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Managing and motivating a team

Guest post by: Leonard Sklar

Article Overview: Keeping team members happy and productive is not rocket science. A few simple, time-tested approaches will produce outstanding results.

Managing and motivating a team

Managing and motivating a team to produce suberb results on a consistent basis incorporates a few psychologically sound, consistently applied approaches in communicating with team members. In no particular order, here are the key elements. Maximum success requires ALL of them.

1. Go out of you way to acknowledge good work as well as good results, both to the individual and to others on the team. (Some managers are afraid to do this out of the fear that this will encourage the recipient of the praise to ask for a raise or some other benefit, or else help create a swelled ego. This is sloppy thinking). Of all the items that employees have been asked to list that motivates them, being acknowledged for any good job done is number one. Surprisingly, getting a salary increase is way down on that list.

2. As a corrollary to the above, any evidence of poor work must also be acknowledged, preferably with just the offending individual, not publically. To take the issue of poor performance a step further, a member of the team who consistently does poor work must not only be confronted and given a chance to improve, but if this is a pattern of poor performance that indicates the employee should be terminated, then termination is the right thing to do. One important test of the skill level of a manager is the willingness to terminate, as well as confront, when necessary. Some managers simply can't or won't do it. Further, if a poorly performing member of the team is allowed to remain on the team, the remaining members will certainly notice, will usually resent the mollycoddling of the offender, have less respect for the manager, and, overall, perform less well.

3. Training of team members should be continuous. Regular meetings are essential to flush out problems, acknowledge successes, set goals, and simply learn more. If short term prizes for performance are part of the program, it often helps if the team members, rather than management, create the prize and the goal needed to achieve it. If the team is a sales team, regular role-playing exercises are essential to either expand individual sales performances or, as a bonus, more quickly find out who should really be doing some other job because selling is "not their thing", and the sooner you find that out, the better off you are.

4. Team members are notjust employees. They also have a life outside work, and that life can cause stresses that employees, inevitably, bring with them to work. The challenge is how to appropriately deal with the impact of the outside life so that the employee is as productive as possible. One approach I have found effective is to let the troubled employee know that you are aware that he or she is not a happy camper and invite them into your office for a private chat. Assure them that you realize that life isn't always fantastic and that you have also had to deal with issues that were troubling at the time. The essential element of this approach is that any and all employeesmust becertain that what they reveal to you will never be communicated to anyone else and that there is no shame in seeing you privately in your office. During the chat, if you can be of help - great. If a therapist is advisable, feel free to suggest that. For the troubled employee, just getting the problem off their chest is often a release to better performance.

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Article Tags: performance, team motivation, training



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