When someone becomes demotivated it can affect an entire team, a project, or even an organization. Keeping people motivated is an important job for any leader. Sometimes even the best leaders make a mistake, and say the wrong thing at the wrong time.
I remember one time in my career when I was heading up a large project. My boss had called me a few other team members in for a progress review. When we arrived, he immediately began to tell us how we were not on the right track, and that we needed to start over, and began to question our leadership. It was instantaneous humiliation for the team that was dedicating their time and effort on bringing the project to a successful conclusion. This happened prior to our delivering any of our status updates.
In the end, my boss apologized, and realized his frustration was related to other issues. Issues that had nothing to do with the team or the project. So as a leader how do we avoid saying something that will affect the team’s morale, but can still say what needs to be said?
As a reminder, here are four approaches that can cause motivation problems.
1. Public criticism – Criticism can be difficult to deliver, but if you attempt to deliver criticism in public, expect to create more issues than you will solve. People do not like to be challenged in front of their peers or subordinates. Be cautious on how and when you deliver criticism, even constructive criticism.
2. Manipulation – If you try to manipulate a person or team, you will remove trust from the relationship. If you give trust, it will be returned. Manipulation takes away a person’s ability to succeed on their own.
3. Insensitivity – Put yourself in their shoes. What is their perspective? If you are not aware of their perspective or their effort, then you risk being insensitive to their message. You must meet people in their space, not in yours.
4. Limiting risk – Every leader must evaluate risk. However growth and innovation happens through failure. Taking risk, experimenting, and stretching to your potential are all attributes of highly successful people. You must be careful not to shut down creativity under the guise of eliminating risk.
Keep your teams motivation high, and celebrate their success!