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Running head: TEAM AND MOTIVATION 1

TEAM AND MOTIVATION 2

Team and Motivation

Quanise Richardson

Strayer University

Dr. White

BUS: 520

2/16/2015

Teamwork and Motivation

Introduction

Why should organizations encourage teamwork and motivate their employees? We should all ask this question ourselves. Teamwork is a way of letting the employees work together share ideas in realization of the organization’s goals. The organization should motivate its employees in showing their work is appreciated in helping it achieve its objectives (Broner, 2009).

Motivation is the strategy an organization sets in understanding the work and efforts of its employees. This includes incentives, motivational talks, poems, outdoor activities such as sports, dinners, arranging conferences for the workers and promoting the employees according to their efforts and creativity (Abraham, 2013).

There are two types of motivations; intrinsic motivation- this involves internal factors within a person, i.e. the drive one has to succeed in life or his/her workplace. Extrinsic motivation- the factors outside such as a healthy working environment and incentives offered by the organization (Broner, 2009).

Significant elements of an organization motivation plan.

A motivation plan can one way enhance motivation or diminish it, thus any manager should look at the needs and goals of the organization before enforcing a motivation scheme.

Elements of a motivation program;

Purpose – the manager must recognize the purpose of each employee, his/her responsibility in the organization in the implementation of the organization’s goals and objectives. In doing so, the employer or the leader of the specific unit in the organization must create self-confidence in each employee, so as to show the worth of them and thus creating job satisfaction (Dicker, 2010).

Self-confidence will help to improve the individual’s ability in undertaking and persevering in projects no matter the hardships. Expectations – the employer should outline his/her expectation on each employee and provide the resources so as to fulfill his/her expectations. Clear expectation will help in sustaining long goals of an organization. Creating motivation factors to increase job satisfaction- presence of motivation in the workplace will assist the employees work better and strive to achieve the goals of the group or organization. Growth and development- if there is further training and acquisition of new skills it will help in meeting the objectives and motivating the employees. Creating competence in the organization- the employer should create competency in the employees in achieving and motivating them. This can be through creating new opportunities and giving challenging work to the employees to show their worth and competency in the organization (Dicker, 2010).

Hygiene factor in decreasing job dissatisfaction: this can be through creating policies that the employees can use in working, respect and trust them. It can be done through supervision- there are those employees who like being supervised, and there are those who don’t thus the employer should know the requirement of each employee. It can also be done through work conditions such as a good environment, security in the workplace and good relationships between them and the employer and their workmates.

Organization justice and equity; the employees will always look at their input and the output and thus they expect to be rewarded according to the input and output. Also, they will look at the justice done in the organization, policies, and rules in the organization and thus they should be fair and thus motivating the employees (Phillips & Connel, 2004).

Feedback- the employer should create a good atmosphere for communication during the work so as to encourage the employees to give satisfying feedback that will help in achieving the goals of the organization. Also, the communication between the employer and employee should be frequent so as to determine all factors that affect the employees and the organization. Rewarding system- the organization should create a fair and good rewarding system in motivating its employees Reinforcement- positive reinforcement is better than a negative one thus encouraging the employees (Broner, 2009).

Motivational theory in satisfying the motivation plan

There are many motivational theories that help organizations in fulfilling their motivation plans, and these are; the expectancy motivation theory- this theory that entail the relationship between effort, performance, and the outcome. Thus in achieving the reward the effort has to be there. Goal setting theory- where the employees work according to the goals that have been set.

Abraham Maslow ‘s hierarchy of needs theory- he explains his theory using to strategies that is the deficit principle where a need needs not to be satisfied since it has already been satisfied (Abraham, 2013). It is the progressive principle where a higher need needs to be satisfied after a lower need has been satisfied. He explains that a need is a psychological deficiency that a person feels like it needs to be satisfied, and it may end up creating tension and thus influencing the behavior of the person (Abraham, 2013).

McClelland’s need theory- this is a manifest need theory that explains the main three categories of learned human behavior and these are the need to achieve, the power and affiliations. People have different needs for achievement if one has a high need for achievement they will do all it takes to achieve what they want; they will set goals and follow them to the letter (Dicker, 2010). The need for power takes two forms that are the personalized power that benefits the individual and the socialized power that benefits the group or teammates.

Those with high need for affiliation expect a good relationship with others in the organization. Without the three elements then there is low motivation. Herzberg’s two=factor theory- that is the motivation and hygiene factors. This encourages good job satisfaction.

My motivation plan; I will take the Herzberg’s two-factor theory that include the motivation and hygiene factor,

Hygiene factor

The presence of the following hygiene helps motivate the employees and thus job satisfaction. Good policies- employees will be determined to work if there is an existence of policies that they can respect and trust for the benefit of the organization and themselves. Relationship- an employee will be motivated if there exist a good relationship between him/her with supervisors and workmates (Phillips & Connel, 2004). Good working conditions and security- an employee will work best where there are good conditions and assured of his/her security.

Motivation

The employees will work best if he is well motivated, rewarded for his efforts and respected in the workplace. Thus in achieving the goals of the organization there must be well-defined rewarding system that is fair to all employees. They should be rewarded according to their inputs, skills and experience in the organization. The rewarding should be good payments, promotions, and other benefits such as training of employees to acquire new or better their skills (Reiley, 2014).

The effect of communication, attitude and behavior on team performance

Communication: good communication between the teammates and the leaders is a key factor in succeeding as a team. There must be horizontal and vertical communication to enable the goals of the team and good performance. Poor communication is a way of disconnecting the flow of activities in a group and thus poor performance.

Attitude: each team member should have a good attitude so as to accomplish the work given; negative attitude doesn’t give good output and thus poor performance. Behavior: as an individual you should have good behavior and try to respect each teammate so as to have good performance. Bad behaviors such as lateness, not doing your work leads to poor performance. Culture: a good culture help in achieving a good performance in the organization while a bad culture will lead to poor performance.

A guide to lead the team

The team should work together as a team. This is meant to increase efficiency and productivity. The members of the team or the team, in general, should one specific task at a time.

The management should ensure that all the employees have good communication skills.

Experience in the team

The team leader was chosen because she was eloquent, a good speaker, humble, polite and had a good relationship with all team members.

1. We met twice in a week that was on Monday and Friday.

2. We had the following challenges

i. Keeping time for meeting was a problem

ii. Poor communication between the team members

iii. Communication media was not the best.

Conclusion

In the future, I would wish that the team use different methods of communication such as social media e.g. Skype, Facebook, and WhatsApp. The group leader should be strict on the time keeping. To achieve the goals of a team or organization, there must be good motivation plan and goals of the organization thus achieving the goals set.

References Abraham, M. H. (2013). A Theory of Human Motivation. New York: Rough Drafy Printing. Broner, S. (2009). Employees' Perceptions of Leaders' Attitudes and Employee Retention: A Quantitative Study on Perceived Attitudes. New York: ProQuest. Dicker, L. (2010). Employee Relations: How to Build Strong Relationships with Your Employees. New York: Allen & Unwin. Phillips , J., & Connel, A. (2004). Managing Employee Retention. New York: Routledge. Reiley, R. (2014). Five Ways to Improve Employee Engagement Now. Business Journal, 23(1), 1.