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How to motivate your team to excel

Written by Adrian Caruso, CEO/Master Business Coach of TA Fastrack

Do you understand what makes successful people tick?

They stand out a mile away don't they?

What am I on about?

Well, I'm on about the successful motivators!

They seem to just effortlessly be able to motivate and get the best out of their teams without even trying

How do they do this?

The answer lies in their ability to read other people and to be able to know what motivates them, what gets them out of bed everyday and what their management styles and learning styles are.

And then the manager tailors the way he/she approaches them and communicates with each person differently.

So how do you understand what makes people tick?

Well, here are just a few of the criteria that make up someone else's world - entire books have been written about this subject, but here is a concise guide:

Other peoples values

This is all about standards and evaluations.

Values are our attractions or repulsion's in life. They are all about what is important and what is good or bad for us. Because values are about things that are important to us, they have a great impact on our motivation.

If one of your managers values security for example and you value adventure, you might not see eye to when it comes to implementing a new pay structure based upon commission alone!

Beliefs

• A belief is a feeling of certainty of what something means to us.
• All human behaviour is belief driven.
• Beliefs are the presuppositions that we have about the way the world is.
• Depending upon what they are they can either create or destroy
  our own personal power to do something.
• Beliefs are essentially our on/off switch for our ability to do anything in the world.

There's an old saying that "Whether you believe you can or your cannot, you're absolutely right"

When communicating to someone it is important to elicit their beliefs of WHY they have done what they have done.

On the flip side, when motivating someone, you might also want to find out the dis-empowering beliefs that have stopped him or her from doing what they want to do.

Management Styles

• Coercive Style - The DO as I say manager
  
• Authoritative Style - The FIRM but fair manager
  
• Affiliative Style - Manager who likes to keep HARMONY in the team
  
• Democratic Style - Seeks CONSENSUS before making decisions
  
• Pace-setting Style - The FOLLOW ME I'll show you manager
• Coaching Style -Approach based upon the PROFESSIONAL growth of employees
  

Now, there are no right or wrong managerial styles - let me make that clear.

But you will have a preferred and natural style that you use most often.

And every situation requires a different approach and style!

For example, if you hear a fire alarm you as a manager will not make a committee decision as to what to do! (DEMOCRATIC STYLE)

Instead you'll use a COERCIVE STYLE - "Let's get out of here NOW!"

I'm not going to go into the ins and outs of each managerial style in this email course but what I would like you to start to do is categorise your managers and staff into the 6 main styles and then say to yourself:

"How can I get the best out of this person now that I know the way he/she likes to manage? What work can I give them? How can I communicate more effectively with them?"

Preferred learning style

In short this is how your staff prefer to learn new things.

When coaching and managing it is vital to understand what makes others tick and their preferred styles of learning.

Think of a time when you have had to assemble a wardrobe
or set up a VCR - How did you do it?

Did you:

Go full steam ahead, ignore the instructions and go for it? Or Did you take your time and read the instructions and go
about it in a methodical manner?

Think of a time at school when you learned the most out of a lesson -

Was it:

When you sat listening to the teacher explain the theory? Or When you did an experiment and found out for yourself?

You see, we ALL have different preferred ways of learning. We all learn in different ways.

• Do you know what your direct reports preferred learning styles are?
• Do you communicate and give them pieces of work that will play to their strengths or improve upon their weaknesses?
• Do they like to sit back and evaluate things before making a decision or to learn?
• Or do they like to roll their sleeves up and get on with it?

Think about your members of staff and what their learning styles are?

Are you making the most out of them?

How your staff think

You can recognise the thinking process of a person by listening to the verbal indicators that they use in everyday speech and then using this information to tailor the way that you communicate to them.

Remember, people like people who are like themselves!

People think in 3 main ways:

1. In Pictures (VISUAL)

2. They Hear Sounds (AUDITORY)

3. They Get A Feeling (KINAESTHETIC)

For example if we meet someone who makes decisions because "It looks right" and uses mainly visual words when talking, we will find it easier to communicate to and explain things to that person if we show him/her a diagram or by painting them a picture in his minds eye.

If someone else makes a decision by "it feels right" then we want to talk about how he/she will feel when communicating to them.

Listen out for the words that people use when talking because they will actually tell you how they think by the vocabulary that they use.

Here are some examples:

VISUAL PEOPLE USE THE FOLLOWING WORDS:

AUDITORY PEOPLE USE

KINAESTHETIC PEOPLE USE

Motivating Others

So, is it your job to motivate your team?

Well, your job is to ENSURE that they ARE motivated whether
you actually do the motivating yourself or not.

You have got to make sure that the team get on as a whole and that they are are rowing in the same direction! This means motivating them yourself and getting fellow team mates to motivate them also. In addition to this there has also got to be an element of self motivation in there as well.

• How well do you ensure that your staff understand themselves?
• Do they know their own motivations and values?
• Do they know how to use this knowledge?

You role as an executive is to professionally develop your managers so that they have the drive and purpose to be self motivated to achieve their own goals as well as the organisations.

tell us what you think

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email, 07 3630 1298, http://www.tafastrack.com