Motivate Your Team in 30 Days:

While working in the corporate world I realized how quickly I became demotivated when I was told what to do. It was as if I did not know my job, was not trusted, engaged, or empowered, which are all the necessary elements in creating a team that performs well.

One day my boss came into my office and starting telling me what I needed to do. I immediately challenged her and told her how her instructions made me feel unimportant. In turn she asked "How should I manage you?", and I suggested that she should try asking me and other team members, as opposed to telling us, which in turn made us a more productive team.

Think about yourself for a moment:

There are things in life that we cannot control, and things that are under our full control. One of the first things we must do is get into the habit of distinguishing between the two. Then, we can start to take control of our lives and our destiny.

Each day we go out into the world where we are faced with the many external influences that are not part of ourselves, not under our control, and that cause us to react. These influences can include the weather, news, traffic, crowds of people or the lack of people, and comments we hear.

How you react is under your full control; you have that freedom of choice. When we face an obstacle we can be discouraged and even quit, or we can seek out the hidden opportunity, knowing that at least we will learn from the experience.

The problem is that most people are not taking control of what is under their control—their thoughts. The secret is to take control of your thoughts. It has been said...

An effective leader, manager, facilitator, coach, and mentor will never tell you what you need to do. They will ask questions and help you discover the answer for yourself. Only in this way will you take ownership and become committed to implementing the idea.

In attempting to facilitate participant involvement, there are a number of specific facilitator behaviors that can help you meet your objectives.

When you think about your own experiences as a participant, it's not unusual to remember as much about the facilitator as about the session content. This is because behaviors modeled by a facilitator can have a powerful impact on group and individual performance. In fact, participants are likely to discount the quality and usefulness of the session content if the facilitator's behavior is inconsistent with the values or behaviors being promoted.

When people face a personal problem, what are they looking for?

In the seminars we conduct around the world, we ask for an answer first from the extraverts only. Their answer is quick—a solution.

We then ask for an answer from the introverts. Their answer is an empathic ear.

Allow me to ask you a question—is it a solution you are looking for or just someone to empathize with you?

In most cases you will find the latter to be the preferred choice. Why? Because people like to be heard and cared for, and by nature introverts are more nurturing than extraverts, in most cases.

One of my favorite quotes in this area is:

How do you show you care? You ask questions and listen. You can even take notes, with permission, as that also makes people feel important.

If you are not achieving the results you want, you need to get the team involved, and deal with the underlying issues surrounding team effectiveness.

Now it is time to bring the day to an end and brainstorm attitude, which is 100 percent under everyone's control and will have the biggest impact on team effectiveness.

First, I suggest you create a buzzword incorporating your company, department, or team name combined with the part word "-tude", derived from attitude.

Here is an example; to the outside world we are known as Microsoft, but there is no sense working on the outside until we fix the inside. Why not create Micro-Tude, and formulate a list of attitudes related to how we treat each other within the team environment. This list will inevitably focus on factors within our control; it is referred to as team attitude in this section.

Have groups list words that would best describe the kind of attitude each team member should have towards each other. Allow 10 minutes or so for each group to come up with their list on a flip chart.

Have each group present their list, and ask "Are there any words on this list that are not...

In this chapter, we covered the following:

In the next chapter, you will learn about motivating factors in the workplace, how to deal with change, and you will facilitate the day 13 full-day team effectiveness meeting, while learning how to empower and follow up with your team members.