578: How Do You Motivate Your Team…And Make It Last?

My Business On Purpose

A business owner called me and said simply, “my people are getting their rear ends kicked right now, do you know of a good motivational speaker?”

Within a few weeks, I show up ready to deliver a powerful talk on the RPMs of leadership (repetition, predictability, and meaning) and then follow it up with our super fun and engaging DISC workshop so that this team of project managers, purchasers, warranty care members, and general managers could work through the importance of speaking to people the way they wished to be spoken to.

We worked through the realities of competing personalities and, in some cases, warring agendas.

It was a powerful two-hour window of time and left each of the team members trying to understand their colleagues, customers, and trade partners better.

But then what?

The motivation was there. The new insights, the curiosities, and the nuances were all uncovered, evaluated, and role-played to some extent.

But now what?

A two-hour workshop is part insight, part motivation. Insights can spark a lifetime of curiosity, motivation will typically only ignite a short-term explosion that can leave a mark… but then go away.

How do we take the short term value of motivation and merge it with the long term necessities of repetition, predictability, and meaning so that what we set in motion one day, like a rocket lifting to space, can be strategically placed into a cyclical orbit that brings long term value?

First, we must remember that motivation is momentary.

Some things in our home and business lives simply don’t last very long, and yet have the power to wake us up to something that could change our lives.

We see this played out medically when a friend has a sudden, non-fatal heart attack. That momentary situation acts as a wake-up call by which the patient now has a decision, use the heart attack as a catalyst to repetitively change their lifestyle, or simply reflect on this near-death moment as a cool story, but little else.

Cardiology circles are filled with stories of patients who did not respond to the wake-up call with long-term, sustained changes. Sure, they had the gym membership, and purchased the diet foods… but on Tuesday, when it mattered, they opted for donuts and video games on the couch.

When you bring in a shot of motivation, it must be followed with a drip of repetition.

The second way to bring long-term value from a singular motivational event is, there must be a repetitive home for the long-tail of motivation.

The smoothest and most natural repetitive check in to a solitary motivational event is the agenda-driven, leader-led, weekly team meeting.

This predictable, repetitive event can become home to the ongoing follow-up to the singular motivation… if you make it so.

Business offices are filled with team members who wished that their leadership would hold to a powerful, repetitive, agenda-driven team meeting.

The reason we mock meetings is because most meetings are wasting our precious time. It is not the meeting (by definition) that is bad, it is the poor leadership of that meeting that wastes what is precious to us.

Most clients we work with have spent time, effort, and energy to make their meetings meaningful and important. There are still a few trying to play dress-up with their meetings and talking a bigger game than they are living.

It’s up to you, if you want a culture you can be proud of, and your co-workers will want to invite their friends to be a part of… then the team meeting will become a priority.

It is the one place where your entire team can wrestle through agenda issues, and get on the same page with the motivation that you have been sharing.

As always, in making motivation last, remember that hail-mary play calling is not a winning strategy.

Watch any sport and you will only see the equivalent of a hail-mary executed in moments of real desperation, and typically at the very end of the game.

When successful, we are lured into believing that we can operate this way all of the time. Some even believe that certain players or teams can rely on hail mary’s because “they are skilled at it”.

Real skill comes through the daily, repetitive, predictable, play calling of forethought game-planning and scenario scouting. Hail mary’s are a losing strategy long term.

Go ahead, hire your motivational speaker…but not until you have a long-term plan for implementing the short-term shot.