LeadDev recently hosted a panel discussion on ‘Creating and sustaining motivation in your engineering team’. I recommend listening as many topical points were covered that may spark ideas around motivation in your teams.
My takeaways:
- Motivation can be considered on 3 levels: Individual, Team, and Organisational.
- Fairness – there should be an appearance of fairness. Leaders must understand the processes in the company to be able to justify decisions/levels to their team in one-on-ones.
- Stay interviews could be considered to fix things before it gets too late. Ask candid questions to understand individual motivators. What do people enjoy/not enjoy about coming into work? Gives understanding in how to help people.
- Peers are a motivation to stay, are people around you challenging you to be better? Find a place to learn from your peers. Peers can help you keep ‘on track’. Reminds me of the First Team mindset.
- “Right seat, right bus, right people”. Is each person in the right place for their needs? Does this align with the organisation direction? If not, what can we do to help? Time can be an important factor, will projects, direction change in the company in 6-months which should be considered or planned for?
- Failure mode – are you doing too much ‘herding’ or directing? Are you becoming a task manager? Take a step back to identify why people don’t feel they can make their own decisions.
- A view from the C-suite – does everyone understand the company’s mission and direction? If not, what can you do make this more visible?
- When there are changes of direction in the organisation, remind the team of the strengths that stay the same e.g. same colleagues to work with and same opportunities to learn. Even if people do leave, there will be opportunities for others to grow.
- Observing is key for spotting disengagement. Are people being creative? Are they collaborating with the team? Has their behaviour changed recently?
Listen below to discover your takeaways:
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