How to lead
A Demotivated Team
How to keep your team motivated
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is your team slacking that's the
question we've asked over 1200 leaders
and managers for the past 17 years when
people on your team are not contributing
they're not pulling their weight
literally in a very first demonstration
of this people were pulling a rope on
average people were able to pull 63
kilos of force per person you put those
people in two teams of three it goes
down to 53 kilos per person you put them
in teams of eight now we're down at 31
kilos per person this social loafing
effect has also been replicated in
intellectual challenges creativity tasks
complex reasoning and it occurs across
cultures India Japan Taiwan in addition
to the u.s. I had an opportunity to work
with the senior vice president at the
bulk Matic transport company
Brian's safety team at bulk Matic was
tasked with a really important project
how to install 500 smart drive cameras
in their tractors and produced coaching
clips and instill driver acceptance the
team had been working for several months
but there hadn't been any progress the
team wasn't engaged drivers were
quitting team members were not showing
up to meetings and when they did show up
they came 60 to 90 minutes late they
hadn't produced a single coaching clip
the phone calls were wandering off in
different directions so Brian and I put
our heads together and worked up a four
pronged intervention plan to increase
engagement step one develop a team
contract a team contract is a one-page
preferably half a page mission statement
of the team focusing on three things the
goal the responsibilities and the norms
everybody signs everybody commits Brian
called me the first day after he
introduced the contract to his team he
said this was the most productive
meeting the team had ever had and it
surprised him how much a simple tool
could increase the engagement of the
team step two short frequent meetings as
opposed to long drawn-out meetings the
research is in teams work to fill their
time Brian's safety team noticed that
the longer the distance
was between the meetings the more the
team started to drift off track so Brian
started hosting more frequent shorter
meetings and in each one of these
meetings they revisited the team
contract step 3
Stand and Deliver literally every week
team members need to stand up and report
out to the team what they've
accomplished that week
case in point Google Ventures weekly
Tuesday meetings everybody stands up and
reports out what they've accomplished
the research is in teams that stand up
are 34% more productive than teams that
sit down step four create a line of
sight when team members can see how
they're having an impact on the end goal
they're much more engaged let me give
you an example this was looking at
engagement in a fundraising organization
three groups one team had direct contact
with the beneficiary another group read
a letter from the beneficiary and one
group had no contact at all with the
beneficiary one month later the group
who'd had direct contact with the
beneficiary raised a hundred and seventy
one percent more money so what happened
at bulk matic the safety team
successfully installed 500 smart drive
cameras on schedule prior to the
intervention they had only installed 60
after several months and at-risk driver
behaviors cut to only 5% down from high
double digits the team contract was a
game-changer for bulk Matic and it can
be a game changer for your team as well
you
