Motivating a team or Not

ryan7

When you see Management or Supervisory Office based roles  they  often include,  Team Motivating as  essential criteria.

From my own experience and being  on the receiving end of 'Motivation' from my line manager,  I often find it has the adverse effect leaving you feel confused and drained. This is the shared view among my colleagues  so I don't believe that it is me who is reacting negatively to it.

My questions are:
1) How do you (The people reading this) successfully motivate staff, keep them engaged and not 'over do it'. ?
2) What sort of motivation style have you reacted positively to?
3) Is Motivation overly hyped; how important is it?

Thanks,

oh_really

If you're unaware of, read some of the theories on motivation....

Herberg x; y hygiene ....https://prezi.com/-mwafv5zq8lb/herzbergs-motivation-hygiene-theory-theory-x-y-and-z-and-reinforcement-theory
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_74.htm
Team Management Skills from MindTools.com

If you have the motivation (boom-boom) more to get to grips with. Pavlov, Thorndike, Watson, and Skinner

This brings back memories from long ago, writing essays on that lot, shudders.

josephine82

I’m not sure it’s about motivation such but about leadership, making people feel valued, leading by example, having a collaborative and supportive working culture. 

Motivation is part of it, but I think it’s more about understanding of your team, what makes them interested in their work, what drives them etc. 

I motivate my team by showing my passion for my work, thanking my team when they do great work, publicly saying well done, rewarding hard work with new opportunities and giving consistent, clear and honest communication. Don’t always get it right, especially when work is hard and challenging but I try my best. 

It’s a whole lot more than being perky and upbeat.

StevenB12

I've been a team leader for about 6 years now working in utilities, and often we are away from home in a 3-5 man team, so it can become very close knit but also very border line to being unbearable at times.

I've always gone off principles of treat people the way you want to be treated yourself and to make your own judgements etc on people and not go off what others may say as a starting rule. As an example with my team I tell them all the same thing, we are all here to work and to make money and to go home to our families, we are all pulling in the same direction etc. I'll always make myself available 24/7 for work related or personal matters and I find this goes a long way.

I always try to make it a comfortable atmosphere and most importantly to have a laugh, as I mentioned, working away can be hard as we all have young families etc. We usually have a talk for half an hour in the mornings just any general chat to have a relaxed start etc which again often helps, also doing the same work as the rest of the team, when they see the supervisor etc doing the same job iv'e often found the team works a lot harder.