A quote by Dwight L. Moody is my inspiration for this post today. Moody was a 19th century evangelist, who said “The best way to revive a church is to build a fire in the pulpit,” and he was sharing a lesson about more than building churches. The lesson is much broader.
Consider my adaptation of his quote: “The best way to revive a team (or organization) is to build a fire in employees.” Note that I am not suggesting that you fire and replace under-performing employees. While that is sometimes required to motivate under-performers and other employees who refuse to step it up, it usually isn’t required. Instead, take steps to ignite the fire already burning in your employees.
If the word fire doesn’t connect for you, use “passion.”
“The best way to revive a team (or organization) is to build passion among employees.”
If you want to revive your team, look in the mirror first to evaluate your own passion. Be honest:
- Are you excited about your team? Your customers?
- Do you truly care about the work?
- Do you believe in the vision and mission of the organization?
- Do you want to excel? And do you want your employees to excel? Or is just getting by enough?
- Are you actively looking for new opportunities and taking steps to move your team forward? Or are you comfortable with the status quo?
- Are you bored, frustrated or indifferent? Or are you energized and excited about what’s ahead?
- Do you love leading, coaching and developing your staff? Or do you wish you could just focus on yourself for a change?
Those are hard questions to answer, but if you are honest, it will become clear, pretty quickly, if you are passionate about your job, your employees and your role as a leader. If your passion has been there in the past, but you feel it waning, ignite it. Focus on what’s great about your career and your life. Recognize your accomplishments and revisit your successes. Choose to have a better attitude. Then seek out opportunities to help your employees and coworkers. Doing so makes you feel good about yourself and more connected to the them. Finally, change your perspective about a big (perhaps, troublesome) project or task, and take a new approach to finish it or resolve it.
Share this activity with your employees to encourage them to also ignite their own passion.
A shift in perspective, a positive attitude, and small, daily actions will bring both your and employees’ passion back, and that will lead to a higher performing team.
Photo Credit: http://www.freeimages.com/photo/passion-1141987
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