creative thinking. Most recently these include The Guardian, Training Journal, The Manager, Personnel Today and Customer Management.

Clive was elected a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants in 1992 and is a member of the Institute of Directors. Prior to co-founding Illumine he spent eight years as a Senior Management Consultant with Coopers & Lybrand. As a Consultant he led many assignments in diverse industries and has worked in many different countries.

If you would like Clive to speak at your next event call us on +44 (0)1753 866633, or email info@illumine.co.uk.