Since I created the article “How to Motivate Yourself,” I thought it would be nice to create “How to Motivate Your Staff.” They compliment each other, and hopefully with the knowledge of these two articles, you can successfully motivate yourself AND others, which is an important skill to have as an administrator on a forum.

First, You Must Be Motivated

It’s really hard to motivate others if you are not motivated. You can’t really express your ideas in an enthusiastic way if you are not motivated about the subject at hand. So before you try to motivate others, make sure you are motivated.

Don’t Talk As Much About the Work Involved

Just as you can’t “think about the work” when motivating yourself, try to avoid talking about the work involved as much as you can when speaking with your staff team. People are typically NOT motivated about work, so talking about it won’t help you motivate them. So what do you do?

Talk About The Finished Product

If you are motivated about the finished product then you should hopefully be able to transmit that enthusiasm towards your staff members. One of the best way to transmit this sort of enthusiasm is by having chats with your staff. These chats could be individual or groups. I have found that motivating your staff through chat is much more efficient than through forum-means.

What you want to do when you speak with your staff is to get them excited about the final product. If you can get your staff to be excited about it when it is completed, then motivating them will be easy. The final product is what people want. If there was any way to avoid all of the work in between to get to the end, then you wouldn’t need to motivate your staff at all. But you can’t just start talking about the work involved until they are motivated, otherwise it will be a complete failure.

How to Talk About Work

Once your staff members are excited about the final product, they are motivated. Now you are able to talk about some of the work involved. The main thing you should be weary of is making the whole thing feel overwhelming. If your staff members feel like they are overwhelmed, there is probably not enough motivation in the world to get them to work. Once you have given them the idea of the final product, tell them the first step, and only the first step. You can easily get too ahead of yourself, and cause them to lose their motivation to work.

What Ways Do YOU Motivate Your Staff Members?

This is my most effective way to motivate people I work with, what about you? Are there any tricks you have used that have proven helpful on your own forum? Share them!

Related posts:

1. How to Motivate Yourself
2. How To Motivate Staff Members – Top 10 Tips
3. How To Motivate Yourself: Setting Goals
4. Motivation is like an Old Car
5. Keeping Your Staff Motivated