Six ways to motivate your team to kick start the New Year Jaya Gali Follow Jan 6 · 6 min read

It’s the beginning of a New Year and your team is back at work after an extended holiday. As expected, many of them will find it difficult to get into the rhythm of things after being just back from a laid relaxing vacation. So, how are you going to help your team ease into the work routine? What approaches are you going to take to inspire and motivate them to deliver their best?

“And now let us welcome the new year, full of things that never were.” — Rainer Maria Rilke

Help knock out those Monday blues

To help ease into the work schedule, kick off the New Year with an All-hands meeting with the entire team.

Start off the meeting with a warm-up game allowing folks to share one thing they loved on their holiday and one thing they missed being away from work. This will give them a chance to share while also offering them the opportunity to start thinking of work projects that need to be on their radar.

Next, dive into the annual goals and get into quarter specific objectives. Make the expectations for the team clear and promote the discussion to drive strong team work collaboration to get them charged and engaged.

Drive alignment

Your team should have a clear understanding of the roadmap and individual level expectations. With the start of the New Year, it helps to do a roadmap refresher by reviewing the projects, timelines and deliverables. Take the opportunity to refine the plan working collectively with your team and address any gaps of understanding to build a fully aligned roadmap.

Effective communication and open discussion are critical to learning how your team feels about the projects. Sometimes your team may raise concerns on the aggressive timelines or seek out added resources to help achieve the objectives. Don’t ignore your team’s voice or concerns. As you hear to their feedback, ask for creative solutions or ideas to support the business goals. Adapt these ideas and tweak the roadmap to kick start the year with an agree up on plan to ensure smooth business execution.

Offer flexibility as a priority this New Year

If there is one thing you should take as an initiative this year to support your team, it is focusing on offering work flexibility. As a leader, you have to find ways to create a positive culture and build a highly productive team. Individuals perform better when they are happy and feel empowered. Giving them the opportunity to deliver their best is your job as a leader.

According to a Deloitte study in 2018 of 10,000 people, lack of work flexibility was declared as the most likely reason for quitting the job.

This is especially the case with younger generation of millennials who value work-life balance and seek employers with similar values. It is noted that flexibility at work place is becoming increasingly one of the biggest perks outweighing many other benefits.

Whether your company has a policy or not, you as a leader can support them with flexibility options like allowing individuals to work from home or take time for personal appointments etc. This requires trusting your team and creating a culture of self-organization and accountability.

Be clear on your expectations, hold your team accountable for their goals and provide them with a safe, trusting and open environment encouraging them to use flexibility as a tool to over-achieve.

Promote creativity

Motivated teams are those where the employees are challenged and feel their creativity is tapped by the organization. Your job as a leader is to ensure you maximize the employee potential. During the first month of the New Year, take the time to connect with the teams scheduling 1 on 1 meetings.

Often, weekly coffee chats are excellent way to keep things informal and encourage the employee to share their interests and project ideas.

In these discussions, allow for the employee to share with you their growth aspirations as some of them might see the New Year as a chance to take on a new project or a challenge. This discussion should not create conflict with their already established performance goals or career objectives. Understand specific areas they want to focus on whether it is in their current line of business or another vertical. Creative employees love having the autonomy to validate, build and test their ideas. Allocate 5–10% of their time to work on these ideas. Ensure they have clearly defined goals and outcomes that will enable business growth.

Host lunch and learn to have interested parties present their projects to the cross teams and find partners to pair up with in the organization if more hands are needed for an enthusiastic employee’s pet project. Self-motivated teams can open doors to new business growth and opportunities when given the chance to fulfill their creative aspirations.

Create incentive based recognition

Employees can be motivated when they are offered rewards or recognized for going extra mile and becoming top performers. Create top performer programs to give certificate of recognition, excellence rewards and incentives when they over-achieve their targets. These accomplishments can be included in performance reviews to promote career progression opportunities. Most employees will strive to give their highest commitment if the incentives offer monetary value or give an ego boost.

Roll out these programs during the first month. Test out some of the incentives, learn what performs and what does not motivate employees. When a format becomes a routine, your task is to bring forward a new incentive format to reignite the interest and recharge the teams to drive in delivering to the best of their abilities.

Create a personal connection

Most businesses flourish when they have highly committed and engaged employees. Statistics show that businesses with above average employee engagement drive higher business outcomes vs those with lower employee morale.

If you want to focus on business growth, start with your own team growth to find ways to increase their success and commitment.

As you kick start with the All-hands meeting, put your employees in the focus outlining the role they play in achieving the business outcomes and the roadmap execution. Get their attention to critical goals.

Ensure you are having regular one on ones with your direct reports if not already doing so. Make these sessions informal with coffee catch ups or going on a walk etc. This will help an employee relax, open up and share more on their engagement and how they are doing in their role. Listen to the employee and speak less about your opinions. Show that you want to learn about them as an individual and empathize with their challenges.

Discover what will help to improve their satisfaction and raise the engagement levels. Your mission is to offer a supportive work culture allowing your employees to have an open and honest discussion.

Some of the above may seem fairly apparent, it is surprising how many leaders do not practice these actively. Consider New Year as an opportunity for you to grow as a leader and make these six areas a core focus to create a positive, open-ended and caring work environment.

Good luck!