Motivation Comes From More Than Money

Taylor Stauffer Leave a comment



So much of our lives are spent working and, of course, you can pull together a good team if you offer very high salaries, but what you’ll find over the long term is that there are other ways to motivate your team, beyond the dollars and cents. These motivators are often quoted as being more important than money in deciding whether or not to remain in a position.

Like what?

1. Praise your team

Praise them as a group, praise them individually, but always be generous with your kudos. A pat on the back might seem trite and silly compared to an extra $5k, but on exit interviews with many major corporations, a lack of praise is often mentioned as a motivation for leaving.

People need to feel like their contributions to the team matter and you can’t assume that your good feelings about them come through on the paycheck. Your team needs to hear from you, collectively and one on one, to know that they are valued.

How you praise them will be different from person to person: one might prefer a bonus; another might prefer some extra time off. Even just taking the time to sit down with a cup of coffee, phones on mute, to tell them that they’re doing a great job can be a huge bonus for an employee who has been giving it their all.

2. Don’t take advantage of the hard workers

It can be tempting, in a project crunch, to set your sights on the team member who is naturally adept at getting things done, but you could be inadvertently overworking them at best, and at worst, taking advantage of them unfairly.

Unless you plan to give them a new title, with new responsibilities and more pay, you can’t keep looking to a small subset of individuals. They will quickly realize that their effectiveness in their role is also their downfall and there’s no faster way to lose motivation than to realize that you are being taken for granted. Ask any married person who does all the housework while holding down a job too!

3. Remember that no one is essential

I don’t mean that you shouldn’t value your team members because you can replace them. It’s never easy to replace a productive, valuable team member. But you also can’t hold onto them because you’re afraid you won’t be able to replace them. While someone new might not have quite the same skill set, that doesn’t mean that they won’t eventually rise to the task you set for them. Don’t stand in the way of a good employee moving onwards and upwards: it won’t work in the long run, and in the short term, it can do a lot of damage to their motivation.

Instead, be supportive of their goals and remind yourself that no one, not even you, are essential. It’s the best way to stay grounded and focused.

4. Skip the fear tactics

Sure, people work hard when they’re worried about losing their job, but they don’t work well. Nobody can function for long in an environment where they are afraid for their future, or even afraid of being berated publicly.

Inasmuch as no one is essential, people should never be made to feel disposable, as if what they do doesn’t matter. If mistakes are made, deal with the individual privately and with generosity and in the spirit of learning. Instead of feeling like their job is at stake, they’ll feel like you’ve got their back and want to help them gain the right footing. When it comes to motivating your team, choosing the right styles can make all the difference in how they feel about working better, harder and more conscientiously.


A good leader is someone for whom others want to work, want to do their best for, and want to create something with. If your team doesn’t feel that way about you, it’s says more about you than it does about them, so find ways to motivate them so that they are happy. You will be too!

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6 Mentorship Myths That Need To Go Away

Taylor Stauffer Leave a comment

Whether you are a mentor or a mentee, the whole relationship of mentorship can be fraught with myths and misconceptions. Here are six myths that you should dispel from your thought processes right away.

Myth #1 — The best mentors work at other companies and make more than you do

While you are likely to look for a mentor who is more seasoned than you are, which means they likely at are a higher pay grade than you, that shouldn’t be the determining factor. For example, if you’re new to a certain type of business model, working with someone who may in fact be relatively junior but who has been doing the job for a while could be very helpful to give you the ground level intelligence that you need to move forward.

And as to the location of the mentor, that also should not matter. You are looking for someone who can guide you and provide you with a certain level of information. That person may be at another company, or they might be in the management ranks at your company. There is no hard and fast rule and some would argue that ‘keeping it in the family’ makes more sense, from a group dynamic and information sharing point of view.

Myth #2 — The mentor / mentee you have now is your first, last and only

Wrong! As you evolve, whether that is as a mentor or a mentee, the person you will want to work with will evolve too. Either you will outgrow your mentor, or you will change disciplines, making their experience less relevant to your current needs. If you are a mentor, you might find that you’ve reached the top range of what you can offer your mentee and it’s time that they move on to someone who can expand on that breadth of knowledge in a different direction. Either way, it’s absolutely normal and expected that you will have different mentors / mentees over time.

Further, you might have different mentors for different aspects of what you want to learn. No one can be all things to another person, nor does anyone have ALL the knowledge.

Myth #3 — The mentor chooses the mentee, not the other way around

The best person to decide what they need to know is the person who is looking for the knowledge. That is, the mentee. They are uniquely positioned in their own minds to understand what it is that they require to move forward. It’s therefore not only acceptable for a mentee to approach a mentor first, but it’s actually preferable. That mentee will be more engaged and more committed if they are the ones who have put down the stakes and asked for your help.

Myth #4 — Mentees will only leverage the relationship in order to get a better job

There are so many reasons that mentees and mentors choose to enter into a relationship with one another and finding the next great role is not high on that list. Yes, the point of being mentored is to further your skill set and grow, but the mentor benefits from this as well, often learning along with their mentee. It’s a dynamic that goes beyond a ‘lunch and learn’ scenario but one where both people can grow. It’s also not a short term, quick turnaround situation. Mentor / mentee relationships take time to develop and to show results that are satisfactory to both parties. It’s about exploration, not gain.

Myth #5 — Mentoring doesn’t help the mentor in any way

As mentioned in Myth #4, that’s false and if it is what’s occurring, then the pairing isn’t a true mentor / mentee relationship. Like all teachers, there are things to be learned from the process, from the interaction. We all grow and learn from working with others, even if that person is not yet at your level of expertise or experience. It’s definitely not a one-sided relationship. As a mentor, seeing the opportunity to learn is an important step. If you are just looking to pontificate and have a younger mentee genuflect at your feet, you’re not seeing the power of symbiotic learning that can happen when two people drop their guard and open their minds.

Myth #6 — Mentoring is teaching and the relationship should be viewed in that formal construct in order to see a return on investment

No. Mentoring is guiding. It’s helping a mentee to understand and see a path for themselves. It’s sharing knowledge and experience so that the mentee can develop their own understanding of how to apply that knowledge in their own work and career path. There return on investment is there but it’s not as directly measurable as you might find in a teaching or coaching environment. A mentor doesn’t teach a class in a specific area of knowledge, give a test and calculate the mentee’s understanding of the material. It’s not as formal as that, nor should it be. The point of mentoring is to help a mentee grow at their pace and within their needs.

Starting a mentoring program is not difficult but sometimes it’s made easier by the participation of a neutral third party with strong experience in building mentoring programs. From the initial consultation to the final implementation, bridge between can assist any company to connect potential to performance!

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Why You Need to Let Your Team Go

Taylor Stauffer Leave a comment

Unless you’ve been living under a rock these last years, you’ll have heard about the phenomenon known as ‘helicopter parenting’. These are parents who won’t let their children experience failure of any kind.

In the business world, this is known as micro-managing. “Micromanagement is a management style whereby a manager closely observes and/or controls the work of his/her subordinates or employees.”

In fact, leading a team isn’t all that different from parenting. Not that team members are children nor should they be treated as such, but stick with my analogy for a moment and you’ll see where I’m going.

Avoiding being a bottleneck requires some planning

CEOs and top flight managers are often concerned with two issues:

  1. The amount of time they have to get tasks done that don’t relate to people management (which is often not enough!)—an issue every parent can relate to particularly when fights among siblings are a daily occurrence.
  2. Not becoming a bottleneck to work getting done.

The result is that in the aim of not becoming the bottleneck, they become too available to their team. Like the parent who is forever picking up after the older child who should know better, the analogic results for a leader or manager is that is that they a) don’t have enough time for point 1 and b) the team doesn’t learn to operate on their own.

Your team members must be set up to make decisions on their own, and fail if necessary. That is a far more valuable learning process than constantly stepping in to help them avoid all the pitfalls. Mentoring a team doesn’t necessarily mean making all the decisions for them and simply expecting them to execute; it means helping them find a way to making those decisions on their own.

Setting team members up to decide, not to fail

The previous point isn’t meant to say that you as a leader should set team members up to fail. Rather, you need to equip them with all the necessary tools and information so that they can make decisions without you. Non-helicopter parents do it all the time: they give their kids a certain level of freedom and the rules that surround that and let them go to it. As a leader, you need to think the same way with your team.

This means:

  • Clearly establishing the parameters and scope of their authority;
  • Encouraging creative solutions, even if they ultimately don’t work out, by not punishing failures;
  • Reviewing decisions on a regular basis as a team and seeing where improvements can be made, so that the review becomes a learning process for all.

Give team members some free range

The opposite to being a helicopter parent is being a free range parent. That is: “… raising children in the spirit of encouraging them to function independently and with limited parental supervision, in accordance of their age of development and with a reasonable acceptance of realistic personal risks”

Apply that to your team too: block off time to be available to your team but also block off time where you’re not. Whether that’s because you’re in conference or otherwise occupied, there are teams that will gravitate to always asking for your input because they don’t feel comfortable making decisions or have simply fallen into the habit.

Like the parent who wants their kids to be more independent over time, your team needs to be more independent and get into the habit of making a judgment call as to whether you really need to be brought into the decision in advance or whether it would be enough to fill you in later, at a pre-scheduled meeting.

A little trial and error where the errors don’t result in punishment will help your team to function on their own a little more, freeing up some of your time to focus on other priorities.

If you think about it, looking at the development of your team as a work in progress, as parents do with their children, you will be able to clearly see when they need a little boosting and encouragement and when they should be allowed to fly on their own. Giving your team independence is good for their development and feeling of accomplishment and it’s also good for your own satisfaction in your role. You can rest easy knowing that you’ve equipped them for the job you’re asking them to perform.

Sources: Wikipedia ;Wikipedia ; Wikipedia

How to Lead From a Distance

Taylor Stauffer Leave a comment

How do you provide a sense of purpose to your team when face to face interaction isn’t an option?

 

The importance of having regular meetings with team members can’t be overstated. Whether it’s to give feedback (positive and negative) or just to ‘check in’, much has been written about why this is important for overall team health, as well as individual job satisfaction and effectiveness.

Depending on the nature of the business, you could have staff that are working at a distance, or even a team scattered over a large geographic area, making connecting in person very difficult, if not impossible. So how can you authentically empower your team members from a distance and not have them roll their eyes at you?

 

1. Be clear on your purpose, as a team

If everyone is clear about what you are working towards and what the values are of the organization, it’s easier to motivate people, even from far away. When people are scattered, they need to feel that unifying purpose and they can’t do that if they don’t understand what the team is all about.

If everyone is clear about their roles and responsibilities, to each other, to the project and to you / the organization, they can get on with their work with a sense of confidence that they’re on the right track. Then it’s up to you to make sure they retain that feeling.

 

2. Keep in touch

Out of sight, out of mind: you might be tempted to push off the effort to keep in touch with each individual team member simply because you don’t see them every day. It’s easy to say that you don’t have the time and that you’ll do it next week. However, leading by example is essential to distance teamwork being effective. Reaching out regularly to each person individually also needs to be a part of your routine, as it would be in an office environment. It shows respect, commitment, interest in your team members, and enhances their trust of you. Hopefully, they will appreciate and even replicate the behavior with others.

More often than not, this will require a formal communication strategy, at least at first. Processes by which team members check in with you and you check in with them. Everyone works differently and so work with your team members in a way that is authentic to them. If a daily meeting is too much, drop it to weekly. Not everyone ‘needs’ to check in daily to feel included and empowered to get the job done. Others may need that support at least at first.

 

3. Don’t skip the small talk

Conference calls and video conference meetings are the norms for teams that don’t work in the same space, but often, they’re fairly regimented in the aim of not wasting anyone’s time. Fair enough, but there is a lot of ‘team building’ and morale-boosting that goes on during water cooler chats. It’s in these more informal interactions that you, and others, can learn each other’s non-verbal cues and idiosyncrasies. Replicating that in a Skype call isn’t necessarily easy but the person leading the meeting sets the tone for it and should make time for a little small talk at the beginning or end of the meeting. After all, you know what they say about all work and no play!

Another aspect is celebrations! Yes, celebrating a birthday, milestone, or project success at a distance can be tough but technology is there to make it easier. Such as? Send a package to each team member in advance that contains a treat, with instructions not to open it until the video conference scheduled for the celebration day. Then you can all open them together and celebrate! It may seem silly but it’s in these little ways that you can build a solid community, even miles and miles apart!

 

4. Open door policy

Make sure that your team knows when they can reach you freely, in the same way as they would in an office environment. If you were in the same space, they’d be able to see whether your office door was open or closed or have a sense of whether you are in the middle of a crisis issue and can’t break.

At a distance, those cues are gone, so creating a calendar with blocks of time when you’re available makes sense. Like a professor who has posted office hours, you can let your team know that they can always reach you but that X, Y and Z time slots are the best!

 

5. Focus on the outcomes and the effort

Unlike an employee whose desk is right outside your office, you can’t really observe or track how much effort a remote employee is making. Frankly, you shouldn’t be micromanaging an employee right in front of you that way either, but that’s another blog post!

Instead, focus on the outcomes. Are they delivering their projects/work on time? Is the work well done or does it seem rushed and incomplete? If they’re doing good work and they’re doing it on time, that’s what matters! If not, that needs to be dealt with too, so that other team members aren’t left feeling like that person isn’t pulling their weight.

 

Key to all of these efforts is authenticity. You have to believe in what you’re doing, and your team, in order to reach them. Going through the motions isn’t enough. Trust in the people you work with, show them what you expect and walk with them along the path. Even at a distance, thanks to technology, you can do all of these things and do them well.

 

 

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How to Get Rid of Your Toxic Work Culture

Taylor Stauffer Leave a comment

The recipe for a productive, happy team isn’t complicated. Like actual food recipes, it’s all about working with real, authentic ingredients. No fake elements, no aggressive attitudes!

Toxic work cultures aren’t new but they all tend to operate the same way. A culture of ‘motivation by fear’ works, but only in the short term. If you want a team that is inspired, that sticks together and works well as a unit, you need do everything you can to avoid a toxic style and bring dignity to the table, instead.

Give praise as well as feedback

Have you ever noticed how often people speak up when it’s to complain about something but how they will speak up less often to offer praise for a job well done? If a team member feels appreciated and is actively told they’re doing something right, despite constructive feedback that might seek to improve their performance, they will be happier in their roles.

Even if they are not performing as you would like them to, from their point of view, they may be doing their best. A manager or leader who doesn’t recognize that will lose their confidence.

Use their strengths

A team member who feels their skills are being underutilized will never be happy. If, however, you are using their skills to the best of your ability, they not only feel more fulfilled but you are clearly demonstrating that you see them for what skills they have and what they can add to the team as a whole. It’s important for people to have that recognition, to know that those above see them for who they are and what they can accomplish.

Lead by example

This is basic: if you want people to behave a certain way or work a certain way, you have to do it too. Walk the walk, as the saying goes, instead of standing on a pulpit issuing orders. That also means that you need the skills to do the work too. You won’t gain respect of your team if they feel that you can’t do the job alongside them.

Akin to this is leading with authority. It’s difficult to lead a team if you don’t really understand what you’re doing. You need to come from a position of knowledge in order to get people to listen to and follow you. That said, you can’t know everything and being honest about what you don’t know is an opportunity for the team to see you as human, rather than an authority figure. That’s important for their own validation but also for you to be able to relate to one another.

Listen to your team

Do you want team members to step up with new ideas? Do you want them to offer suggestions and find new ways of working? You need to listen to them. This doesn’t mean that you have to do what they ask every time, but you have to at least take their opinions under consideration. Nothing will cause a group of people to stagnate faster than a management team that doesn’t care what they think.

This needs to happen as a group, but also on a one-on-one basis, so that your team always feels that they can speak to you about concerns they might have, whether they are personal or professional. Do you have a single mom who is struggling to manage her home and professional life? Let her work from home on a regular basis, so that she can gain some control.

Add a dash of dignity

While respect is earned, dignity is something everyone should receive, without having to qualify for it in any way. Treating people with dignity is a minimum requirement for all successful teams. This comes back to the notion of controlling people with fear, as a toxic work environment will do. This management method strips away people’s dignity because they don’t feel safe. The ability to make your team members feel safe at work is an essential step to building a superior, effective and efficient team.

You want your time to feel inspired, safe, valued and appreciated. From there, you’ve got what it takes to build a solid team that will help you grow a project, a business, or an entire industry!