Succeed With The Team Concept
February 19, 2019
A perennial problem in any business is how to motivate the unmotivated. The perfect business environment would be for all employees to be highly motivated, every day, all the time. Unfortunately, this perfect situation exists in very few businesses. When employees come to work, they bring their individual personalities, personal problems, and individual stresses. Many times, they have more to think about than their job, how they can do it better, or what they might do to help improve the business that employs them.
Obviously, each individual is motivated in a different way. Although money is a motivator for some employees, it usually is not the stimulus for developing a long-term company commitment. For those employees not essentially driven by money only, perhaps the TEAM concept is the answer...an acronym for train, engage, approach, and mentor.
Train - Employees must be trained and, generally, want to be trained. They cannot start a job with little or no training and expect to succeed. Of course, this happens all the time in business after business both large and small. This lack of training dooms most employees to fail. Whatever motivation an employee had coming into the job is lost in short order.
Businesses spend time and money in recruiting, interviewing, testing, and checking references. The employee is hired, goes through some type of onboarding process (regardless of the simplicity), and then is left to learn the job on his or her own. Everything is great when things go well but when mistakes are made, guess who takes the blame? The employee, of course, who remembers the lack proper training and out the window goes motivation.
Engage - Employees must be engaged. There must be communication and dialogue so employees feel part of the business...a commitment. Employees get excited when they know their ideas and suggestions are considered and valuable. The “boss” doesn’t always have to be the only one with an opinion about how something should be accomplished or improved. In fact, employees doing the actual work may have the best suggestions for improvement.
Approach - Employees love to talk to management about everything imaginable…kids, family, vacations, promotions, other employees…you name it and someone wants to talk about it. Of course, if the boss is “hands off”, who are the employees going to talk to and about what? They just might talk to other employees about…guess what…maybe, how "unapproachable" the boss is. When communication breaks down, there is little hope that motivation will increase on its own.
Mentor – Although training is one critical factor in business and developing employees, an equally important factor in the motivation process is mentoring. This is going one step past the initial training process by working one-on-one with individual employees. Rather than just training an employee on the basics of a particular job, mentoring involves teaching, assisting, and giving advice to someone less experienced to help with their professional growth. When employees feel valued as individuals, they become committed. It is through a feeling of commitment that employees become highly motivated.
The TEAM Concept
Training, engaging, approaching, and mentoring can have profound effects on employee motivation. Regardless of the number of employees, all businesses need committed employees. This is one important driver of success.
