Mindset and Motivation: How to Get the Best From Your Team

If you’ve been in a place of leadership for any period of time, you know that leading people is not for the faint of heart. Studies show that more than 50 percent of the time that people leave a job, it is due to management, not the work itself. 

Being a great leader requires delicately managing a balance of emotional intelligence to know your team well, and patience to help guide employees to perform at their best and collaboratively meet goals for the company.  

Here are five ways you can implement better systems to get the most from your team. 

Set the Bar For the Expectation

Have you ever had a manager or boss that said one thing and did another? This is a major mistake in leadership that is all too common.

Earning respect from your team begins with your own behavior. Your actions speak far louder to your team than anything you say to them.

If there are internal moral issues, before you start tackling them with individual employees, you must first examine yourself. If you make a mistake, being transparent with your team will not only allow them to learn from your shortcomings but will also help them to trust your honesty. 

Set the bar high and employees who respect you will follow suit.

Improve Communication

Do your team members feel that they can come to you with issues or questions?

Opening the line of communication between yourself and your team can move mountains. When you make it clear that your team can come to you with any issue, you help remove the tendency for gossip to spread through the office. 

Set a clear tone for communication. Let employees know that when an issue arises you will always come directly to them to either make them aware of a problem or to address a mistake. Additionally, make it clear that you expect the same in return.

Though confrontation is not always an enjoyable process, it will help your teamwork more efficiently when they are not questioning whether you are upset with them. 

Teams who communicate well will reach their goals much more efficiently than those who don’t. 

Clarify Objectives

Dare to Lead author, Brene Brown discusses how clarity is one of the highest objectives for her team. She explains how she and her team believe that being clear is being kind and not being clear, is unkind. How true is that? 

When employees know exactly what their objective is, they are set up for success. Alternatively, if they come to work aimlessly and unsure of their role, they will ultimately begin taking up space and being a burden to the team. 

While onboarding new hires set very clear expectations and goals. Let employees know that their success will be based upon those objectives and that you will be checking in, frequently.

Like with anything else in business, goals, and objectives evolve and change. Having a system that keeps up with the evolution is key. For many companies, this means having one-on-one meetings either monthly or quarterly where employees and managers make certain they are all on the same page.

Acknowledge Accomplishments

Having an employee who excels is one of the greatest feelings as a leader. It is easy to mentally evaluate employees and appreciate them being on your team. 

Unfortunately, mentally appreciating an employee only goes so far. Verbalizing your praise can change an employee’s entire outlook on their job.

It is human nature to appreciate being appreciated and receiving acknowledgment for a job well done. Even if something seems small to you, start practicing more acknowledgment.

You may be surprised how these small words of encouragement turn into huge motivation and high morale for your team.  

Be Accessible

Being in a leadership role often means you are doing two jobs: your regular job plus leading people alongside it.

It is easy to get caught up in the busyness of your work and motivating others. It is important that no matter how busy things get, you still make yourself available to your team. 

A great way to do this is to either have a weekly roundtable with the whole team where everyone catches up on what they are working on for the week. Or, set aside time in your schedule where your door is open, and employees know they can stop in and discuss anything they need to in that time. 

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