Ensuring a motivational drive is the fastest and most efficient way to get team members to perform at their best and make sure your business can grow sustainably. It means your team members desire to learn more about what they do, contribute by bringing in all their strengths, and get things done. High-performing teams share a few thinking styles that drive them forward.
In the modern VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world, unless you keep up with your field and have a genuine interest in what you do, it can be tough to keep up and not be overwhelmed. Without a shared identity within the team, people can lose motivation. They want to feel valued by their company and their managers.
But for many organizations, businesses and managers, it is difficult to identify what motivates a team. In addition, many of us now work with more diverse groups than ever. It’s great when everything works well, but it also means team members might have different needs and interpret the key concepts I discuss below differently. When people come from very different backgrounds, the challenges can be more significant.
So, where do you even start?
Team motivation: the key ingredients that should be part of every manager’s playbook
Motivation is the most effective way to achieve growth. But there is one step you can’t miss along the way. Because your team consists of different individuals, you should spend time discussing these concepts with them. It will help you create your own “standard operating procedures” that will help you on the road to reaching your strategic goals. These SOPs will effectively support the optimal culture you want to create.
The challenges your team faces are probably unique to your team and business. Offering people bonuses, perks, and benefits will be positive, but it won’t help create more momentum if individuals feel disconnected. To support sustainable growth and team motivation, you need to know what your team is thinking right now.
That’s where a few key concepts affecting motivation and shared by high-performing teams come in. They will help you understand what to look for when you start discussing with your team and asking them questions.
Accountability
A high-performing team shares the idea that all team members are accountable for the team performance and actions. Whether they lead to success or failure.
You can even hear this when team members talk. For example, they might refer to “our clients” or say, “we have a problem”. That means the team members hold both themselves and each other accountable.
All countries do not have ‘accountability’ as a word. It was initially an Anglo-Saxon concept. If your team is international, you need to make sure your team members understand the idea the same way. In my home country, Finland, we don’t have the word accountability either but instead talk about shared responsibility. In Finland, the idea of there being consequences for not holding yourself and others accountable is not always expected. Also, in high power distance countries (like most countries of the world), people are expected to be compliant rather than accountable. This is why determining the meaning of accountability is crucial for the team.
Autonomy
How much autonomy people want and are comfortable with varies again from culture to culture. Still, all of us want some power and flexibility over our schedule as it helps us match work with our personal lives.
At work, autonomy means controlling when, how, and with whom we do our job. It isn’t easy to find motivation if you feel like everything is out of control.
Mastery
Mastery takes this idea a little bit further. The challenges faced in the work environment should be at the optimal level. If the obstacles are too big, they will overwhelm individuals. On the other hand, if tasks are too small, people might become bored and not see the purpose of why they are doing the work.
High-performing teams tend to share the idea that there is always room for improvement, and each team member can grow. Therefore, they are always looking for ways to get better at mastering their job.
Purpose
At the beginning of this article, I mentioned that individuals want to feel valued and feel a shared identity between the team and their organization. To have this, everyone in the team needs to know the organization’s purpose and feel like it aligns with their values.
On the other hand, high-performing teams tend to share the feeling that the team members are competent and motivated to level up.
Find the right motivators for your business and team
There is no doubt that your team and company will benefit from motivation. Having people work together with a common purpose, the will to succeed, and the belief that they are working with others who share their cause and are competent in achieving the desired results are the main factors to contribute to the motivational drive leading to growth.
A word of warning, though: it is impossible to copy what someone else is doing. Your team members are individuals affected by their cultural background, experiences, and environment.
Look for honest questions and ways to measure where your team is now and be genuine about what you are trying to achieve and what the shared success will look like for your team and organization.
It’s also worth looking at opportunities for training and using tested and validated analysis tools to measure where your team is now and strategies relevant to your current challenges. You can start by checking out our Growth Zone tool that helps in measuring your team motivation. We will be happy to share how we help measure where your team is currently at and how they can level up through real-life action steps.