energise your team

How to energise your team

Want to know how to motivate your team? As a leader you own your team’s spirit. If you walk into your office and see positive energy and collaborative work, you’ve built good team spirit. If you walk in and you see lethargy or your workmates are disinterested and unmotivated, it’s time to take steps to set an upbeat atmosphere and (re)energise your team.

Here are 3 simple steps you can take to motivate your team and get them energised and engaged at work.

1 Engage through 1:1 conversations

Set up regular 1:1 face to face meetings with each of your direct reports and important stakeholders to get to know them better. The purpose here is not to understand the tasks they are working on, but the way they’re working and what you can best do to support them to be even more effective.

Find a quiet, relaxed space (a cafe outside of the office is ideal) and ask them a range of questions to get a sense of how engaged they currently are in their work. Here are some questions to get you started:

  • What do you most like about your job?
  • What are your 3 biggest frustrations right now?
  • Do you have the resources you need to do your work well?
  • How can I best support you over the next 3-6 months?
  • What is 1 thing you would change if you were in my role?

Really listen to what your workmate has to say and take notes if you don’t trust your memory. Then look at what you can do and take action to remove their frustrations and deliver on their support needs. Listening and acting on their requests demonstrates that you care about them as a valued member of your team.

2 Engage through social time together

Creating a casual, relaxed atmosphere that encourages your workmates to get to know each other on a personal level works wonders. It doesn’t need to be anything elaborate. Allocating a Friday afternoon snack time or happy hour in the office can create a great opportunity for social team bonding.

When you take the time to build personal relationships with your workmates things just work so much more smoothly.

3 Engage through development

Whether they tell you or not, your workmates want to learn and grow at work. Feeling like they’re making progress and getting better at things is important to them. Look for ways to create opportunities for your workmates to get involved in projects that stretch them to learn new skills or apply what they’re really good at in new ways.

Combining learning with social time can be even more powerful in building team spirit. Set up a monthly ‘lunch and learn’ session where you invite in external speakers or watch an inspiring TED Talk and discuss how to put the ideas into practice. You could rotate the choice of topic between your workmates so that everyone gets a chance to lead a session on a topic that interests them.

Use these simple tips to (re)energise your workmates and create great team spirit.

 

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