A feeling of “progress” may be the most important motivator for you or your team, according to a Harvard Business Review study on what motivates people (thanks to my colleague Mary for pointing this one out).
The HBR study took an interesting angle on motivation by studying hundreds of workers and digging into what happens on a great work day.
The gist of the study is that on days when workers feel like they’re making progress on projects their emotions are positive and that increases their drive to succeed.
The opposite is true: when workers are feeling like they’re on the “hamster wheel,” working hard with little in the way of results, they feel negative emotions and their performance plummets.
And the progress that your team feels can even be small…and they’ll still feel motivated!
To motivate your team through the feeling of progress, you’re gonna first need to work with them to set goals.
The goals you set should be SMART Goals:
You as a leader should do whatever you can to provide the resources necessary for your team to work on reaching goals.
Spend 1-on-1 time with them to discuss the goals and ask them what they need to reach them.
Let’s say you’ve got your team’s quarterly goals in place.
Now you’re gonna want to set up frequent meetings within the quarter to discuss them.
I recommend that you meet with your team either daily (or every other day) (see Daily Huddle).
In those huddles, ask your direct report to list things that they could do in THAT WEEK to make progress on the quarterly priorities.
E.g. If your quarterly goal is to close a major partnership with a single Fortune 100 customer, then ask your direct report at the start of a week what is it that they can commit to doing to moving that priority forward.
Example of chunking down the quarterly goal:
Now, as your direct report makes headway on these chunked-down goals, they will have a feeling of progress.
Remember this nugget of wisdom from my business hero Coach John Wooden (I’m paraphrasing):
Progress is not necessarily reaching your goal…progress is working as hard as you reasonably can on your goal and then letting the results be what they may.
When you reach your goals (i.e. milestones), take a moment to celebrate.
Acknowledge each and every person involved in the project…ideally with specifics on what they contributed to its success.
As a CEO, I ask my team to remind me of whenever anyone does something impressive…and then I try to write a quick congratulatory note to that team member (cc:ing their manager).
Don’t forget that failure is progress.
For example, your team may have a goal of trying to close certain types of customers or partnerships. If you explore one such deal and it’s not a good fit (for you or the other party), that is still progress.
Remember the old adage about the vacuum salesperson who realizes he has to knock on 50 doors before he makes a sale of one $50 vaccum:
“Each failure (closed door) is worth a dollar!” (because he gets $50 for knocking on 50 doors)
So when someone slams the door shut on a component of your goals, just move on — cuz you’re that much closer to getting what you want.
This one’s easy: your praise of people should always be authentic.
Don’t tell someone they “really moved the ball forward” when you actually don’t know what they did.
If you as a leader are indecisive about decisions around goals and priorities then you delay the feeling of progress that your team gets when they either reach (or fail to reach) their goal.
Progress is tough to feel when leadership is wishy-washy.
So be decisive about such things as:
If you can work on the above 7 tips, you will help motivate your team though progress.
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