7 Proven Steps to Motivate Your Team, Increase Productivity, and Build a Better Business

It’s tough keeping a team motivated. Heck, it’s tough keeping yourself motivated sometimes. And, now we’re in the 2020s, which makes things even more complicated. So whether you’re reading this article on the day it was published in 2021 or 50 years in the future, these are some pretty evergreen tips collected over the last century for teaching you and your team how to get motivated, how to be motivated, and how to stay motivated. It doesn’t matter if you’re an owner, manager, employee, or head clown at a rodeo, finding motivation can be tough sometimes, but these tips can be applied to your business and your life with a guarantee of making things better and increasing motivation if you keep with it. Here goes.

#1 Positive Psychology

What is positive psychology?

Positive psychology definition: “The scientific study of what makes life most worth living.”

Renowned psychologist, Martin Seligman, started the new domain of positive psychology in 1998. Since then, it’s been expanded upon by various people. For the purposes of this article, the most important thing to remember is that you are 31% more productive if you are positive. A positive attitude at work can have a greater impact than you might think, and a negative attitude at work can have detrimental consequences. But, for those who aren’t always self-motivated or blissfully dancing through life with rose-colored slippers, we have to shift our mindset a bit to get motivated and motivate others. Here’s how to increase motivation and make your team feel happier and more fulfilled using positive psychology.

Gratitude

Be grateful. Teach your team to be grateful. Follow the theme song to Friends, if it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your year, odds are, there are still probably some good things and good people in the lives of you and your team; it’s important to remember them. Be there for your team, as someone is likely there for you if you really need them.

Journaling

It’s easy to forget what we are grateful for, especially during times of stress or hardship, which is why keeping a journal really helps. Have your team keep a gratitude journal and follow your own advice. Write down things you are grateful for in your professional and personal life. Do this each day; it will remind you and your team why we get out of bed every morning.

Take gratitude journaling a step further. Set up a little time for your team to journal in more detail about one positive experience they have each day. Encourage them to use their five senses in the details; it will allow them to relive this moment with greater accuracy.

Meditation

If it sounds a little new-agey to you, remember that meditation has been around for thousands of years. Daily meditation can be a big mood enhancer and a useful tool for staying motivated. Mindfulness is also a specific form of meditation that can have a positive impact on your day. Work with your team on being present in the moment. Mindfulness is a strong focus on the present moment without thinking about the past or the future. Take deep breaths and try to clear your mind of any extraneous thought. What are your five senses experiencing right now? Hone in on these sensations, bask in them, as it will help you develop a deeper appreciation for each moment of your day.

Exercise

Many companies offer wellness programs and will even give their employees time on the clock to exercise. Exercising regularly will not only improve your physical well-being but can increase serotonin and dopamine, which will chemically make you happier. Regular exercise can also lower stress, increase self-motivation, boost creativity, improve mental clarity, and make you and your team more resilient to adversity while being able to take on challenges more effectively.

Acts of Kindness

Acts of kindness can be as simple as giving a compliment. Encourage your team to send a thank you note or email to someone new each day. Praise employees for good work. Highlight the strengths of your coworkers. Organize charity work or charitable donations with your team. Make your business about helping people; it shouldn’t solely be about money.

The Perma Model

Martin Seligman, renowned psychologist and founder of positive psychology, suggests the PERMA Model as one of the keys to a better life. This isn’t some lofty hocus pocus; it’s hard to deny that these steps won’t help you to make positive changes.

PERMA stands for:

• Positive Emotions
• Engagement
• Relationships
• Meaning
• Accomplishment

These steps can be applied in a professional setting and used to build a happier, more productive team. Teach your team to look for moments of joy throughout their day to improve their professional attitudes, whether it’s a song they like on the radio, a hot cup of coffee, a task they enjoy doing, or lunch with their coworkers.

Give your employees meaningful tasks and a chance to use their skills. Choose tasks that don’t dramatically exceed an employee’s skills but aren’t so below their abilities that the task causes them to become bored and unfocused. Tasks far below an employee’s skill level can be a constant internal battle of never living up to their full potential, causing low motivation, lost motivation, and burnout. Tasks that are much too difficult can also have a negative impact on your work attitude, causing a lack of motivation in addition to stress, burnout, and self-destructive behaviors, like someone thinking they are never good enough, overeating, and in more extreme cases, drug and alcohol abuse. Of course, there will always be mundane tasks that need completing, but you must balance these with that tasks that bring purpose and passion to your employees and your business.

Healthy relationships with your team members are also very important. Be a mentor and do not project arrogance. Encourage healthy relationships among your staff, too. Organize lunches, charitable events, fun activities, and other enjoyable pastimes in and away from the office. Set up ways for employees who don’t know one another to get to know one another by working or “playing” in different groups.

Finding deeper meaning in one’s life isn’t just about self-love; it’s also about:

• Finding something to believe in that is bigger than ourselves.
• Dedication to a worthy cause that helps others.
• Searching for a passion that enriches those around us.
• Developing a set of selfless faiths or ideals to live by that contribute to humanity’s greater good.

Meaning can come from religion, work, or the things we do for people, animals, or our planet. There are many paths to a meaningful life; help your team to walk those paths.

Have your team set goals; professional goals, personal goals, individual goals, and goals as a team. Discuss a plan to meet and exceed those goals, keep track of progress, and celebrate your team’s accomplishments. Accomplishments build confidence, drive us to excel, strengthen resiliency, and develop a greater purpose for a team and its individuals.

#2 Managerial Style

Some managers believe that employees are anti-work and therefore must be continually monitored. Don’t be that manager. Give your employees challenges to tackle and the ability to generate new ideas and ways of doing things to increase work motivation. Listen to their ideas. Mold their ideas. Put these ideas into practice. Give your employees the freedom to work how they want (within reason) because what motivates you at work may be completely different for someone else. Results-only work environments (ROWE) are strictly performance-driven and allow employees to work on their own schedule wherever they choose, as long as the desired results are attained. Results-only work environments have shown promise for creating a more enriching work-life balance, better sleep habits, increased energy levels, improved exercise routines, and overall healthier employees mentally and physically. Analyze employee performance; how has more freedom affected their output of quality work? Test and compare various ways of working with your individual team members, analyze the results, and tweak when necessary.

Allow your employees to be themselves. Remember, negative reinforcement rarely works. Help your employees establish worthwhile goals and provide the resources to meet those goals. Encourage their continued education. Reinforce job security and assist with job advancement when possible. Check in with your employees regularly to see if they are satisfied and what you can do to encourage their continued satisfaction, whether it is changes to the work, their environment, or increased opportunities like workshops, scholarships, and career advancement.

 #3 Environment

Environment is everything, but not every environment is perfect for every employee. Some like working in group settings and open-air offices, some like working alone or from home, some like working outside or at a coffee shop, and some have no motivation to do anything at all (they’re hopeless – get rid of them – kidding). You want an office environment to improve mental clarity and creativity; things like natural light, plants, and nice décor are important, but you must also give employees a space where they can express their own personality, as long as it is not offensive. Keep an upbeat attitude around the office and let your space reflect that.

#4 Get to Work

Meaningful work is essential to employee productivity. All of us want to feel like our skills are being utilized properly and making a difference in some way. Work must be challenging but achievable for each employee. Not all work can give us a deep sense of purpose; some tasks need to be done regardless of the level of engagement they provide. It’s good to find a balance between exciting work and the humdrum tasks that are also essential. For more tedious tasks, you can think about initiating a reward upon completion of targets to encourage your team to work harder. It’s also important that you help employees understand their position’s integral role when teaching them how to find motivation. The more meaning your employees can find in their roles, the more motivated they will be.

#5 Flow

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi developed the concept of flow.

When you are fully engaged in a task and in such a deep state of concentration that everything else fades away, this is considered flow. When performing a task we are passionate about, we lose track of time, block out distractions around us, and productivity increases. The more you tailor your tasks to your employees’ strengths and passions, the more productive your business will become.

#6 Reward

Yale professor Dr. Victor Vroom developed the Expectancy Theory of Motivation. The theory posits that someone is most motivated if they believe the reward for completing a goal is achievable and worth the effort. Conversely, if the reward is not desirable or the person does not believe that their efforts will yield the reward, they will be least motivated to try and achieve it.

The best rewards come from meaningful work in itself (intrinsic rewards). Extrinsic rewards work best for tedious tasks where there is little to no motivation to work. There are several issues with using extrinsic rewards for every task:

1. Extrinsic rewards can signal that the work is undesirable.
2. The rewards will continually need to be increased to keep someone interested.
3. People will often find the quickest but not necessarily the most effective or honest way to complete their task to achieve the reward.
4. You run the risk of encouraging addictive behavior with short-term payouts if you use extrinsic rewards too often.
5. Extrinsic rewards can eventually lead to limited intrinsic motivation and decreased performance.

So, basically, the rule to live by is this, if the general consensus of a task is that it is boring, acknowledge it, and implement an extrinsic reward, but do not preemptively label each task as tedious by offering a reward in every scenario.

Praise is also a reward that can be used to boost business motivation when employees are working hard. Positive feedback from managers and coworkers is a great motivator, so try to be consistent.

Increasing responsibility can also be a great reward, the knowledge that if an employee works hard and performs well, they are given more trust from their company and can excel in their position or even be promoted. Other reward opportunities for an increased level of trust would be allowing an employee to work from home. You can also initiate profit sharing to increase employee motivation.

#7 Relationships

Maintain an active professional relationship with your employees by being a conscientious manager that leads but doesn’t dictate. You should also encourage your employees to have a good working relationship with their coworkers through team-building exercises, in and out of the office events, idea-sharing and brainstorming, and group projects. Be present in the lives of your employees and available when they need you, as it will produce a more motivated team.

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