Morale can make or break any organization. When people feel valued they will be more motivated to be a member of the team and help achieve the team’s goals.
When people do not feel valued it can be a slow or even fast walk to being unproductive and worse, spreading negative feelings thereby influencing others and creating a toxic environment.
The good news is that leaders can impact organization morale every day by making people feel valued.
Some tips and things to keep in mind when looking to boost the morale of your entire team are:
Your daily habits. When a leader takes time out of the day to interact with the team it sends a message that each person is not only important but vital to the success of the organization. This, more than anything else, can help bolster the morale of a team. People, working together with a common mission to do great work, motivate each other to do more, be more, and produce for each other.
Offering assistance to your people, “If there is anything you need from me today just let me know.” This tells people that you are there for them and invested in their successes.
Going out for coffee? Do a coffee/tea run for your people….on you. Often times in top-down organizations the feeling is what people can do for the leaders. It is what leaders do for their people that can make or break an organization’s morale. By extending themselves leaders are letting their team know they are part of the team and not just the supervisor. For virtual employees, you can have a virtual coffee break and talk about what’s going on in work and life.
Bringing the team together for social reasons can also be very impactful on team morale. Schedule a lunch where the team can sit and break bread and NOT talk about work. It can be a bring a dish to pass or the leader can spring for the lunch. Meeting with team members and knowing about them outside of work pays huge dividends in improving team moral. This can be more difficult with the virtual team but not impossible. Be creative when bringing your team together for a virtual meet-up, use music, share funny stories, or even run some competitions. I did this during COVID when my organization was shut down and once a week, we had social events via zoom. The most popular ones were the trivia contests where staff won prizes.
Get to KNOW your people. Find out what’s important to them and talk with them about it. If one of your team members loves college basketball, then have them explain the NCAA tournament to you if you don’t understand it. If you do then chat them up about who they think will be in the final four. People want to be seen and heard. When a leader invests time in understanding what is important to their team it makes the members of the team feel more comfortable and valued.
The most important thing that a leader can do is be authentic with their team. Be the same person whether you are grabbing coffee in the break room or reviewing their performance. Be transparent, kind, forward-thinking, and competent. When a leader shows up consistently for their people morale will improve.
Get out there and be the best leader you can be today, and your team will reflect this back to everyone they encounter and in everything they do.
In friendship, love and leadership,
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