4 Easy Steps to Motivate Your Team

You can’t expect your employees to be you! As a business owner, you’re more willing to work long hours, pour yourself into the success of your company, and so much more.  

However, with the right motivators, you may see a massive shift in mindset, engagement, and productivity!

Motivated people have a positive attitude. They're enthusiastic about what they're doing and realize they're putting their time and effort into something valuable.

In essence, motivated employees enjoy and excel in their roles.

All influential leaders, including the leading SEO company in West Palm Beach, want their companies to be filled with employees in this mindset.

As a result, it's important at Digital Resource to keep our employees motivated and inspired as leaders and managers. (And YOU should too!)

Of course, this is easier said than done.

To help inspire you how, you may read our blog post on: 8 Ways to Increase Motivation in the Workplace.

In this post, we'll go through the essential theories, strategies, and resources you may utilize to keep your employees engaged in their work.

The Two Types of Motivation

Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation are the two major types of motivation.

When you employ external reasons to motivate your team to perform what you want, this is known as extrinsic motivation.  

Pay increases, time off, bonus checks, and the prospect of job termination are all examples of extrinsic motivators – some positive, some negative.

Intrinsic motivation is a motivation that emerges from within. It's about having a solid drive to overcome a challenge, produce high-quality work, or communicate with team members you like and trust.  

Intrinsically driven individuals derive a significant deal of fulfillment and delight from their work.

Each team member is unique, and their motivators will most likely differ. So, to properly inspire your staff, you must first get to know them, figure out what motivates them, and then find a suitable blend of extrinsic and intrinsic motivators.

Employee Motivation in the Workplace

As employers or leaders, we are accountable for inspiring our employees to bring out the best in themselves, which leads to improved work performance. Of course, an individual bears some responsibility for motivating himself. 

However, you may facilitate that process by establishing an environment that encourages him to become more intrinsically driven. Individuals, groups, and even entire organizations can benefit from it.

Motivated people are highly flexible, especially when it comes to change, and they have a positive attitude at work. They help to spread a company's outstanding reputation, reduce absenteeism, and improve performance and profit.

Additionally, they work harder to achieve their goals and work with a greater sense of urgency than unmotivated people.

Instilling Motivation in Action

As a manager, you can use the processes and methods listed below to create a stimulating environment for your employees.

Step 1: Examine Your Assumptions

You may not know it, but what you believe about your employees greatly influences your management style.

For example, do you believe your team members despise working and require constant supervision? Or do you think they're content with their professions and will have more responsibility and freedom in the future?

These two essential concepts serve as the foundation for the theories of team motivation Theory X and Theory Y.

Theory X managers are authoritarian and believe that they must continually supervise their employees. They feel that their team members do not want or require responsibility. They must encourage individuals extrinsically to create results.

Managers who subscribe to Theory Y feel that their team members want more responsibility and be included in decision-making. They believe that everyone has something meaningful to contribute.

In short, your opinions about your team members' motivation influence how you interact with them.

As a result, it's critical to carefully consider how you see your employees and investigate what you believe actually inspires them. 

Step 2: Remove Dissatisfaction and Replace It with Satisfaction

According to psychologist Fredrick Herzberg, you can motivate your team by removing elements of job dissatisfaction and then providing conditions for job satisfaction.

In his Motivation-Hygiene Theory, he emphasized how unhappiness is frequently caused by vexing workplace policies, overbearing supervision, or a lack of job stability, among other things.

People will be dissatisfied at work if these concerns are not addressed, and motivating them will be difficult, if not impossible.

After you've eliminated the causes of job discontent, you can focus on giving satisfaction.

Job satisfaction can be derived from clear chances for advancement/promotion, an increasing sense of responsibility, continual training and development programs, or simply a sense of purpose in one's work.

Step 3: Customize Your Motivational Strategy

Keep in mind that your team comprises individuals who each have their own set of situations, histories, and experiences. As a result, each individual may be motivated by different motivational stimuli and be more or less proficient at self-motivation.

You can help each team member stay motivated if you make an effort to understand them.

You can use various techniques and strategies to adapt your approach to motivation – and not all of them are totally consistent with one another.

However, remember that each individual and situation is unique, so choose the theory or model that best fits your condition.

Let's look at these in more detail:

• According to Sirota's Three-Factor Theory, three critical aspects encourage your employees. These are fairness, achievement, and camaraderie. By incorporating each of these characteristics into their job, you can help to guarantee that your team members remain motivated and positive.
• McClelland's Human Motivation Theory is noticeably different. McClelland felt that we all have three other drivers: the urge for achievement, affiliation, and power, with one of them being dominating. If you arrange your motivators and leadership style around a team member's primary driver, your efforts should yield positive outcomes.
• Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs identifies five universal needs, ranging from the most fundamental to the most complex: physiological, safety, love, self-esteem, and self-actualization. This hierarchy is commonly portrayed as a pyramid, with basic needs at the bottom since they must be addressed before progressing to more complex requirements. You may motivate your team by using this strategy to address all levels.
• According to Amabile and Kramer's Progress Theory, minor "wins" can motivate people. It recommends six things you can do to give employees the best chance of creating measurable and meaningful improvement at work: clear goals and objectives, autonomy, resources, time, support, and the ability to learn from failure.
• Your expectations, according to the Pygmalion Effect, can influence the performance of your team members. When you doubt someone's potential to succeed, you can make her feel worthless and undermine her confidence. The Pygmalion Effect is helpful because it emphasizes that having and articulating high expectations of employees might inspire them to perform better at work.

• Money, of course, is essential, and Understanding Strategic Compensation can assist you in structuring your team's extrinsic rewards. Understanding the differences between base, performance, and group-performance pay, as well as their underlying benefits, will help you organize financial compensation in a more motivating approach.

Step 4: Incorporate Transformational Leadership

Motivation is essential in the workplace, but it can only go so far before leadership takes over. After using the motivational strategies outlined above, you must take the next step toward being an inspirational, transformative leader.

When you use this leadership style, you may inspire and lift your team to new heights, allowing them to do incredible things. 

Transformational leaders have high expectations of their team members and inspire feelings of trust and devotion in return.

There are four steps to becoming a transformational leader:

1. You must first create an appealing, inspiring vision of a meaningful future;

2. then persuade others to buy into that vision;

3. manage its implementation; and

4. build trusting relationships with your team members.

Remember that you need to hone your leadership abilities and focus on your own development to be an inspiring role model for your team.

Do you want to be a part of a highly motivated team?

At Digital Resource, success is defined by more than just client satisfaction. Instead, it stems from a distinct culture based on openness, innovation, empowerment, and enjoyment. We operate on a set of philosophies that inspire our varied team to advance, take charge, and do the right thing for our clients!

Contact us today to learn how to be a part of the leading SEO company in West Palm Beach.