Motivation:
As a simplest definition, motivation is emotional entity
that aspires each individual to perform certain tasks without much external
intervention, on time, with great quality and less
rework
It is choice/desire to achieve a goal with in certain
timelines.
Common
Mistakes:
What motivate you may not motivates
others:
Don’t provide suggestion based on your experience and
factors that motivates you. Respect individual and his aspirations. Two
individuals are never same and their thoughts and goals differ from others.
Prepare a list of the team member that you assume that individual gets
motivated. Have open discussion to know what motivates him at the first place;
and work with him to motivational factors that he is
interested
Remuneration and Perks is not only a source of
motivations:
Yes, as short term benefits, use this as motivational
means. However, this won’t be never a critical motivational factor for any
individual on a long run.
Motivate team or
themselves?
Can a leader really
motivates others: To large extend this is a myth. Leader can understand the
motivational factors and channelize your energy on those lines and get the best
out of you. Motivation lies with you. You have understand what will motivate
you.
Motivations can only come from inside, as leader you
can’t inject the motivation to an employee by providing some goodies, perks,
incentive, bonus etc. If you are doing so, it may give you short-term
benefit.
From my personal experience working as Solution Architect
on multiple assignments for a major Telcos, providing a recognition or an award
or a promotion (band changes) will motivate me not more than 1-2 days. It is a
fact for many with higher experiences cadre, the real factors get them going is
professional challenges and understanding their personal needs (Refer Marslow’s
Hierarchies of Needs). Those are coming under intrinsic needs that provides
motivations.
Strategies and
Techniques:
Make Individual
Important:
To provide a positive feedback on the work item that
received a good feedback from Customer. This will motivate an individual and
feel him proud and important to the
team.
Build Collaborative
activities:
In a big implementation projects Project Manager or
supervisor can easily do the collaboration activities; or at least it can
managed easily compared to Support team providing IT support, where most of the
team members are treated individually for most of the SLA and day to day
activities.
Typical example is on CallCenter support even there is
team that performs tasks for certain specialized areas and team lead who assigns
the tasks; but in reality the overall performance is purely assessed on an
individual level for certain
accomplishments.
To build collaborative team activity is very prominent
for my role during an assignment with a global support organization. To make
this happen, in-addition to the daily support activities, I have insisted the
team to take some new technical features of latest product releases and make
some POC (Proof of Concepts) so that the team is always feel the importance of
the team
activities.
Other initiative already in the same organization is to
support the rest of team members using internal comments for pertaining issues
they have on the Trouble tickets, co-author with other team members on some
technical white papers
etc.
Create a light hearted atmosphere to make sure the
collaboration is
happening.
Decision
Maker:
Be open to employee and make them decision maker for most
of the part. Reach them only if you have clarification. A tough for managers if
you have new team and unsure about the culture and each individual capabilities.
But with 1yr with a team or even shorter, depending on your managerial
experience you can provide the autonomy to the team
members.
Open your Ear and
doors:
As leader needs to listen to the team members, your
communication is firmly on listening to on giving commands to the team members.
Create an open door culture, so that the team member can reach you at any
instance to have a open discussion over a
coffee/tea.
Communication, Information and
Goals:
In your group, I am sure that there could
be at least one member how would love to work
on pre-defined goals. The team member works exceptionally great if the tasks are
properly defined and there is not much change (No change) at all. For some part
of my career due to lack of motivation, I too got into a phase similar to
this.
For those employees tackle them by providing information,
clarifying the goals and continual guidance (sometime it may not well received)
but needs to be
given.
Make sure that the Motivation is continual
activity:
Managers are tend to loss focus on motivational aspects,
most of the motivation discussion is short term activities. However, this has to
be changed and needs to have the focus as continues exercise. If possible have a
1:1 at least once in a month. Usually, you are in situation your direct
reporters are crossing 50+; then there is some change required in your system.
You are on peak time to introduce some additional succession plan for
you.
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