Startup tips - Motivate Your Team on a Budget

Ever since people started thinking of the business world as an isolated entity that plays by its own rules, the question was what is the key to success in this hostile environment .Although you can find tons of different answers, everyone who has been in the game long enough will say one word – motivation. Yes, motivated team is capable of moving the mountains. Without proper motivation, even the most talented individuals will stumble, and eventually fall off a cliff. But how to motivate your team to move those mountains? Well, that is the real billion dollar question here. Let us try to find the answer.

Be a Good Leader

Let us get one thing clear first – the fish rots from the head down and nearly everything that is wrong with your team can be, should be, and will be traced back to you. For this reason, do your best to become a great leader and make the necessary foundations for your team to flourish. Support new ideas, empower each individual in the team, get your hands dirty from time to time, be reachable and become the person your team-members can not only stand behind, but follow as well.

Focus on Happiness, not Motivation

Being inspirational person can get you very far, but only so far, and after some time the power of good old pep-talk starts to fade. Compensate for the lack of motivating skills with various workplace perks and other measures aimed towards improving employee happiness. According to recent study by economists at the University of Warwick, improved happiness can lead to a 12% spike in productivity. There is no reason why these numbers cannot be emulated in your startup, too.

Celebrate the Small Milestones

Huge projects tend to have very demoralizing effect on workforce. That is why it is very important to break up them up into smaller tasks and reward the team members when they are accomplished. Whether you are going to use an affordable gift cards, or you will resort to more conventional incentives like paid vacations, it is up to you – just do your best to present a long journey as a series of small, rewarding steps.

Encourage Friendly Competition

It is not that big of a secret that competitive environment is a productive environment. That is why you should encourage friendly competition whenever possible. Just remember– we said friendly competition. Open rivalry can easily slip into chaos, so be very careful while handling your employees. One of the easiest ways you can make this problem disappear is create smaller competing teams by yourself and shake them up whenever you feel that the positions are becoming too entrenched.

Encourage Individuality

Being a small cog in a larger machine can be a truly a terrifying thought. Never allow your employees to feel that way and encourage their unique personalities to shine through the uniformity of the team. If you allow the individual team members to choose their own office equipment or dress how they like, they will not feel as mindless drones, but as accomplished and independent individuals. Consequently, you will notice a significant difference in their performance.

Create a Career Path for Each Tem Member

Last but not the least, every one of your team members should know what lies ahead of him. If they are aware how, when and what they need to do in order to progress, they will not only be better motivated to accomplish those tasks, they will also feel more as a part of your organization and look at the success of your startup as their personal accomplishment.

Are these few tips everything you need to know about motivation? No. Are they a really good beginning? Yes. Use them as a starting point, learn what motivates the individual team members, and one day your team too will be able to move the business mountains.

Image source: stocksnap.io

Author: Lilly J Adams has worked for seven years in different marketing agencies across Australia. She specializes in digital marketing, marketing for small businesses and consumers behavior. She also writes about marketing, tech & business for the Bizzmarkblog.com 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lilly_j_adams 
Website: bizzmarkblog.com