March Madness
March Madness—it's everywhere this time of year. In my town, my granddaughter's middle school basketball championship was sheer madness. The coaches, leaders of distinction themselves, had motivated these girls to win all season. Now it was the final game. There was a challenge added to the championships, score 30 points and one of the coaches would do 30 push-ups on the court! (30 is a very high score in this defense-centered division.) The girls were excited. But at the half it looked like their dreams might not come true; they were down by 6 points with a mere 2 points on the scoreboard—no where near their needed 30. What would the coaches say? Would they yell or plead or encourage? How would they motivate these girls to play as they had played all season?
The definition of motivation is setting energy and desires toward a specific goal. In business, the job of leaders is to find what works to get people aligned towards goals. Here are some tips to help you motivate people:
| The definition of motivation is setting energy and desires toward a specific goal. |
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- Make sure the needs of your team match those of the organization.
- Make sure that you use positive feedback routinely and negative sparingly.
- Make sure that you talk optimistically about the future.
- And don't forget to celebrate the end of projects.
The key to motivating is to recognize that a leader can only encourage and communicate the company's goals. The rest is up to the employee or in my example, the girls.
Back at the game, the girls scored and scored—they were on a roll. Final score: 24-6, followed by the coach performing 24 pushups while the gleeful girls giggled. When I was walking out I asked my granddaughter the question we all wanted to know. "What did the coaches say to you at half time?" She smiled and said, "They said if we wanted to see pushups we should get scoring." "Did they say anything else?" we all wondered. "Maybe they did but we just cared about seeing the pushups!" That's motivation!
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