Every team has concrete advantages that it ought to use as motivational levers. It’s the group’s results (higher or lower) that are on the line. “As soon as a manager is aware of his or her team’s characteristics, that’s the time to activate one lever or another to maintain or nurture its collective motivation and improve team performance,” explains PerformanSe R&D Engineer Arnaud Trenvouez.

In a previous article, “4 MAJOR TEAM MOTIVATORS” PerformanSe revealed the characteristics and motivations of these 4 team styles (“systematic”, “competitive”, “affinity” and “agile”). Let’s take a closer look at each of their motivational levers.

 

Systematic team: spearheading change systematically

If you want to motivate a super-strict team, there’s nothing like organising periodic organisational points. This is because repeating processes and following rules generally work as an engine driving performance. When conflicts emerge within the group, the best plan of action is to diffuse them from the off by means of group analysis sessions. The aim of this is to decipher each member’s point of view. The same goes for managing change, too. Instead of forcefully implementing new developments and running the risk of frustrating your team – which would be counterproductive – why not treat change as a complex process that must be shaped collectively?

 

Competitive team: promoting individual responsibility to the benefit of the group

The number one motivator for competitive teams is a challenge. Their managers therefore have to fan the flame of competition through both aspirational and specific goals or else they run the risk of lowering the collective enthusiasm of the group. In this style of team, it is crucial that everyone has the opportunity to express him or herself individually and debate with the other members of the team, while simultaneously avoiding lengthy meetings at all costs. The key is to use individual expression to the benefit of collective responsibility by holding stand-up meetings, for example.

 

Affinity team: capitalising on project work

In this style of team, interdependency is a pre-requisite for performance. It would be a mistake to try and compartmentalise these teams’ tasks or work spaces. Because affinity teams like group work, their managers must endeavour to foster conditions conducive to collaboration and interaction in order to realise projects and achieve goals. The key is to ensure the members’ affinitive relationships are maintained, while introducing a productive working atmosphere by providing an example model.

 

Agile team: supervising inventiveness

The agile team’s worst enemy is boredom. Tying them down with inflexible procedure is completely out of the question. On the contrary, you have to give them the means to improvise by promoting iterative methods. Even if it means tolerating the odd failure. Their managers can also feed creative appetites by encouraging the use of models or collaborative solutions.

 

In conclusion, then, it is important for all managers to factor in the motivational style of his or her team when deciding on strategy. This way, it will be easier to deal with tough situations that are more difficult to bring under control. For example, in social psychology the phenomenon of “social laziness” demonstrated by Ringelmann results in reduced motivation because each member of the group will tend to reduce their own individual efforts. The inverse of this, or “social facilitation”, may also take place as demonstrated by Triplett, where the mere presence of others boosts the group’s motivation.

 

Find out how to keep your team type motivated by downloading the PerformanSe guide :

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