Top Ten Tips to Motivate Your Project Team

In difficult economic times it is really important to keep your project team motivated especially when budgets for bonuses and staff parties are not as large as they used to be. So here are some simple and effective tips to keep your team motivated…

1. Get to know your project team. Take the time to really understand what motivates and interests them, what concerns they may have and what ideas they have to make the project more effective. If people feel that their project managers are really interested in them they will return the interest in the work they are doing and the project as a whole.
2. Praise your people. When your team members do good work, put the extra hours in, come up with a brilliant idea or help a colleague – make sure that you give them praise and a thank you. Praising your people will encourage them to do more of the same in the future.
3. Enhance your people’s creativity. Allow your project team to express their ideas and be sure to listen to them and explore those ideas with them – they could come up with the next best thing for the project. Also in brainstorming sessions use a variety of ways i.e. mind mapping/Edward De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats to stimulate creativity and use coloured pens, toys and music to enhance the creative atmosphere.
4. Empower your people. Your role as a project manager is to get things done through your people and you can do this by effectively empowering your team. Where appropriate involve them in the decision making process, communicate key information with them and ask for their feedback. Coach them to do some areas of your job that they would find stimulating and motivating and this will give you more time to do strategic thinking and planning.
5. Be consistent with your management and leadership style. Ensure that you are consistent with your style, if you are empowering and motivating one day but secretive and moody the next your project team will get confused, paranoid and you will lose their trust. Remember every single second you are with your team you are having an impact on them, so make sure it is a positive one.

Similarly, keeping consistent with the processes you use is equally important. If for example, you adopt a PRINCE2 method, it must be used throughout the project and one of the benefits of a system like PRINCE2 is that everyone knows what to expect at each stage.

6. Be motivated yourself. The more positive and motivated you are the more likely it is that your team will be as they will follow your example. Take time to understand what it is that motivates you personally and assertively communicate that to your superiors. As a project manager it is vitally important that you take time for your own learning and development to learn new skills but also to take the time to reflect on what you need to do differently and how you are going to do it.  So see learning and development as vital part of your role and an investment.
7. Reward your staff. Even if you don’t have much of a budget to spare, you can still do small things to reward your project team when they have met targets, added value etc. Chocolates, cakes and wine always go down well as a thank-you. Or you can be creative and look at other ways in which you can reward them, for example, introducing flexi hours or writing them a handwritten personal note of thanks and praise.
8. Have a social get-together. Organising the occasional social get together is a great way to boost morale and enable your team to get to know one another better.  You can organize a social committee that takes responsibility for organizing such events.
9. Celebrate your successes. It is important to celebrate and communicate your successes on the project. Have a success board that is visually appealing and accessible for all the project team to see. You could also have a ‘team hour’ once a week in which all members of the team are invited to have some wine/nibbles or tea/cake and learn about what successes the  project has had and what the current priorities are. This is an excellent way to communicate directly with them.
10. Put your people first. Your people are your greatest asset so make sure that every single member of your project team is made to feel valued – talk to them, listen to them, invest in their learning and always put them at the top of your agenda.

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