Your Business Stimulus Plan<br>How to Motivate Your Team to Do More with Less

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In this economy, you don't have the monetary incentives like raises and bonuses to motivate employees. This means you have to look for alternative ways to keep your teams motivated and to inspire them to achieve goals and objectives with fewer people and less resources.

It's more important than ever to be in front of your employees, encouraging them and letting them know you believe in them. Just because the economy is suffering doesn't mean business can't, and won't, go on.

How can you be the Chief Motivational Officer in such challenging times, when you have to do more with less? First, be honest when you face difficulties, but don't bring people down. There is a fine line to walk between sharing the important information in a straightforward way, and worrying people. The hallmark of a real leader is calm, steady forward-thinking conversations in times of stress and uncertainty.

It is more important than ever right now for leaders to be out in front of employees as much as possible, continually communicating and making personal connections with them.

What are some ways you can do more, with less?

• Praise, reward, and recognize. People really don't mind working hard; they just want to know that their efforts are appreciated. Recognition doesn't have to be through raises and bonuses. Instead, regularly send good performers handwritten notes or personal e-mails of thanks and congratulations.
• Communicate constantly. In times like these, many managers tend to withdraw because they aren't getting clear direction from their own bosses. Fear grows in a vacuum, and employees will fill that vacuum of information with their own worries about their future.
• Be open and honest with employees. Even if leaders don't have all the answers, they need to share the latest news and developments with their people - both good and bad. If the situation is unclear, acknowledge that, too. Keep the information flowing in order to lower the anxiety and stress that stems from uncertainty.
• Adopt a variety of ways to find out what is on employee's minds. It will require using several different approaches to dig deep and discover how employees are feeling. These methods include walking around among employees and asking questions, individual face-to-face meetings, informal brown-bag lunches, and town hall meetings.
• Give employees an opportunity to vent about such issues as layoffs, increased workloads, salary freezes, and other cutbacks. Once they know you are listening to them and paying attention to their concerns, they are far more likely to put forth an extra effort in spite of the challenges.
• Don't be afraid to push your employees to take more initiative and become more involved. Encouraging employees to be more resourceful, rather than waiting for direction, can inspire creativity, energy, and motivation. Employees will be proud to know that their individual efforts are part of the solution.
• Get clear about your own priorities. Managers often hear that they need to communicate their priorities. But they can't communicate these if they haven't decided what they are. Leaders need to make the tough decisions about what really needs to be done now, and what isn't as urgent and can wait longer.
• Reassess day to day, even hour to hour. What seemed important yesterday may not be so important today. Although your priorities must be based on a sound business strategy, you need to continually reassess them, and help your team make good decisions about where to spend their time and resources.
• Get in closer touch with customers, prospects, and vendors. You and your team need up-to-the-minute information from those outside your organization - customers, prospective customers, and vendors - in order to make decisions. You will have far more success getting people to work together, and foster collaboration, if your information is current and solid.

Suzanne Bates is author of "Motivate Like a CEO: Communicate Your Strategic Vision and Inspire People to Act!", just published by McGraw Hill in January 2009, which recently became #1 best-seller in books on communication skills on amazon.com. She is also the author of the business best-seller "Speak Like a CEO, Secrets to Commanding Attention and Getting Results" (McGraw Hill 2005). She is President and CEO of Bates Communications Inc. www.bates-communications.com and blogs at www.thepowerspeakerblog.com . To sign up to receive an RSS feed of S uzanne's blog, click on posts, choose a service if you don't have one that allows you to receive a blog feed. Or with updated Microsoft office, click on RSS posts, and find the link you can copy and post into Outlook. It will be send to your RSS feed in Outlook.