How To Motivate The Unmotivated

Motivation can vary wildly on a team. At any given time, a few people might be highly motivated, while others are totally unmotivated. Ideally, there are times where everyone is motivated at once, but sadly there may be times when everyone is demotivated or burnt out. All this means that an inescapable part of a leader’s job is to motivate the unmotivated.

The good news is that leaders don’t have to rely on raw charisma or the inspirational words of a halftime speech from insert-your-favorite-sports-movie-here. Instead, motivation is less about the qualities of the leader and more about understanding the needs of the team and of each individual on the team.

In this article, we’ll outline five ways to motivate the unmotivated.

Change Up Tasks

The first way to motivate the unmotivated is to change up tasks. Novelty can be a powerful motivator, and the lack of novelty in a job can be demotivating. Few people get excited about coming to work and repeating the same few tasks over and over again. People want new experiences and new challenges. They want to feel that they’re making progress and they often judge that progress based on the projects they’re being given and whether those projects require them to learn new skills or merely execute the same routine functions.