What to Do When You Can't Motivate Your Team Members
Est. reading time 2 minutes
(Video Transcript - lightly edited for clarity)
You know as a real estate consultant, one of the most frustrating things I see my clients suffer with is that they have some people that are unmotivated on their team. So number one, it is your current responsibility to hire self-managed, self-disciplined people. We talked about the four tenants of a great business. If you have those in place, then you shouldn't really have unmotivated people.
What you must ask yourself is why is this person unmotivated. Get out of judgment and into curiosity. A judgment statement is he's just unmotivated, a curiosity statement is why isn't he motivated. So the only way to find out is to have a one-on-one meeting with that individual and find out what's going on.
You've seen it in people that are rockstars for a whole solid year then they have a really off six months and you're like what the heck happened to them? Well, maybe they made more money the year before and figured they didn't need to work their heart out. That can be part of it, but there's always going to be underlying things that are going on. Remember you don't walk in their shoes as they don't walk in yours, so be in curiosity and find out what does motivate them, what makes them happy. That is the key.
We also have a tool: We call it our favorite things for everybody that works for us, and I encourage all of my teams have a list of people's favorite things or favorite music, favorite flower, favorite beverage and so on. If you’re like me, my favorite is yellow roses. Okay so if you want to send me flowers send me yellow roses they make me happy.
So what motivates people is they want to know that they're being listened to and that you really care about them but don't let them cry on your shoulders without solutions. Your responsibility is to get into their psyche and find out what's going on and what's going to help them get motivated because an unmotivated person is a dangerous cancer on your team.
At the end of the day, you need to give certain action items you want this person to accomplish. If they can't accomplish them, then maybe they would be better taking a sabbatical, take a three-month leave or a one-month leave because if you don't enforce this or make this, they're gonna start festering a cancer on your team they're gonna start talking to other team members. Next thing you know you have total chaos.
Please do not stick your head in the sand on this. It is a dangerous slope to go down. Be aware of it and your life will changed, guaranteed!