Three Key Steps to Motivate Your Team to Strive for Excellence

It is a known fact that one of the most compelling reasons employees leave their job is because they feel unappreciated, or that they bring no real value to their team.【小题1】 In order to motivate and build up a team for excellence, there are some key steps that you should follow.

【小题2】

This does not mean that you should hang out with them at the local bar, or become one of their weekend buddies. What it does mean is that if you want to motivate your team to excellence, then you should take the time to get to know your team personally by talking individually to them at different times, asking basic questions, and letting them see that you are human and accessible. 【小题3】

Recognize them as a person, not just their ability.

Too often, we are quick to praise people for a job well done, but we fail to let the person know that we appreciate them as a person. Praise them for that job well done, but take notice of their personal qualities and talents and how they bring value to the team.【小题4】 For example: “Hey Johnny, those were some great ideas you came up with in the team meeting today, I like the way you think!”

Make their success public.

Take time in your team meetings each week to recognize and talk about the people who made a difference that week.【小题5】 This makes others want to push harder and do more as they see that hard work is valued. Many times other team members do not know what has happened in other departments, or the accomplishments that they have had, so this is also a great way for your team to keep up with the latest and greatest.

As a kid, Pamela Akuku spent her weekends exploring the National Museums of Kenya, following along with her mom who worked there. Akuku became fascinated with the researchers. She saw them using various equipment and researching the fossils carefully. “But I didn’t know what they were doing at the time,” she says. “I kept asking my mom about it.”

Akuku’s mom saw her daughter’s curiosity and signed her up for the museum’s Young Researchers Club. Akuku soon took part in mock excavations (模拟挖掘) and reconstructed bones. “I enjoyed reading and puzzles,” says Akuku. “And this was a mixture of the two.”

The museum experiences helped inspire her career as an archeologist. After her four years in university, she was sure that she wanted to study archaeology. She did her master’s in South Africa and majored in zooarchaeology (动物考古学). She is now at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution in Tarragona, Spain. There, she studies how ancient humans modified (改良) animal bones. Her research is helping to reveal more about where early humans lived. She’s currently studying the remains from Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge, where researchers previously discovered stone tools and evidence of early human ancestors going back as far as 2 million years.

Akuku gives some advice to people who want to do her job. “Be prepared to come across hard conditions. Working in this field is challenging. You have to work twice as hard just to be recognized,” Akuku said. But she has learned to deal with it. Now she always tells everyone the efforts are worthy.