Many managers I’ve worked with in my leadership training and coaching work expect their staff to be self-motivated and their teams to function with little direct leadership. They are disappointed and frustrated when this doesn’t happen. Often, they blame team members, especially the “next generation”, for not having a strong work ethic.
The reality is that many team members start out self-motivated and eager to be productive. However, they often lose their positive edge without skilled, engaged leaders. Two things that demotivate teams are:
- The lack of clear direction, expectations, and mission
- The feeling that bosses don’t care about them as workers and individuals, a lack of feeling appreciated
This is compounded by the distance created through remote work.
Motivating Teams
When I ask the following question: “What do you get for working extra hard?”, participants in my classes uniformly give the same answer: “More work.” That’s not a great motivator for working hard. And as a bonus, good workers often feel unappreciated by bosses who focus on dealing with problem employees and end up ignoring good workers.
This goes doubly for teams. Teams whose members are not highly motivated and lack engaged leadership perform poorly. They drift from being low performing to being in conflict, siloed working, and even to physical fights due to feeling frustrated, treated unfairly, and stressed. Managers shake their heads, mutter about how worthless teams really are and focus on getting the individuals to do the best they can.
The Potential of Teams
Building and leading high-performing teams is a challenge, but one with great rewards. Positive, collaborative teamwork provides many tangible benefits. A few examples are:
- having extra hands to pitch in when one member is overloaded
- bringing in fresh perspectives and new ideas to a difficult problem
- finding new ways for different areas to collaborate and get the highest performance and efficiency
- meeting the needs many workers have for connecting with their co-workers
Two Keys to Skilled Team Leadership
1 – Purpose and Vision: Having and communicating a clear, motivating vision for the team’s goals, day-to-day work, and opportunities for collaboration energizes a team. It can be exciting to work on a team that has a clear, meaningful purpose. People come together when they have a shared purpose that they value. When working towards a valued goal, it feels good to know you have teammates who back you up, help you out, and bring in new ideas.
2 – Be clear about rules and roles
- Talk about and identify where teamwork is most effective. Where is it better for people to work alone?
- Be clear about who needs to go to specific meetings so only those most essential are there. Find ways to keep other members up to date without forcing them to sit through unnecessary meetings.
- What decisions are made by consensus? Which by the internal experts? Which by the boss? Having a set of agreed-upon rules of the road makes for smoother driving.
Team leadership works best when it’s fully distributed with clear roles and responsibilities. Every team member should take leadership roles in their area of expertise, and all should be on the lookout to facilitate team challenges and friction. Managers need to be comfortable with some uncertainty and variation in approach and need to stay engaged so they know when they need to step in and take charge.
Team Self-evaluation
Self-evaluation and reflection are other important elements for team success. From time to time, teams need to stop and assess how effectively they are achieving their mission. They need to review how well they are working within their boundaries and how well leadership is serving the team. Listening is a key skill here. Team members and leaders need to regularly look and listen to assess how the team is doing overall and how well individuals are working together.
Lastly…Trust
And finally, to be successful, teams need to have trust. This is the most difficult to gain and the easiest to lose. If teams put the above strategies in place, trust is usually the result. And as soon as mistrust rears its head, leaders need to step up, flag it, and address the underlying issues.
People are Different!
One final note is that every team member is unique and has different preferences for how they work and communicate. Some want to be fully engaged with the team, others need time alone to reflect, plan and get work done. Some are ready to run full throttle while others want to consult and consider alternative options. The more a team and team leader can acknowledge, celebrate and draw upon these differences, the better a team will function. Our T.E.A.M. Communication Styles® model helps leaders and teams understand these differences and learn how to build collaboration through them. We’d love to help your team work together more effectively. Contact us for more information.