Motivating Your Employees - Make People Feel Important

As I have mentioned in my previous article, motivating people is a difficult job for a manager, especially when you have only non-financial means available and your team is made up of various types of characters. Money is a good motivator but only for a while and only for lower type of positions. As you go higher, it no longer works, no matter how much money you decide to make available. That's when you need to think of other motivators. Making people feel important is one of them. It works for all categories of team members - juniors and seniors alike.

Making people feel important doesn't necessarily mean promoting them. And you need to remember that not everybody wants to be manager. For some it may be a huge pain in the back. Also, promoting the wrong people may lead to team disaster. Making people feel important may be sometimes much easier than you think. Here's what you can do:

• Listen to people - this shows you care - listen to their problems, to their suggestions, even if you can't apply or solve everything at least give people a part of your time to show that you appreciate their effort in the team;
• Ask for help - this makes people feel useful - delegate some of your tasks - it will help them and you equally;
• Be polite - no matter how angry or frustrated you are. Never forget "Please" and "Thank you";
• Reward people - don't take measures only when something is wrong to solve a problem - also act when people have done something positive;
• Offer feedback - good or bad - this shows that you are following your team members in their actions, that you offer them part of your time, that you praise them when good things happen and that you care about their improvement when bad things do;
• Encourage people;
• Offer them some decision freedom - no matter how small, allow them to make some choices, to implement some of their ideas;
• Show them you care about their professional and personal improvement - send them to trainings, organize team buildings, delegate (I've already said that, but it needs to be repeated here too), talk about what they want to do and help them, give them challenging tasks and objectives;
• Show compassion when they have personal problems;
• Allow them to have a life - let them go home on time to be with their families, encourage them to be efficient on the job in order not to spend the entire day at work, encourage them not to take work at home unless absolutely necessary;
• Smile, be nice and honest;
• Organize personal meetings with each of them to allow them to offer your their feedback;
• Roll up your sleeves - don't run when the team has a big project to finish and tight deadlines- work near them doing sometimes tasks that are below your status - this will show them you care about them and about the team and you don't consider yourself too good and too high on the ladder to do entry level tasks;

What ideas do you have to make people in your team feel important?

Take care,
Geo