 How do you motivate your team? Is a pretty common interview question when you are or will be managing team members? To answer any interview question well, you need four things. Firstly, you need to understand what the interviewer is really asking. Second, you need to understand what problems you have to solve in the job that you're applying for. Third, you need to have a clear, well thought out, pre-prepared answer and Fourth, you need to have practiced your answer, so you're clear about what you're saying and confident delivering it. In this video, we take you through each of these for how do you motivate your team? The interview question. I've also included example answers at the end of this video, so watch until the end. My name is Jess Coles and I've won many management-level jobs in the tough London jobs markets with corporates and household names among others. And I've also sat as a hiring manager in over a thousand interviews. If you're new to this channel, Enhance.training provides online business courses to help professionals, managers and business owners improve their performance. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up, subscribe and share it with friends. So let's start by talking about what the interviewer is looking for by asking how do you motivate your team? Interviewers are interested in how you motivate teams because a well-motivated team performs better, delivers more and is likely to have less staff members leave. All these are very important benefits for the company. Because of this, your answer is often a make or break answer. Get it wrong or give a weak answer and you may easily find yourself out of the running for the job. The interviewer is expecting to find out, firstly, how experienced and managed you are. Secondly, what your approach to team management and team motivation is. Thirdly, how effective your approach might be. And fourth, if your approach fits with what is needed in the team. And what makes this question even harder to answer is that your answer needs to be based on your approach. You can't just come up with a generic set of answers that you can find in a management book. You have to inject into your answer what you do, how you approach the situation and make the answer your own. An experienced interviewer or hiring manager will be able to tell the difference. For example, if I thought a candidate was regurgitating a management book to me, I would ask for examples of when the candidate did X, Y and Z, I would ask how it went, what the team's reaction was and so on. So in answering this question, you should be ready to answer clarifying questions, even if you give a great and personalised answer. And as always, you're in competition with the other candidates that the interviewer will be speaking to. I'm now going to give you some ideas about what should be included in your answer. As mentioned before, make your answer personal, based on what you have done to motivate teams or individuals in the past. Here are some of the areas that I would talk about when answering this question. Firstly, setting clear direction, goals and expectations for the team. Secondly, being fair and consistent with team members. This makes your job as a manager a lot easier. Third, being open and honest. This creates an atmosphere of trust, which has many benefits to motivation. Fourth, being supportive and helping team members. Fifth, working hard to develop team members. This action is a must in my view. The benefits development brings to the team, the business and the manager are too good to ignore. Sixth, protect your team so they can deliver without getting burnt out or being pulled from pillar to post. Seven, learn to say no. A critical skill to learn how to do well. Eight, celebrate success both publicly and privately. Complementing good work or behaviour is so important in team motivation. Also, team members want to know when they have done something well and they'll want to do more of it. Nine, manage your negative emotions carefully. The leader has a big impact on the team's culture and motivation, so it is important that you manage your response to negative emotions well. Ten, promoting from within where possible. This sends a really positive message about the development opportunities to the team and the wider business. And lastly, 11, seeking feedback where possible so I can improve my management skills. You may well have other areas that you want to talk about. As long as these work in practice and you've had some experience of delivering, what you're talking about include what you think is best. On the card showing is a link to our how to motivate a team video, taking you through each of these points in a lot more detail. I've also included a link below in the description. Take a look. In many interviews, the interviewer may well give you additional information. When asking how do you motivate your team, the interviewer may well give you a scenario first and then ask this question. Or you may have been given additional information at some point during the interview. Or you may have a good idea of the team situation from the job description, the job advert and your research. Use this information to amend your standard answer. Incorporate how you might deal with team issues or poor staff morale or a difficult team culture, whatever the situation you're presented with. In preparing for this interview question, it is well worth you thinking about the different situations in which team motivation is a key issue. For example, poor team performance or high staff turnover, or the business is failing or under financial pressure, or the company might have high growth and which in turn puts a lot of pressure on the team. Plan out how you would answer these situations and others that you can think of. How long you should take to answer this question depends on your experience level. If you're at the junior end of the management ranks, then I'll suggest you keep your answer to say one minute, maybe two minutes at most. If you're more experienced and have a lot more to say, for instance, then maybe one minute to maybe three minutes. You must keep your answer clear, concise and easy to follow. Do not allow yourself to ramble when answering this interview question, which is really easy to do if you're not careful. As with all interview questions, make sure you practice your answers in front of a mirror or film yourself answering the questions. You must be confident delivering your answer and your answer must be clear, concise and easy to follow. Keep practicing your answer until you're happy with how you are delivering it. I'm going to take you through a couple of example answers for different experience levels. I treat my team as I would like to be treated. I'm open and honest with them, keeping them informed about what is going on. I set clear directions and expectations and I spend a lot of time mentoring them so that I can pass on my knowledge and develop my team members. As they get better at what they do, the team and the company and I are better off. And finally, I make sure good work is publicly and privately celebrated. As an example, as our monthly team meetings, I bring a bottle of champagne and give this to the person who's done the best work or to demonstrate the best behaviour as nominated by their colleagues. I have a diverse team covering mid-office through to back office functions with star performers through to good performers. I have employed a range of strategies to keep the team motivated and performing well. Some of these include requiring all managers to have one-to-one meetings with all their direct reports each week with a big emphasis on mentoring and development. We have informal training sessions and formal ones regularly and invest significant amounts in our team members professional growth. We have a variety of meetings to keep communications clear and consistent in which I employ a very open and honest style in which all team members ask a lot of questions. I encourage this as much as possible and it works really well. I have employee of the month awards nominated by their peers and we read out all the nominations to celebrate their successes. And I fight hard for the team within the wider business to ensure that they are recognised for the achievements they deliver and protected from all of the politics from being overworked or from being pulled from pillar to post. And on a personal note, I spent a lot of time coaching my direct reports and I work hard on improving my ability to lead with the appropriate style in a wide range of situations we encounter. I am fair, I try to be as consistent as I can and I deal with any issues quickly. We have a supportive environment and ethos with a strong expectation to perform. As an example, the team and I delivered on over 50 projects outside of our day-to-day work. These range from large to small projects. The team are very well respected and liked within the business and we've won our internal best team award as a result. So in summary, think about firstly the different team situations you might encounter in which motivation is a key issue. And secondly, how would you approach improving the team motivation? Be clear on what points you want to talk about and construct an answer that matches your management style and approach for each of these situations. Then practice delivering this answer until it is clear, easy to follow and you're confident in the delivery. Good luck. And if you liked this video, please hit the thumbs up button below and subscribe and hit the bell to get notified of our weekly video releases. This really helps us to produce more videos to help you. Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to seeing you soon.