Simple Tips for Motivating the Team!

Simple Tips for Motivating the Team!

In today’s business it is a must to become an effective manager. One must be a good administrator and develop a keen sense of the teams basic needs. The ability to motivate and grow talent in your staff will become essential to your growth as a manager. The following are some of the ways I used in building my staffs.

Insure the peoples basic needs are met. All people have a various needs such as pay, job security, and basic working conditions. Failure to meet these needs will lead to dissatisfaction and make it impossible to motivate your team. Taking an interest in the team needs will help your chance of motivating the team to improve their performance.

Promote Pride. People are more motivated if they feel they are contributing. If you are the manager you need encourage the team and ensure them the success of the store is a tribute to themselves. It is amazing what this will do for the teams spirit and self-confidence.

Listen intently. As a store manager a strength of your personal make up, needs to be the ability to listen carefully what your team is saying. Being very busy with many tasks going on is not an excuse for not listening to your employees. When you are in meetings or on the floor you need to slow yourself down enough to really hear what they are saying.

Instill confidence. Many people are insecure and this can cause anxiety which will impede motivation. So you made need to help them to gain confidence. The cure for this is to recognize them when they do well. Confident teams are always more productive because they are not questioning the easy things and are willing to take on bigger challenges.

Be available. Managers need to be assessable to the team. You can't lock yourself in the office and avoid contact with your employees. The best managers are out and about on the sales floor with the team. They put themselves in a position to interact with the people that are working. If you must be in the office leave the door open and if someone comes by, encourage them to speak. Building rapport with the team increases motivation.

Develop trust. Giving your team the opportunity to show them you trust them will improve motivation. It is important to build the trust factor in the store, because this will improve team work. It will be your approach to making decision-making in a fair, balanced, and constant manor that will increase the trust in management.

Delegate decisions. Making all of the decisions as a manager stifles the motivation, confidence and pride of the people. Empowering the team to make certain decisions will also improve the service in stores by making things faster and more efficient. Why hold up team members from going ahead with something when they are following your guidelines. Give them the ability to make decisions and watch their overconfidence grow. Confidence and motivation go hand in hand.

Following these steps will increase the motivation in your store. It will improve the working relationship of staff and management. This will improve your results. I know I have followed these simple examples and have been reward with better results, higher rewards and a much more peaceful work place.

Keep Your Focus and Get Your Goals

Keep Your Focus and Get Your Goals



The secret is to have sustained focus. This keeps your eye on the ball and your attention on what needs to be accomplished. Your energy is then concentrated on what needs to be done. Your chances of success are tied to the focus you have on them.

It is not hocus pocus, it is keeping your eye on the ball. The key to success is focusing on the things you need to get done. When I was given goals I would break them down in what was easiest to achieve first and then going to the harder tasks next. I always felt that those early successes would give myself and the team momentum. As you accomplish the easiest task you gain the confidence to take on the more difficult ones. You also can devote more resources to tackle the progressively tougher goals.

This is what I would do first. I would list the goals in order of the most doable first. Then in order of the degree of difficulty I would list from one to whatever the number you needed to get done. Some people would say this is a cop out but in my opinion it gets the ball rolling. Then I would identify if the first goal was a total store goal or a goal that was relevant to a section of the store. So if the first goal was to insure that everyone in the store greeted every customer as they came within ten feet I would put my focus on reaching a high level of participation on that. If the next goal was for the stockroom to insure every order placed for shipment was sent out each day. I would work with the sales team and the warehouse to set a plan in motion on how this could be done and then I would monitor the process to be certain we procedures in place that would assure its success.

The goals all have accomplished. But there success is better gained by breaking them down so they are doable. You can take the list of goals to be achieved and get the easy ones out of the way first. As I said when each goal accomplished it gives your team more confidence to tackle the next one. The goals don't have to wait to be fully achieved before you start the next one but you need to not start too many at once. If you have too many things going on you will risks confusing your staff and team members.

Remember the process is to go from the easy to progressively more difficult. As you accomplish each goal you must set up a system to insure that your progress is maintained. You might make one of your staff in charge of maintaining it until it is habit or ingrained in the store culture. From then on you just have to monitor on a regular time frame. As each goal becomes more routine you have more assets to help you attain each goal.

With your plans laid out it has to be your focus that brings the energy to get each task done. You have to set up focus triggers to keep on track. I would put up several reminders in my office, a sign on my door, a picture frame on my desk with the goals, I have even gone to the printer and had my goals printed on pads that I used for meeting notes. It is what works for you, but you have to be honest and realistic with yourself on how you are to be reminded. Just putting a sign on the inside of your door won't be noticed if you have a open door policy and rarely close it.


So here is the way I would do this:

1 Arrange the goals in descending order from the easiest to the most difficult.

2 Have a plan for attaining each goal.

3 Implement the first goal and as you see it is working start the next.

4 Avoid starting too many at one time. This will lead to confusion.

5 Focus. Most importantly you need to be focus daily and do the things to keep your focus on the task

This would be a good time to set a personal goal the sense of accomplishment at work would probably carry over to your personal life and help you reach those goals as well. Stay focused use good reminders.

Can Setting Goals Help or Hurt?

I am sure we have all been given unrealistic goals. Goals set up by those in the home office that are seemingly impossible to attain. We will not go into the reasons the office sets those goals today but will look at what we can do about them as a store manager.

In the past I can tell you that I have set goals for my own store that have been different from what I was handed for the purpose of maintaining the morale of the store sales team. The reason for this is, when you set a goal the team knows they can't reach they are often beaten before they start. What I have done is to set my monthly goals the first of the year so we could overachieve. Then as we beat the early goals we had the ability to keep the momentum growing.

In most cases the company will give you a goal for a longer period(a yearly goal) we were then allowed to break this up in monthly numbers that would give us the yearly number. I always felt this was smart way to run the store because the company doesn't consider the value of the moral of the store when they decide how much your budget should be. Managers don't get down about this just accept it and move on. It is up to you to do what is right for your store that is why they pay you the big bucks.

I will tell you this you are the captain of your ship! I was opening a new store and it was opening day, the store was having our pre-opening meeting and we had two vice presidents in attendance the spirits were running high and it was my turn to speak. After going over the operational messages to the team I said for all to hear, my personal goal for our store was to beat the number one store in our region within the first year we were open. The response was an over-whelming cheer.

Two things came from this, one was we read our sales numbers in every morning meeting and compared them to the other store. The second was that one of the vice presidents in attendance that day became a help and inspiration to the store in our quest to be #1. I can proudly say that we became the number one volume store in the region in the first six months and I was well treated by the company for the accomplishment. I had been in Retail for many years at this point and had a very good feel for the store location before we opened so I felt this was a goal that was very possible, and the team had the desire to be the best they could be as well.

Goal setting needs to be SMART.

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely

Think about this when you are setting the goals. And hopefully those above you will think that way too. But if they don't you need to be creative in how you approach them with your team.