Over the past 12 years, i have dealt with several teams, in some i was leading in others don’t, so i got some conclusions, like the DO and DON’T about team motivation, that i would like to share with you.

1. Avoid the bad news

Spreading bad news should be avoided at all costs, people tend to demotivate quickly when they hear about bad news. Think that people often think they are giving their best, bad news is the recognition that wasn’t enough! If you really have to give people bad news, make it on a solid way. Explain people why that happened and how will it be avoided in the future!

2. Lead the direction

Is extremely easy to order people to do a task or something else, is harder to lead the way until the task is completed. Stay side by side with your team when shit happens and help the team to achieve the goal, don’t be the guy that measures the performance at the end, be one of the responsible for the team success or failure. Assume the failures and give the champagne bubbles to your team on success.

3. Teach when people do bad

Don’t point the finger out, don’t recriminate people, be a teacher to the team! Blaming someone else will make the blame syndrome to grow, and at the end you will never be able to take control back! Every team member will have fear to risk because they will be afraid to miss and be blamed. So, don’t blame, teach!

4. EXTRA TIP: Recognize and reward top performers

Recognize and reward who behaves great on the team, instead of punishing who behaves badly, have a positive attitude relating to performance, this will increase all the team morale. Everyone likes to be recognized among their pairs.

In every though times the team is the key factor to achieve success, so, be with the team, as a part of the team not as a team ruler.

Do you ever felt that as more as you work, more you will leave behind ? There are a some hints, that i use for myself that could help you to change that.

1. Write down your goals

Grab a notepad, or even a simple piece and write them down. This way you will keep your goals in front of your head, remove the goal form the list when is done. Make short list, in order to get you motivated by seeing the bottom of it.

2. Commit with your goals

Talk about your goals with someone, make a commitment, ensure that you would like to avoid to later one admit that you failed. Committing to someone else will enforce you to make the extra push needed sometimes to finish the goals.

3. Track your goals timely

Add your goals on a spreadsheet or draw a line graph by hand, ensure that you will be able to see the progress of the achievement of your goals on a timely basis, lets say weekly, monthly, quarterly. This will help you to overpass a fail situation and push you forward on next defined goals. A simple spreadsheet with % of achievements will make the work.

Extra Tip: 4. Reward yourself

Define a reward for yourself, as a price for finishing the defined goals. Think on something that you feel like doing, a go out plan, a lunch or a dinner with a friend, something simpler as a 2 hours riding a bike over the weekend. As an human being will work better if there is a reward at the end, is the extra motivational factor. Do you ever saw an horse at the end of a race? Do you ever noticed the sugar that he receives ? That is called motivator!

The secret is simple: WRITE -> COMMIT -> TRACK -> REWARD

My advice for whatever you do is to track down every goals, or actions that you’ll need to, is the only way to measure the success or not, and in the future, historical data will help you to get your goals more realistic.

Do you have any secret tips ?

There’s no other time that generate more opportunities than crisis time. Not everything is negative when being in a crisis time!

Most of people get into a comfort zone that will make almost impossible to make something different than what you have been doing on your daily work, killing all creativity and innovation. A crisis time will push most of you outside the comfort zone and make you have the need to make things different, search and learn new technologies, be creative and push yourself to attain goals that would be never be possible to attain in your comfort zone.

So, how to take fully advantage of crisis ?

1. Force yourself to be outside the comfort zone quickly, don’t wait to be forced to do it
2. Look into new things that are being done
3. Attend the most of social events that you can
4. Join your specialities local user group

I am sure that you will find many other actions that will make you visible.

You just need to remember, crisis doesn’t mean a bad thing!