Motivating the Whole Team


Thus far, we have focused on the dynamics of motivating individual team members for the sake of the team's performance. However, in a team concept organization, you will have opportunities to motivate the whole team as well. In sports this commonly boils down to focusing the team to defeat a common enemy. However, with work teams you need to be on the lookout for when your system of reinforcement causes your whole team to compete with other teams in the organization. I have seen teams come in early and move supplies to their location within a plant so they can earn a bonus and some other team, who also needs the same supplies , cannot. Your system of reinforcement must be good for the overall organization and not just for the team you are motivating.

Rather than defeat the "common enemy," you want your work team to reach its established performance goal. The basic tactic of identifying expectations and then providing reinforcement still applies. The expectations include not only the performance goals but also the roles the players must play to pull together to accomplish those goals. The reinforcers you use need to encourage further bonding among team members. It is hard to find tangible rewards that are appealing to all members. You will probably have to rely primarily on recognition and symbolic reinforcers.

Team pictures, hats, and shirts display unity. Special events such as team picnics, banquets, and group attendance at sporting events not only reinforce accomplishments, but also can provide opportunities for people to get to know each other as people. However, they tend to cut into personal and family time and should therefore be used sparingly. Just make sure you are not imposing these events on people or using guilt to motivate people to attend. Also, these events should be planned by a task force of members, not you alone. Make it clear to this task force that they are to accommodate as many schedules as possible. Some members will not be able to attend events that occur outside of work time. This may set up an unintended "in crowd" versus "out crowd " dynamic, which is quite opposite from the desired result.

When attempting to motivate a team, you must also decide when you primarily want to reinforce effort and when you want to reserve rewards for results. As a rule of thumb, when a group is newly formed , you want to reward effort and not wait until you get the results. This is to motivate the team to keep trying. As the team matures and the members become veterans , you primarily want to reward results and behaviors that produce learning.

What can be done to punish teams when they collectively fail to meet expectations? In the real world, teams don't typically get punished, individuals do. In fact it is usually the leader who pays the price of team failures. If this occurs, I would not keep it secret. Try not to guilt-trip the team, but instead try to rally some loyalty and support. Instances when a whole team is punished typically involve situations where the whole team needs to put in undesired overtime or where the whole team loses out on some opportunity. If this occurs, be on the lookout for members playing the blame game. Try to keep the team focused on learning what can be done to avoid these punishments in the future, not who is at fault for this particular incident.




Tools for Team Leadership. Delivering the X-Factor in Team eXcellence
Tools for Team Leadership: Delivering the X-Factor in Team eXcellence
ISBN: 0891063862
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 137

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net