One of the biggest challenges for any project manager is to maintain a harmonized and motivated team throughout the project. Chaotic environment never allows a team to successfully celebrate the accomplishment of a project. Therefore project managers must ensure a fully-charged motivated team if they want to complete the project satisfying the desired quality in due time and under budget. However, maintaining such kind of highly motivated team for long time requires special skillset and strategies. Although there is no ‘magic bullet’ or ‘one-size-fit-for-all’ theory to overcome the issue in every situation, however, the following points will help you to improve the motivation of your team significantly.
Maintain an open environment
Many project managers do not explain the value and importance of relevant task to the individual team member or to the team who is going to execute it rather simply tell them – ‘hey, this is your assignment for the next week’. As a result related people do not feel the responsibility for the assignment, and the project starts to slip. Always remember that all of your team members are human being– they can feel, they can think, they have mind, they have sense of prestige and prejudice. Therefore this is extremely important for the project manager to ensure that every single team member can feel that he/she and his/her contributions are critically important for the project success. As a project manager, if you can clarify the value of a person to that individual the responsibility of that team member for the relevant task will automatically come from inner feelings, and you can stay assured that your headache for the supervision does not exist anymore.
Identify the need
A project manager must know the strength and weakness of his/her team, more precisely, for each of the individual team member. Some team member might be working hard but with inadequate knowledge and skill, so his/her performance is not satisfactory. In such a case, relevant team member will burn out soon, and ultimately will lose his/her driving force for the task. On the other hand, a highly skilled team member might not be working hard enough, and jeopardising the project. The biggest problem is that such team members would consider the project manager is liable for their sufferings, unfortunately which is very true. Therefore develop some system or get some effective software like MyManager™ to evaluate the performance and efficiency of team member in real-time so that the real need can be identified and you can recover the situation before it is too late.
Set reward
Everyone wants to see his/her accomplishment is recognized. Therefore, project manager should set some rewards for an exemplary performance by team member, and essentially such rewards should be declared before the relevant activities started. There might be two levels of rewards – namely, (i) for an individual and (ii) for a team. Keep in mind that in no way disbursing of such kind of pre-declared rewards should be forgotten or skipped; otherwise it will create mistrust to the team members against the project manager. Occasional reunion or party or outing depending on the achievement of a milestone is a very effective tool for motivating a team. Family reunion can also develop stronger relationship, like a family, among the team members.
Ensure proper training
Just imagine how you will perform if you are chosen as a lucky person to join as an astronaut for a mars-mission without proper training! It sounds interesting but practically it is a non-professional approach because soon you will become frustrated and demoralized for not being able to perform like other experienced astronauts of the team have been contributing. However, if you are interested for the role and you can get proper training then most likely you will proudly contribute for the mission as an active team member. This example indicates that appropriate training is very important to rejuvenate motivation, primarily of an individual and finally of the team. It is extremely helpful if the relevant weakness can be identified properly and quickly. Therefore always try to adopt some system, like MyManager™, that can truly reveal the weakness of an individual in real-time; so that you can design the proper training in right time to recover the damage in right time.
Proactively resolve conflict
Conflicts among the members of a team are very common in practical life scenario. Conflicts generally arise for the differences in personality traits not for the differences in knowledge level. Therefore always try to maintain a closely knitted team by proactively exercising the techniques of conflict resolution. Convince your team members to feel that all the members of the team are like a good family.