Working in a team can inspire striving – or encourage free-riding. What makes a difference is how the teamwork is designed. Discover the secrets to boosting team motivation with strategies that either skyrocket success or lead to total failure. Understanding what motivates your team can transform your workplace dynamics and drive unprecedented performance.
Keep reading to uncover actionable insights and avoid common pitfalls that sap team motivation.
Table of Contents
- Genres
- Review
- Recommendation
- Take-Aways
- Summary
- Teamwork can either enhance or diminish an individual’s motivation, depending on how the work is designed.
- People engage in social loafing when they believe their efforts aren’t vital to their team’s success.
- When designing teamwork, delegate subtasks to each member and celebrate individual contributions.
- About the Authors
Genres
Business, Management, Psychology, Leadership, Human Resources, Workplace Culture, Organizational Behavior, Team Building, Employee Engagement, Motivation
The article “Why some teams boost motivation while others totally sap it” explores the factors that differentiate highly motivated teams from those that struggle with low morale. The authors, Ann-Kathrin Torka, Jens Mazei, and Joachim Hüffmeier, identify key elements such as leadership style, team dynamics, and communication practices.
They emphasize the importance of creating a supportive environment, fostering open communication, and recognizing individual contributions. The article also highlights the negative impact of poor leadership, lack of direction, and inadequate feedback on team motivation. Practical recommendations are provided to help leaders enhance their team’s motivation and overall performance.
Review
The article offers a comprehensive analysis of the factors influencing team motivation, backed by research and expert insights. The authors effectively highlight the crucial role of leadership in shaping team dynamics and motivation levels.
The use of real-world examples and practical recommendations makes the content actionable and relevant for managers and team leaders. The article’s structured approach, clear language, and focus on actionable insights contribute to its effectiveness. It is a valuable resource for anyone looking to understand and improve team motivation, offering both theoretical and practical perspectives.
Recommendation
Conventional wisdom suggests that teams can achieve more than individuals. Yet teamwork can be a soul-destroying experience — for example, when a classmate slacks on a group project. In German, the word “team” offers a tongue-in-cheek acronym that stands for Toll, ein anderer macht’s, (“Great, someone else does it”). But if you carefully design your team’s work, according to TU Dortmund University researchers Ann-Kathrin Torka, Jens Mazei, and Joachim Hüffmeier, the acronym can stand for “together, everyone achieves more.” Their treatise provides a helpful blueprint for boosting team performance.
Take-Aways
- Teamwork can either enhance or diminish an individual’s motivation, depending on how the work is designed.
- People engage in social loafing when they believe their efforts aren’t vital to their team’s success.
- When designing teamwork, delegate subtasks to each member and celebrate individual contributions.
Summary
Teamwork can either enhance or diminish an individual’s motivation, depending on how the work is designed.
Imagine a typical high school student. She gets assigned to a group project with three other students, one of whom happens to be the smartest kid in the class. The project is due in one week. She immediately disengages. Rather than working on the group assignment, she opts to save her time and energy, because she believes that her contributions would be redundant and dispensable.
The same student then participates in a relay race at a swim meet. During her leg, she pushes herself to the limits of her endurance to ensure her team’s victory. Why does the student demonstrate such a wide discrepancy in effort between the two activities?
“In teams, members can provide mutual support, one person can compensate for the other, and teammates can learn from each other’s knowledge and skills. There are obvious benefits of teamwork in terms of help and shared knowledge.”
You might think the answer lies in the nature of the task — that is, perhaps the student excels in physical activities, or her culture celebrates athletics more than academics. However, data from a variety of studies involving more than 320,000 participants from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, South Africa, and China suggest that teamwork itself isn’t responsible for improving or diminishing performance. Rather, the way in which the work is designed defines individuals’ motivation to be team players. This is true whether the task is physical or cognitive, and whether the participants are young or old.
Research shows that if you feel that your efforts are nonessential — or if you feel that the team’s success hinges on the performance of the strongest member, and that person isn’t you — you likely won’t commit as much of your time or energy to a team effort as you would to a solo project, resulting in social loafing and “effort losses.” If, on the other hand, you perceive that your efforts are critical to the success of the team, you’ll exhibit a greater contribution than you would if you were working alone, resulting in “effort gains” — that is, a willingness to go the extra mile for your teammates.
“Teamwork can represent a social dilemma, in which people seemingly have to choose between what is best for the team and what is best for themselves.”
In one study, participants were told that a teammate’s performance far surpassed their own. In task after task, the imaginary teammate did twice as well as the participant. Confronted with a superior teammate, people tended to stop trying so hard and struggled with feelings of frustration and failure. Comparing yourself to others is natural, but when you have no chance of catching up, it can lead to a sense of failure, reduced motivation, and a reduction in effort.
When designing teamwork, delegate subtasks to each member and celebrate individual contributions.
To help all team members feel as though their contributions are essential, break down a project into subtasks, and assign specific tasks to each individual, giving all members an area of responsibility. Or structure your tasks sequentially, like a relay team, so that later tasks rely on the completion of earlier ones, helping each member feel accountable for the team’s overall success. This approach can be especially motivating in new teams or groups working on monotonous tasks.
“Just monitoring people does not lead them to do their best. Instead…managers, instructors, and other leaders can boost people’s motivation during teamwork by enabling team members to engage in social comparisons.”
Moreover, highlight and celebrate individual performances, and encourage social comparisons, which can be extremely motivating. The social comparison tactic can backfire, alas, if people compare themselves to others whose skills and performances eclipse their own. Comparison to an unobtainable standard can have a demotivating effect. Instead, use social comparison strategically by encouraging individuals to compare themselves to teammates who demonstrate only slightly better performance. Strategic recognition of individual contributions can foster a healthy competitive environment and motivate all team members to put in greater effort.
About the Authors
Ann-Kathrin Torka is researching a PhD in psychology at TU Dortmund University, where Jens Mazei is a postdoctoral researcher, and Joachim Hüffmeier is professor for social, work, and organizational psychology.