How to Motivate Your Team When Energy Dips

Can you feel the morale on your team slipping?

Maybe the work is moving slower.

Maybe there are negative comments here or there.

Even the best teams hit low spots.

How do you get back on track?

Sure, you can run a contest or dangle additional equity as an incentive - and sometimes those help.

But real motivation comes from within - and no matter how hard you try to assert power over your team to do more and care more, you can’t control their motivation.

You can’t C-O-N-T-R-O-L their motivation.

But you can invite it, welcome it, and design your team activities around the moments that will stoke the fire.

Here are 3 science-backed ways to design for more motivation: 

Design Full Circle Moments 

One of the best predictors of motivation at work is the number of enriching interactions and relationships an employee has - especially when those interactions include customers. If your team is far removed from the end-user in your organization, find a way to bring them in closer. Talk to, interact with, and listen to the positive contributions your team made by having them mingle with end-users.

Example:

I once arranged for a customer to drop into an executive team offsite for a user interview. Each leader got to hear stories as I interviewed the customer about her experiences and perceptions using the product. Leaders asked questions, built rapport, and empathized with her struggles. By the end, each leader left with two to three powerful insights that immediately spawned new projects. The customer also put faces to the company she’d been a supporter of for years, and left an even bigger fan.

Download Now: Team Energy Map Exercise to Boost Motivation

Design for End-to-End Ownership

In the world of specialized, cross-functional, matrixed, code-red, large, complex and top secret teams, it can be hard for one individual or small team to work on one project from start to finish. I’m talking about inception to beyond launch, experiencing all the ups and downs along the way. The more you can design your team’s work to include end-to-end ownership over a piece of work, the more you’ll see inspired action. 

Example:

I once led a small team through a two-week design sprint where the goal was to announce a major social impact initiative at the end. Start to finish, everyday, together, we worked on ideating and building a new consumer program. Each of us had expertise in one domain - together we had a well-rounded set of skills. We tested with real customers, prototyped, argued and debated until the sprint culminated with a finished product and a press announcement in the Wall Street Journal. Throughout the two weeks in that small room, we grew close, stayed focused, shared meals, and felt immense pride for what we were building together. You might recall your own work moments like this, where you were committed to each other and the work, and everyone was focused on a tight deadline. Design more of these moments into your work and your team will lean in.

Design for a Wider ‘T’

T-Shaped skills are those that include deep expertise in one area with broad capability across domains - and it’s the building of these broad capabilities that can light a fire. The tenured members of your team might have mastered the core parts of the job, but it’s the learning of new skills and exposure to other experts in adjacent domains that creates healthy skill tension and engagement. How might you design their work to include exposure across domains?

Example:

One team I worked with assigned a tenured and knowledgeable team member to build a new onboarding training session. While she had little experience building training, she was experienced with the content and curious to try, investing herself deeply into the project. This excitement came from knowing she needed to build skills just outside her comfort zone, while leveraging the skills she already had to her full potential.

By Adam Allred

Designer, consultant, and co-founder of Bourbon Fat