Ten Ways Teams Can Motivate Team Building and Performance

Team members should understand how they are responsible for much of their own motivation and performance. Each member can help motivate other members to have better attitudes and become more productive in team work. In many ways, motivating team members to build a better team not only increases the team performance but also develops better individual behaviors and personal job performance.

Presented for consideration are ten possible ways for team members and leaders to motivate within their team. Most of these ideas will require very little budget or approval from management. Most can be implemented merely by a change in team accountability or the way the team interacts with each other and encourages each member to grow personally.

1. Rotate team roles, such as meeting leader, data gathering, recorder/historian, celebration planner, etc.
2. Ask for their ideas when problem solving and involve them in the deployment process.
3. Promote a sense of ownership in the project, job, improvement, or customer satisfaction.
4. Make sure members understand team or project goals, milestones, and deadlines.
5. Do not blame individual members instead find ways to help and encourage.
6. Show respect towards the team members and expect trust in return.
7. Encourage creativity and risk taking.
8. Give appropriate assignments based on skill or opportunity to learn.
9. Be flexible in allowing needed time off and sharing of work responsibilities.
10. Keep team working environment informal while providing structure in meetings.

Selecting from these ten ways to motivate team membership, team building, and increased performance will allow the team to implement a strategy for building themselves and improving individual performance as well. All it may take is changing the way the team members interact and increases encouragement of individual member’s personal growth. These ideas can help the team members to accept responsibility for their team and individual progress. The overall result should be improved team member attitudes, better team behaviors, and an increase in on-the-job productivity.