Team Motivation: How To Get Your Team On Board | EXCC

How do you motivate others? I’m often asked about team motivation – here are my best tips on motivation.

Team motivation: how to get your team (and customers) on board

How do you motivate others? The question of team motivation is a frequently-asked topic, asked by some of the best companies I’ve worked with in New Zealand, Australia, and North America.

To motivate others, the key is that you need to be able to motivate yourself, first of all. Once you’re clear on your purpose and what gets you out of bed in the mornings, only then you can work on team motivation.

How do you motivate yourself?

The key to motivating yourself is to have some understanding of what really makes you tick – and in a holistic way. That means that your heart, emotions, and logic all need to buy into your goals.

In other words, the three parts of your brain need to harmonise. The three parts of your brain are:

  1.  Front brain: known as the neocortex, or thinking brain.
  2.  Rear brain: known as the basal ganglia, or reptilian/primal brain, or instinctive brain.
  3.  Mid brain: known as the limbic system, emotional brain, or neomammalian brain.

Whenever you’ve been in a challenging situation, you might have found that you have conflicting thoughts: your logic says one thing, but your emotions and gut instinct say something different. That’s your three brains trying to synchronise. And it’s not always easy.

In terms of figuring out how to motivate yourself, it’s about defining your true purpose.

7 questions to find your true purpose:

1. What really, deeply motivates you?
2. What do you want to be remembered by?
3. What do you want people saying about you at your retirement party?
4. What’s the best version of yourself look like?
5. What legacy do you want to leave?
6. What do you want to aspire to be?
7. What were you born to do?

By identifying and writing these things down, it gives them substance and power.

This is a good exercise for everyone in your team to do, too, as it cements their purpose and passion.

Translating personal motivators into team motivation

When you’ve answered the seven questions above for yourself, you can extend this to your business for team motivation. The Japanese ‘ikigai’ model is good for this: ‘iki’ means life, and ‘gai’ means value, or worth.

Involve your team in this exercise: working on this together for your business is a powerful way to build unity, a team purpose, and motivation. In other words, these are the building blocks of team motivation.

Define the ikigai for your organisation, and communicate this internally via a purpose statement. This is crucial in inspiring and motivating others as a leader.

Examples of purpose statements:

    • All Blacks: We believe in becoming the greatest team of all time. 
    • Apple Computer: We believe in challenging the status quo and we believe in thinking differently (which we do with beautifully designed devices).

How to communicate your purpose

Your company’s purpose and values should shine through in everything you do. Incorporate it into your sales scripts. Tell your story on your website and in your marketing materials. Make sure the photography brings these values to life. 

The more you embrace your purpose, the more enthusiastic and motivated your customers will be.

Summary

The key to motivating others is to motivate yourself first and foremost. Then you can involve your team, to motivate them. And the work you do with your team, and communicating your shared purpose and values will then motivate your customers.

Need help? Contact us for a free consultation to see how we can help you define your purpose and values – and get your team motivation going.

By Jason Dinan, Executive Coaching and Consulting

With 29 years of leadership experience working in 23 countries, Jason specialises in growing organisations through developing high- erformance leaders, teams and strategy. He was the project head for a leading homebuilder in New Zealand, Australia and North America, helping grow annual sales from 47% to 311%.

In the construction industry, EXCC has worked with Placemakers, ITM, NZ Bricks, Generation Homes, CS Doors, Sequel Lumbar, and Kohler. And within the NZCB network, Jason has worked with Dash Build, Wiki Scaffolding, Wiki Earthworks, Wiki Electrical, Tomik, and Falcon Construction.