Imagine the best team you’ve ever been a part of: One where a leader is motivating employees to go above and beyond to achieve a shared purpose. Everyone is contributing their best work and elevates the outcome to be far greater than what was even originally envisioned.
Does it sound like wishful thinking?
I don’t blame your skepticism.
Trying to figure out how to motivate our team to go above and beyond may feel like a naive quest for an illusionary Holy Grail — especially when maintaining a baseline of motivation can feel like a struggle with our own teams. After all, according to Gallup, only 2 in 10 employees strongly agree that their performance is managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work, in the first place.
Motivating employees to go above and beyond must require secret alchemy of high salaries plus unthinkably posh perks plus some trendy goals framework attached to it… Right?
Wrong. Motivating employees to go above and beyond is not an elusive myth, beholden to only the teams that get lucky or can afford to buy their team’s motivation.
Rather, motivating a team to go above and beyond requires a rigorous reexamination of what truly motivates a team, and how to connect that motivation to the greater vision of what you’re pursuing.