How to Inspire Your Team

Inspiration. How exactly does one muster up the personality and necessary skills to make a team want to work harder? All managers are faced with this dilemma throughout their tenure, but only great managers can overcome it. For some, it comes naturally; for others, these may be acquired skills. Regardless of how they are achieved, they are crucial in making or breaking any team.

 

For those that do not necessarily have the innate ability to inspire others, but want to be the image of inspiration to your employees, here are a few tips that should get you on the right track.

 

Giving a Purpose

The point of every business, for better or worse, is to make money. And that is, obviously, a very important aspect of any company. However, sometimes employees want to feel like more than just a tool used by a company to make more money. They want to have a purpose for waking up in the morning and coming to work. For some jobs, like social work or charitable organizations, employees usually feel a sense of purpose. However, for other industries, that embedded sense of purpose is not there; it must be instilled. This is where a great manager can come into play. By performing meaningful and life-changing tasks, as a manager, you can create that sense of inspiration. For example, Google’s executives have a large focus on helping those in poverty, giving back to their community and even attempting to end human trafficking. For employees, seeing this tremendous example set-forth by management is inspiring. It also makes you more than a manager; it makes you a leader. 

 

Communication

At traditional places of work, most employees have issues with feeling as though they are part of a machine that never changes. It adds to the monotony of daily life. And if there is a lack of socialization or communication, this can dramatically impact an employee’s perspective of both the office and the manager. Increasing communication is incredibly helpful. And by that, I do not mean communicating work-related topics; I mean speaking to your employees on a much more social level. Ask how they are doing, if they’ve seen any good movies lately, if they have a family, etc. By creating a social dialogue, you are making your employees feel as though they are part of a team, and not just an office. This then inspires them to work harder for their team.

 

Honesty and Trust

For some reason, there seems to be this negative image of a manager perpetuated by Hollywood. Most feature films portray many managers as dishonest, mean-spirited, evil people. This is usually not the case. Managers are human beings, like everyone else. What I’ve found to prove incredibly successful for creating inspiration is being honest and having trust with employees; break the negative stereotypes by being a trustworthy and honest person. Fully disclose all information possible with your employees, let them know that they have the right to know about company details just as much as you do. Now, not all information can be shared, but try to make sure that your employees feel as though they are kept in the loop. Be open about good information and bad information. This creates a sense of trust between you and the employee. And trust is probably one of the most crucial aspects of inspiration. Why would any person want to work with or for someone they do not trust? Trust your employees to perform, and they will be inspired to gain your trust, and put their all into their work.