 Knowing how to motivate a team is a great skill for any manager to have. Before we each became managers, chances are you'll have worked in a motivated and not so motivated team. Motivated teams are much nicer places to work in, plus they are more successful and deliver a lot more. Good for everyone and their careers. Here are five stats from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to prove why motivation matters. Firstly, highly engaged business units result in 21% greater profitability. Secondly, highly engaged business units realise a 41% reduction in absenteeism and a 17% increase in productivity. Third, highly engaged business units achieve a 10% increase in customer ratings and a 20% increase in sales. Fourth, companies with engaged employees outperform those without by 202%. And fifth, customer retention rates are 18% higher on average with employees that aren't highly engaged. Wow, these differences in performance as a result of motivation are huge. Learning how to motivate team members as a leader is 100% doable for all managers. I am taking you through seven methods to motivate your team. Put these into practice and your team motivation will rise quickly. And towards the end of this video, I'm going to go through seven additional best practices for practicing a positive and motivational management style. My name is Jess Coles and I've had a 25-year management career in corporates and household names through to SMEs. My teams won multiple best team prizes at national and company level and building team motivation plays such an important part in their success. If you're new to this channel, enhance.training shares business and people management expertise to help you improve your performance and that of your team and business. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. Before diving into the seven methods to motivate your team, a really important starting point is having the confidence to be yourself. It is not true that you need to be a charismatic outgoing leader giving motivational speeches every five minutes to motivate a team. Be who you are with your own style. Being genuine is a vital stepping stone to building trust and strong relationships. So with that in mind, let's go through the seven methods to motivate your team which you should put into practice in your own style. The first method to motivate your team is to share your vision. Share your vision for the team and how this fits into and supports the company's vision and goals. Explain why you have chosen this direction of travel for the team and what it means for everyone in the team. And your vision doesn't have to be grand or have a wow factor. Sensible, practical and useful directions of travel are perfectly good. To motivate the team, make it clear what you want to achieve and why you want the team to join you on the journey. Link your vision for the team to their individual jobs. Link the company's strategy to your vision for the team. This shows each individual how their efforts are helping towards the bigger picture and why they are valuable. Once you have a clear direction of travel for the team and a clear vision of where you want to get to, then setting smart goals for the team and each individual person is a lot easier. Key for how to motivate employees is to make them feel their work is valuable and linked directly and clearly into the bigger picture. The second method to motivate your team is to understand the goals of each team member. Every member of your team is different. They have their own goals and hopes and ambitions both professional and personal. Find out what these are. Book in regular one-on-one meetings with them. Ask them what they want to achieve professionally. When you know what your team members want to achieve and their timeframes, you can outline where the team goals will help them achieve their own goals. Spelling out where their personal goals align with the team and the company goals is a great action to motivate your team members. Don't assume that they will join the dots. Join the dots for them. Going through this process treats each team member as an individual rather than just a cog in the machine. You also get to know them, build a better relationship with them, make them feel valued and show you care. All are very big motivating factors for anyone. The third method to motivate your team is to lead by example. Actions speak louder than words by quite a long way. Team members will pay attention to your actions, your decisions and how you do what you do. This is what sets the tone and expectations for actions and behaviours across the team. One of the key ways to motivate your team is to lead by example. If you expect your team to work hard, then seeing you working hard is going to motivate them to work harder. I've always found it very motivational being in a team with a hard working successful manager who lives by the same rules they set for everyone. We all want to learn from our managers. You're not just the technical parts of our job but also how to act and behave at work to be successful. So don't view management as giving out orders and expecting employees to happily deliver. Much better is to show employees what you expect from them and ask them to do as you do. The fourth method to motivate your team is to actively develop team members. Every team member will want to progress their career in some way. Helping employees to do new things, to keep learning and to move their careers forward are all great steps to motivate team members. Create a personalised development plan with each of your employees. Align to the team and the company's needs as much as possible. Take into account different ambition levels, different capabilities and different requirements. Proactively developing team members is brilliant for motivating your team at work. There are loads of ways to develop your team without needing a large budget. Here's some ideas include firstly provide a business book reading list or a YouTube video watch list. Secondly, organise on-the-job training through new tasks or projects. Third, organise peers to cross-train other team members or give training on their areas of expertise. Fourth, use weekly one-on-one meetings to mentor and coach team members. Fifth, ask colleagues from outside of the team to give short training sessions. And of course there are external routes which would need some budgets such as in firstly classroom or online training courses. Secondly, organise an external mentor and third organise an external coach. Make the time and effort to proactively develop your team members. It is hugely motivating to work for a manager that cares about moving your career forward and takes action to make that happen. The fifth method to motivate your team is to praise regularly. Research has proven that you need to praise three times more than criticise to keep your team members motivated and engaged. We all like to receive praise for work well done. Doing great work and getting nothing back leaves us feeling disappointed and let down. Praise and positive reinforcement encourages more good work, more good choices and more positive behaviour from the team members. This is good for everyone. Make the time to look for good reasons to praise your staff. And there are loads of ways to praise to motivate your team members including firstly taking them aside to say well done. Secondly praising them in your next one-on-one meeting. Third praise them in public in team meetings or in front of other team members. Fourth give them prizes and make a fuss of them and what they have achieved. Fifth ask them to explain how they achieved what they did to other team members. Sixth mention them in team newsletters or emails etc. Giving praise regularly is a great way to motivate employees. Give feedback regularly to employees too. Don't shy away from giving negative or corrective feedback. Employees according to Gallup are 20 times more engaged after receiving negative feedback compared to no feedback at all. Make your praise and feedback specific and give it quickly for maximum impact on motivation. The sixth method to motivate your team is to proactively remove blockers. When you're working hard to do a good job having to fight against blockers is painful and demotivating. Examples of blockers include firstly pointless or poor processes. Secondly lots of information requests without obvious purpose or benefit. Third being repeatedly pulled off projects or tasks to do urgent but less important work. Fourth working alongside difficult or disruptive colleagues or those that don't pull their weight. And fifth having to put up with conflicts within the team. As a manager you are in a good position to work on removing as many blockers to your team and members as practical. Keep asking team members what we should stop doing, what we should change and what we should continue doing. These are pretty safe questions for any employee to answer and you get great insights about what is annoying them by asking. Deal with conflict between team members quickly so that annoyances or inconveniences don't become full blown issues that impact those working with the parties in conflict. And when you have under performers, disruptive employees or other difficult team members it is very important that you take active steps to help these individuals change their behaviour. Failing to improve should result in removing them from the team as a final step. By taking steps in a fair and reasonable way you are signaling to the rest of the team that disruption will be dealt with quickly. This is very motivating for everyone and in particular the higher performers. Fighting for and protecting your team from unnecessary work, requests, politics and similar is another very motivating approach. I mean who doesn't want to work for a manager that protects the team in a sensible way? Work hard to remove the blockers from your team members. The seventh method to motivate your team is to practice a positive management style. If you manage a team by doing your best to support and develop team members in exchange for the team working hard and working smartly and use a collaborative open and honest management style then the team is likely to be very motivated and engaged. If you use a traditional do as I tell you approach combined with lots of performance assessment and micromanagement you are not offering the employees much other than their salary and chances are you are going to have disengaged unhappy employees. As a leader of a team you set the tone of how the team operates and behaves. Every team member is watching each action you take, each decision you make and how you do everything. The team will take their clues from your actions and behaviors and give them a positive example. In addition to the areas we have already covered the following approaches and behaviors are all great actions to motivate your team. Firstly, practice open communication. Creating open communication includes promoting conversations between team members sharing information, asking team members for opinions and ideas implementing cross training or putting together a cross team or business projects. Take action to improve and share knowledge and build good relationships. Secondly, consistency is king. As a manager it is super important to be consistent with your actions, decisions and behaviors. This way you treat all team members in the same way and they can see you being consistent. Knowing you will get treated just the same way as everyone else is very motivational. Third, be fair. Being fair is about treating others how you would like to be treated. It's about giving employees a chance. It's about being consistent with your expectations and demands. It's about offering something in return other than just a salary. Fourth, spend time listening. Listening is a very underrated skill and in my view essential to practice to be a good manager. Ask for ideas, ask for opinions, ask for solutions and listen to what you're being told. Pay attention to all the non-verbal communication within your team. Act on what you learn and you will have a lot of motivated team members. Fifth, promote from within. Promoting from within is another great way to motivate your team. Make promotion opportunities a reality where you can. It is a great way to reward employees. Even if you hire externally in the end, visibly showing that you are considering internal staff members for promotion is very motivational. Sixth, don't punish failure. When individuals and teams are learning and improving, mistakes will happen. To maintain the motivation of the team, don't punish these mistakes. Rather, use them as learning exercises for the individuals concerned and the team. And stay close to the work being undertaken through providing support and you can significantly reduce the size and risks of these mistakes happening. Seventh, protect and fight for your team. Every business has competing demands for staff time, resources and support. Think of all the projects being undertaken in any company at any given time. Because of this internal competition, teams can get pulled from pillar to post unless you protect and fight for your team. It is very motivational to work for a manager you know has your back. So there you have seven methods to motivate your team plus seven additional behaviours and approaches to develop a positive management style. Start putting at least one method I have shared with you into practice today and let me know how you get on in the comment section below this video. As a manager, you have a significant impact on and influence over your team and their motivation. How you motivate and inspire employees makes a huge difference to what your team will produce for the company, in some cases doubling their performance. And a motivated and happy team is a much nicer place to work than a team that's just going through the motions. So please put into practice at least one of the methods that I've shared with you today. Start with one and once that is up and running, add the next one. It won't be long before you have all of these methods put into practice and I know you will enjoy the results for the rest of your career. So just to recap, the seven methods to motivate your team I have shared are firstly, share your vision with the team. Secondly, understand the goals of each team member. Third, lead by example. Fourth, actively develop team members. Fifth, praise employees regularly. Sixth, proactively remove blockers. And then seventh, practice a positive management style. If you have any questions about the seven methods to motivate your team please leave them in the comment section below and I'll get back to you. Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to speaking to you again soon. Thank you.