The One Thing You Need to Know about Team Motivation
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Let me ask you a simple question. Do you, as a manager, want a highly motivated team who don’t take time off work, who achieve their goals and objectives, and don’t stress you out in the process?
I’m sure the answer is – Yes! However, you’re no doubt asking how you’re supposed to achieve this ‘miracle.’
The one thing you need to know about team motivation is that – there’s no such thing! Okay, so the football manager ‘motivates’ the team by getting them together at half-time and ‘explaining’ how they’re about to lose the game unless they start to play a lot better. (This, of course, is the polite version)
However, the only way to build a highly motivated team is to concentrate on individual motivation and create an environment where the individual ‘motivates them self.’
Every member of your team is a complex and complicated human being and they all have different needs. Your job, as a Motivational Manager, is to find out what these needs are, and satisfy them.
There are 3 actions you can take:
1. Spend some quality time with each team member – One or two minutes of quality time on a regular basis is far more productive than an appraisal once a year. You need to get to know the individual better and they need to get to know you. You’ll gain a much better understanding of them and how they’re handling the job. It will also send the message that you care about them and show that you’re there to help with problems, both personal and business. Read More→
2 Sure-Fire Tips for Self Motivation
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Let me tell you a quick story. When I started my business in 1993, I faced all the challenges experienced by most new business start-ups. I also had to deal with the all the negative situations; the people who said – “The Speaking and Training business is a hard market to break into, it’s very competitive, you’re very brave! There was also the rejection from potential customers and the people who’d let me down at the last minute.
I quickly realized that if I was going to be successful, there were two things that I really needed. Lots of BRAIN ENERGY and lots of BODY ENERGY.
Sure-fire tip number 1 is – Build your Brain Energy.
Imagine that you’ve just been rejected for a bank loan, or you’ve just been turned down by a potential customer, or a publishing company has rejected the book that you’ve slaved over for the past couple of years.
If you react with – “Oh no, not again, I’m really fed up with this. These people are a real pain. They’re making a big mistake. What am I going to do now?”
This sort of reaction drains your brain of energy, adds to your stress levels and destroys your self motivation.
Reacting drains the brain – thinking less so. Read More→
Daniel Pink on the surprising science of motivation
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www.ted.com Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t: Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories — and maybe, a way forward.
tedtalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.
Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the “Sixth Sense” wearable tech, and “Lost” producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery.
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and tedtalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at www.ted.com Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 tedtalks at www.ted.com
A Person of Influence
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Copyright (c) 2008 GainMore Advantage
Every single thing you do and say has a degree of influence on you and on others. You are part of their external environment. You even exert a small degree of gravitational force on others, indeed, you exert gravitational force on the planet! Not a lot admittedly, but your mass does attract other mass. You knew that you should have paid attention in science class now. Just as aside, it’s quite a useful factoid for use when you have gained a few pounds of weight – you do so in order to become more attractive! That’s put paid to the glamor magazines.
The same is true for other people exerting their influence over you. Everything that other people say or do is a part of your external environment and that exerts an influence in turn over your behavior.
The external environment beyond other human beings, also has some influence over you. The weather for example – when it is raining, it is quite likely that you would alter your ‘normal’ behavior by carrying an umbrella, or wearing a rain-proof coat. You know for sure that the weather can have a major influence over your golf. When there is lightening, you would wisely move away from the fairways under the trees or into the clubhouse. Being struck by lightening is one influence that everyone can do without. Read More→
Influencing Skills – How To Influence People
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There is no right way, nor is there only one way to influence others. Everything, but everything, is a factor when influencing people.
And we are, all of us, influenced by people, places, events and situations at all times. Sometimes we are affected more or less by these things, but we are continually being influenced by what happens around us.
So what about the specifics in the workplace?
Your job requires you to influence people just about all of the time. It may take the form of gaining support, inspiring others, persuading other people to become your champions, engaging someone’s imagination, creating relationships.
Whatever form it takes, being an excellent influencer makes your job easier.
An interesting point about people who use their influencing skills well, is that other people like being around them. There’s a kind of exciting buzz, or sense that things happen when they’re about.
It’s because they don’t sit around wishing things were different while moaning there’s nothing they can do about it.
They don’t sit around blaming others or complaining about what needs fixing that will make things better. They see what needs doing and set about getting it done. Read More→
Employee Motivation: Elements of Greatness
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For a DVD of this video, email Candice.Cameron@profilesmail.com – The music is “The Stopping Place” by Sam Cardon and Don Stirling from the album “Faithful” (licensed for use with this video) It is available on itunes.
What makes people great? These elements define greatness and will inspire and motivate you and your team go beyond your best, to GREATNESS. www.profilesinternational.com
Great Ways to Influence People
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We all have our own mentors – people who, in one way or another, has played a big role and influenced us in the way that we perceive things.
At some point in your life, you will also find that what you have done or said has a way of influencing people. In these two cases, you will see that there is a way for you to influence people and it will benefit you if you know how to use this skill to your advantage.
There is actually no right or wrong way to influence people. The important thing when trying to influence people is that you are going for a positive result. Your success as a leader or part of a group, as well as in life in general, will depend on your ability to influence people and affect their lives in a positive way.
To have a deeper understanding of how you can influence people in a positive or productive manner, take a look at the following:
1. Get your message across.
Take a manager for example. If an employee under his supervision is often late arriving to work, how can he influence this employee into improving his or her performance at work? The first thing that the manager needs to do is set a good example. By showing up on time, you are sending the message that you may be the boss but you are not exempted from the company rules – even with something as simple as coming to work on time. This way, the manager can influence the employee by being a role model and setting a good example. Read More→
How to Hold Motivational Meetings
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How many times have you phoned someone to be told, “They’re in a meeting!?”
At least 60 per cent of a manager’s time is spent in meetings. Research in one large organization discovered that the figure could be as high as 90 per cent. And another survey found that many managers consider meetings they attend, to be a waste of time. In fact, some managers say that – “meetings take ‘minutes’ and last for hours.”
If you are a manager or team leader, then you will have to hold meetings; here are 4 steps to make them exceptionally Motivational:
1. Don’t hold a meeting unless you really have to. Be really, really sure that the meeting is needed and that it has a clear objective. By the end of the meeting, however long it takes, the shorter the better; you have to be sure that you’ve achieved that objective.
2. Start the meeting on time. Don’t wait for anyone and don’t go over what’s been discussed for latecomers. Of course, you really shouldn’t have latecomers and if you do, speak to them individually after the meeting and sort it out. Read More→
The Most Important Discipline of Employee Motivation
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Employee motivation can be an easy task especially when the team leader demonstrates the appropriate disciplines. The simple disciplines encourage employee motivation to happen naturally. The wonders of “monkey see, monkey do” approach.
Motivation, whether it is self motivation or employee motivation, is the trigger to act. The factors involved to personally motivate and to inspire are not necessarily the factors that motivate all individuals or that lead to overall employee motivation.
No one can conjure up the means to motivate you, only you can discover the best methods in which to motivate yourself. Employee motivation comes from within the individual.
A good and well equipped team leader will demonstrate the appropriate behaviors and create an environment that accentuates employee motivation.
There are two types of self or employee motivation: External and Internal
External employee motivation comes from awards, bonuses, titles, promotions, money, etc. These are motivators commonly referred to as the hygiene factors. Unfortunately these external motivators do not last and are not a good source for employee motivation. Read More→
What is Motivation
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Motivation is of particular interest to Educational psychologists because of the crucial role it plays in student learning. Motivation in education can have several effects on how students learn and their behaviour towards subject matter (Ormrod, 2003). Motivation has been found to be a pivotal area in treating Autism Spectrum Disorders, as in Pivotal Response Therapy.
Motivation is also an important element in the concept of Andragogy (what motivates the adult learner). Motivation by threat is a dead-end strategy, and naturally staff are more attracted to the opportunity side of the motivation curve than the threat side. Motivational strategies need to be applied individually and changed frequently so that they do not become ineffective through over use.
Motivation
According to Geen, motivation refers to the initiation, direction, intensity and persistence of human behavior. Some authors distinguish between two forms of intrinsic motivation: one based on enjoyment, the other on obligation. There is currently no universal theory to explain the origin or elements of intrinsic motivation, and most explanations combine elements of Fritz Heider’s attribution theory, Bandura’s work on self-efficacy and other studies relating to locus of control and goal orientation.
Note that the idea of reward for achievement is absent from this model of intrinsic motivation, since rewards are an extrinsic factor. In work environments, money may provide a more powerful extrinsic factor than the intrinsic motivation provided by an enjoyable workplace. Successful coercion sometimes can take priority over other types of motivation. The self-control of motivation is increasingly understood as a subset of emotional intelligence; a person may be highly intelligent according to a more conservative definition (as measured by many intelligence tests), yet unmotivated to dedicate this intelligence to certain tasks. Read More→