Christmas and Motivation

Christmas time is coming and with all of this we have now time to thank our colleagues for the good job made during the year. Considering that it's a good time to share your feelings and also do some Networking, you may now prepare your next year's way to motivate your team and start working on your objectives.

For this time I want to share some of the different motivation theories that can be used to keep your team working with enthusiasm:

Maslow's Hierarchy Needs: Motivation is defined as the step where we are in the pyramid, this define our needs, that are five: physiological, security, social, esteem and auto realization.

Commonly the employees that are new at your team (6 months or less) is probably because they have been looking for a job during the year. Give your collaborators the assurance that you want to continue working with them the rest of the year, and also, keep the promise that if their outcomes are good, they may stay as long as they want. 

Adams Equity Theory: People compare their rewards and their job outcomes with the rest of the team. With that in mind, they evaluate if they are equal or not, if they think they aren't demotivation and the actions to achieve it will come.

When your team realizes almost the same activities, it's possible that they share information about their salaries, benefits, among other. In many cases the definition of this conditions is not in your hands, as it is my case. But what you could do is distribute in an even way the job responsibilities, the recognition prices, training, job upgrades. Speak with your employees and ask them, what they want to receive in order to feel an equal situation.

Vroom Expectancy Theory: All human effort is done with an expectation of some success. The people trust that if he achieves his full capacity, some other consequences will come. The expectancy that the achievement of the objectives come with some wished consequences is called instrumentality.

In some jobs, the achievement of the goals has a remunerated bonus associated, but in the place where I work this is not a benefit. You will have to innovate and make your team feel motivated to achieve again that goal. Have a breakfast, give them some pizza, make a public recognition is a process that will make you to commit and then to fulfill, giving your team the expectation of a small but significative reward.

McClellan Power, Affiliation, Achievement Approach: What every people search with their performance could be one of this three things. The Achievement, impulse to stand out with the well done job. The Power, control or influence to obtain recognition. And the Affiliation, need to belong to a group.

With the time, keep some good working teams becomes necessary. Since my first big working team at the Academic Direction, when we all agreed how to organize birthday parties, going through Innovation Direction, Global MBA, and now Admissions Direction, all my teams get to know that they could trust each other to the achievement of the objectives. Communication among them, friendship, sense of affiliation, solidarity and support have made my teams stick together.

Following my own personal recommendations, my team and me are preparing a virtual "Posada" to have some time to share a little bit of recreational time and also get to know each other a little bit more. I will share the outcome.

In the meantime, Do you have any suggestion to motivate your people?