I have had a lot of questions recently about how to keep my team motivated: “How do I keep my team engaged? How do I maximize engagement?” Many of us are now working remotely and this has brought about a series of new challenges.
Engagement is a choice. Cy Wakeman says, “Engagement without accountability is really entitlement.” One of the things that you can do to maximize engagement is to instill accountability for your team, in terms of who’s accountable for what. At our organization, we share all of our metrics publicly within the team. We’ve got dashboards and KPIs for every team member in every department for items that we are accountable for, and it’s public. Even my metrics are public. Enforcing and instilling accountability is key. High accountable individuals love that and it allows them to be more engaged. However, low accountable individuals don’t love that, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The other thing is you can always reinforce the mission and the “why.”
“How do I keep my team motivated?” What would be the reason why they would not be motivated? It’s different for each person. Perhaps they’re watching the news or they’re reading on social media, and they’re scared. All those different things that can cause distraction from their focus. Now, it’s more important than ever to reinforce the mission of your organization. Why are we doing this? Who are we impacting? The importance of working together and aligning because not only is this about your team, but it’s also about your clients and your community.
The next thing is that those who are aligned with the values of your organization are going to step up during this time. This is their call to greatness, and those who aren’t willing will make that quite apparent. This is a catalyst where you can determine who your top players are, and who’s not. Anything that you’re doing to help to support them and offer moments of brevity is supplementary.
It’s not going to solve a team that is not engaged or accountable. I think other types of activities are very beneficial and team members do enjoy them. So of course, we advocate for them, but they’re not a Band-Aid to replace somebody who isn’t motivated or a team that’s not engaged or aligned.
True motivation comes from within. No one has to convince me to get out of bed every day to work, and hopefully, no one has to convince you to get out there and get after it each day.
It’s similar with high accountable team members and making sure that you’ve got the right people on board. For the ones that may not be the right people, you’ll get very clear indicators of who will step up during a time like this.
The other thing to ask yourself is if you have a team that may not be as engaged as you would like, are you enabling it? If you see something that’s off-standard and do nothing, then that becomes the new standard. If you see low engagement or low accountability it’s because you’ve enabled it. You’ve allowed that to exist and you’ve done nothing about it. Oftentimes, it’s reaching down and speaking to that team member and discussing what their motivations and values are.
I’ll just tell you this question of “How do I keep my team motivated, and how do I maximize engagement?” really comes down to: one, are you instilling accountability, and two, are you reinforcing the vision? Getting down to the core and the root of the vision is important.
Look at your team and say “Who is intrinsically motivated, who is stepping up and aligning with the values of the organization?” You’ll find that if somebody is not engaged and chooses not to be engaged, there’s little you can do or say to get that person motivated. To be honest, there’s probably another role for them or another place where they can be much happier. The ones who do want to work in a high accountable environment are going to flourish once you crank up that accountability.
If you agree or disagree with anything said here, I want to know about it. Text me at 404–531–7691 to tell me how you keep your team motivated and engaged.
