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Top 5 Tips for Maintaining Momentum

Guest post by: Marja Botha van Doorn

Article Overview: It is May and most of us are back into the full swing of living our life and running our businesses. In January we explored New Year’s resolutions as a means of setting personal and business goals. If you are like most people, then you'll have a limited window of opportunity during the first few days of January to harness your motivation. After that, most people forget their resolutions completely. As business leader, it is your responsibility to keep the ball rolling, utilizing and maintaining momentum to not just achieve immediate objectives, but your long-term vision as well. In this month’s article we discuss 5 tips for maintaining momentum:

Top 5 Tips for Maintaining Momentum

It is May and most of us are back into the full swing of living our life and running our businesses. In January we explored New Year’s resolutions as a means of setting personal and business goals.

If you are like most people, then you'll have a limited window of opportunity during the first few days of January to harness your motivation. After that, most people forget their resolutions completely.

As business leader, it is your responsibility to keep the ball rolling, utilizing and maintaining momentum to not just achieve immediate objectives, but your long-term vision as well.

When good leaders see momentum developing within their organization and harness it, positive results happen at a much more rapid pace and success becomes almost second nature. But to keep momentum going, you must revisit what started it, re-set goals, and re-energize, recognize and reward your team.

In this month’s article we discuss 5 tips for maintaining momentum:

Re-Set Greater Challenges

Perhaps the easiest thing to do to maintain momentum for your team is to keep raising the bar. Once a goal is achieved, it is easy for your organization as a whole to ease off the accelerator, pull back and catch a collective breath.

Setting new company-wide objectives each time one is achieved will consistently keep you moving full steam ahead corporately. Keep the new goals attainable and in line with what got you started—and make sure they fit in with the overall vision you have already created.

Review Individual Efforts

Individual efforts within your organization helped create the initial momentum, and they will be crucial to helping maintain it.

In addition to establishing new corporate goals, meet individually with each player on your team. Evaluate their contributions for the previous momentum push and outline the next steps needed from him or her to keep things accelerating. Also gauge their perspective of where things were, where they are now and where they are going to keep an active read on the momentum pulse of your corporate culture.

Re-Energize

You do not want to be a task master, constantly pushing people to the brink of exhaustion, to keep momentum. Give subordinates a break when appropriate to prevent burn out—whether it is a corporate outing or simply a day away from the office—allowing them to get re-energized and refocused on the task at hand.

Just be wary of too much of a break and keep the focus on re-energizing, not relaxing.

Remind

Something started the momentum you are experiencing. While you may not be able to completely recapture what created the initial buzz, you can facilitate events that will remind your team of what got them here.

Holding corporate outings, retreats, training sessions, and team-building exercises on a regular basis will rekindle the original vision and purpose of the team, helping further a sense of excitement and keep your pace.

Recognize and Reward

Being a part of something big can get anyone excited and build momentum. But once the newness is gone, catering to the individual can keep things rolling for your team. Celebrate victories that have been hard-earned to generate the momentum by rewarding your team, either with symbolic accolades or real value awards.

Offer ongoing incentives for team members who routinely go above and beyond and recognize their efforts on an organizational-wide basis. Not only will it encourage recipients to continue their efforts, but others will be motivated as well.

Until next month - Empower your Mind, Inspire your Soul

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Article Tags: Maintaining Momentum, Motivation



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