How to motivate your team?
Written by Tijana Tubić, Project Manager at Softray Solutions
When I started working as a project manager, one of my goals was to make sure that all team members are successful in every task assigned to them and at the same time keep their motivation & interest high throughout the project.
Based on my experience here are few simple things that every project manager can do in order to increase overall enthusiasm and motivate team members to give little more every single day.
1. The first and most important thing is setting realistic goals and timelines. Nobody enjoys putting his / her energy and time into something that is not realistic or created without careful analysis and detailed planning. At the beginning of the project, we get very excited, we want to give our best to impress everyone and show that we are the perfect team for the job. While this is a great attitude to have, sometimes we tend to aim too high and set the goals that might not be very realistic. As project milestones keep approaching, we can easily exhaust the team since they need to put more hours in only to become even more stressful. This can become a vicious cycle that can easily make everyone unhappy, lead to poor quality, increase your turnover, and make it hard to retain your best talents. Setting realistic and achievable goals together with your team is the key and your job as a project manager is to find that right balance that will produce both satisfaction and productivity.
2. Every day is an opportunity to learn something new. Give your team members a chance to learn new skills and provide them with the training they need in order to advance their career.
3. Show your appreciation for the work your team is doing and show that you care about them and their career goals. You are probably seeing more of your team members then some of your family, so you need to be kind to them, trust them, inspire them, and care about them.
4. Friendly and nice environment will make your team feel better and motivated for work. Give them some space to drink coffee, eat fruit, encourage them to hang out with their team members or listen to some relaxing music.
5. Celebrate every success together with your team. Don’t just celebrate big wins, celebrate all the little ones and even smaller milestones. Good way to do that is to organize sport or team building activities. This way you will get to know each other better, have some fun and celebrate at the same time.
6. Get to know your team members. Know their skills, expertise, weaknesses, interests, learn what they like etc. Knowing these things will help you manage your team better, adapt your style to each team member, and keep them more productive.
As a project manager you are expected to do a lot of things. After all, your job is to look after and get the best from your team.
Use your leadership skills and positive reinforcement to motivate your team members and whether you have 2 or 100 people on the project, these rules should be the same.
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