What if You are Demotivating your Team?

On every occasion to write a post on team’s leadership we emphasize motivation and the ability to push employees and team members to deliver more than they can. Very few times do we mention demotivation or explain why some behaviors or actions we take can demotivate our staff. Micromanaging, for example, is one way most leaders admit they do their best not to employ it. We prefer to employ the word motivation and talk about what motivates employees rather than the word demotivation because it gives a negative sense of the process.

Micromanaging is not the only way a leader ought to demotivate his team. Not understanding the practice’s culture and betting everything on strategy is another important way to demotivate the team. Management guru and best thinker Peter Drucker used to say “culture eats strategy for breakfast, operational excellence for lunch and everything else for dinner”. Perhaps it may be easy to understand the team’s culture if it is a small team. However, as the organization begins to grow and many large teams become involved, the role of culture in understanding the employees’ values becomes more important and indispensable.

Understanding Culture in an organization does not mean ordering breakfast, dining, or outing together. It is about what needs and wants every employee is trying to achieve working at your practice. From this emerges another great way to demotivate employees that is by praising employees for important none important things. Some leaders rely on drive-by praise methods to praise employees for great achievements. They often don’t make a formal recognition for the employee’s effort because they are too busy. On the other hand, many leaders praise every little thing even silly obvious things employees do, thinking that brings positive energy. However, many employees look for the honest and serious opinion that helps them develop their skills and grow their personality. Therefore they look for real challenges and need appropriate guidance from reliable leaders.

One last way you may demotivate employees is the way you solve conflict among team members and if you privilege some employees and not the others. Remember that the goal of effective team leadership is to motivate, and a way to do this during conflict among teammates is to come up with creative solutions that foster a collaborative environment and promote motivation to increase productivity.