Introduction
Teamwork is an essential aspect of the dynamic corporate landscape. Management encourages people to work in teams because it reduces stress, helps workers to be meticulous, and allows sharing of ideas, hence completing tasks with the required precision. Teamwork can, however, be beneficial if all the members are motivated and ready to work. Motivation is, therefore, crucial to ensure that all the members are adaptable and have a positive attitude towards work. Further motivation reduces absenteeism, increases profits, and makes businesses thrive despite the competition levels. Team leaders and management personnel must practice motivational strategies because team members must be motivated for them to perform.
Motivational Strategies to Lead a Team at Work
Team members must be motivated to put in their best efforts. Failure to motivate team members leads to poor performance and organizational goals will not be met. Motivating them is the first step towards achieving success and high productivity at work. Some motivation strategies include setting clear goals, enhancing a feedback mechanism, celebrating milestones, recognizing, and awarding improvements, and offering learning opportunities. When all the team members understand the purposes of the project and what they stand to benefit from its successful completion, they are likely to put in their best effort (Venditti and Scott 79). When inputs from the team members are not taken seriously, they are likely to be less motivated. However, when there is comprehensive feedback, and all their concerns are heard and addressed, they will likely be motivated to better performance.
Celebrating big and small milestones makes the team members feel appreciated. Unlike other organizations where competing milestones are routine, team leaders who celebrate all team successes are likely to motivate team members to perform better for more celebration. Further, when a team member is recognized and rewarded for an outstanding performance is likely to put in more effort to maintain the recognition and the awards. Other members will also work harder to improve their performance for the awards. Consequently, the team performance will be improved, and project completion will be flawless. One of the main reasons for a higher turnover is the lack of training opportunities (Ficapal-Cusà et al. 37). When members of a team desire to advance their skills and the team leader cannot offer the opportunities, the team members are likely to be less motivated and therefore perform poorly. Providing training and other learning opportunities for career advancement is an important motivational tool for team members to remain focused and productive.
Members with Self-Centered Roles
Team members exhibit different character traits that leaders must consider when implementing motivation strategies. A team member with self-centered role seeks to dissuade group members from the central objective from focusing on the member with the role. Examples of members with self-centered roles include a confessor who shares personal information at the expense of group goals and objectives. As a result of the confessions, group members sympathize with the members and lose focus on the project’s goal (et al. 39). Further, the member with such roles demands attention from the group members. As a result of the role, group meetings are always delayed as the person keeps opposing all the suggestions members offer. When meetings are dragged because of the member who dominates the group, slowed decision-making is likely to impact the overall output of a project. The member is also unreliable and deserts the assigned roles. Consequently, the absconded roles pull the team behind, and success is not easily achieved in the discourse. Team leaders must develop critical strategies to deal with members with self-centered roles.
Strategies to Help Members with Self-Centered Roles
Members with self-centered roles are considered a threat in a team and must be helped to change their attitudes for the group’s success. The team leader’s role is to identify and help such members for group success. Since such members speak more than they listen, the team leader should organize training sessions on active listening and teach the members the benefits of listening more before speaking. When the members with self-centered roles undertake the active listening courses, they are likely to change and be productive members of the group (Venditti and Scott 71). Further, the team leader must explain the team’s objectives to the member and how the self-catered role jeopardizes the group’s success. Setting boundaries is an essential strategy that can help people with self-centered roles to change and be more productive in the group. When a leader sets boundaries to avoid personal matters in the project meetings, the member with such roles is likely to be helped, significantly when exceeding the limits leads to disciplinary action. A deserter must be called to report to work or face termination. Regular training on discipline, self-control and team communication is key to eliminating self-centered roles.
Good Nonverbal Communication
Nonverbal communication effectively conveys information from one person to another through eye contact, gestures, facial expression, posture, and body language. It is the transmission of wordless messages through human behaviors and body movements (Bhat et al. 43). Team members must possess nonverbal cues to effectively pass messages to one another. Some features must be present to make nonverbal communication good. The absence of these features would constitute poor nonverbal communication, and messages will not be passed effectively. Good nonverbal communication is constituted when the human action or behavior, such as facial expression, has a message value and has ambiguous interpretation so that the message is passed to the intended person (Ficapal-Cusà et al. 41). The nonverbal action or behavior for the communication must relational and shows other what is felt and offers a suggestion for improvement, For example when a leader shows an angry face to a worker passes a message that the job has not been completed to satisfaction and therefore needs to be improved. Good nonverbal communication also puts things into the correct contexts for better understanding.
Analysis of Personal Nonverbal Skills
Personal nonverbal determine how well a person can navigate the combination landscape and pass the message to the intended audience. Critical skills include facial expression, body movement, posture, eye contact, and space. Facial expressions can effectively express sadness, anger, surprise, fear, and disgust. The skill is underscored by its ability to convey messages to people from different cultural origins. Further, body posture and movement are manifested through particular standing positions that pass messages to team members. The body postures are changed whenever information is to be changed and passes coded messages that team members can only understand. Eye contact is a remarkable expression manifested when looking at someone to pass a message. When supervising other people, space is used to communicate how the members deliver their duties. For example, when a person performs well, space is accorded, while a poor performer lacks personal space as supervision is done while standing too close.
Strategies to Improve Nonverbal Communication
Nonverbal communication is a unique tool to convey messages in a team. The key strategies to improve these skills are improving the stance of eye contact, having a perfect handshake, ensuring that all the nervous gestures are eliminated, often smiling, and appearing more confident when issuing nonverbal instructions (Venditti and Scott 77). Standing with confidence with arms open while issuing instructions is essential to improving wordless communication since the team members consider instructions that are issued with high levels of confidence. A perfect handshake is a meaningful gesture that helps improve nonverbal communication since it defines the relationship between the team members and ensures instructions are well understood (Ficapal-Cusà et al. 44). Nervous gestures are likely to send confusing messages and the team members may not get the information as desired. Eliminating nervous gestures is a key to improving nonverbal communication. Continuous training on nonverbal communication cues will likely improve the passage of messages and signals from one person to another.
Conclusion
Communication is an essential tool for the formation and management of teams. Nonverbal skills must be understood and used in communication to enhance the passing passage of information in a team for success. Teams help organizations break down goals and assign them to different groups for accurate and speedy implementation. Since teams are the basis for success in an organization, teamwork is encouraged, and tasks are divided into small projects for close monitoring. It is the responsibility of the team leader to ensure that all team members are motivated and ready to work. Different character traits are likely to jeopardize the success of a group. Members with self-centered roles will likely affect how a group operates by destroying it. The team leader can enhance punishment, training, and setting boundaries to ensure that all the group goals are not destroyed.
Works Cited
Bhat, B. Vishnu, and Manoj Kumar Kingsley. “Effective non-verbal communication.”Effective Medical Communication. Springer, Singapore, 2020. 39–47. Web.
Ficapal-CusÃ, Pilar, Mihaela Enache-Zegheru, and Joan Torrent-Sellens. “Enhancing team performance: A multilevel model.”Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021): 125158. Web.
Venditti, Phil, and Scott McLean. “An Introduction to Group Communication v. 0.0.” 2018. Web.