How to communicate better with your team

1. Find out what motivates employees and incentivise them appropriately.

Whether it’s bonuses, the freedom to work from home or free lunches, take the time to learn what really drives each employee on your team. What gets them excited? What will make them motivated? What will make the work environment better for them? Keep asking the important questions

2. Communicate clear expectations and directions.

Disharmony can result if people don’t fully understand their roles, or if their job functions overlap with someone else’s. You need to make sure that the expectations for each person are clearly written out and they know what they’re supposed to be doing and what you expect of them.

3. Avoid micromanaging at all costs.

No one enjoys having someone else’s hands and eyes all over their work. And it’s not good for bosses either, who aren’t focusing on their own task. Empower your team to be successful and give them the tools to make it happen.

4. Do what you say you’re going do.

It’s a matter of leading by example and keeping your promises. Lead from the front and by example, as you’ll earn more respect this way

5. Give them a chance to be entrepreneurial within your company.

Help them get excited about something within the business and watch it grow. People like taking ownership. If they have cool projects that they’re excited about and can share with their teammates and their friends and celebrate their own little venture within your company.

6. Give them rain days off to do cool things.

BiggerPockets is an American company based in Colorado, they took advantage of the recent beautiful weather to give everyone in the office a day off to go skiing or trail running. “It was a chance to give them a breather, a paid break, and I think they were very happy about it,” There MD says. “Just the little things that please people.”

7. Listen to their concerns and value their input.

If someone isn’t happy, find out why and what you can do about it. One negative teammate can really sink the whole ship, make it your mission to check in with everybody at least a couple times a week to just see how they’re doing, what they’ve got going on, and how they feel.

8. Give them the tools they need to do their job well.

In other words, don’t be stingy. If someone needs a new device or computer, make it happen. Buy the equipment, buy the software, buy the extra mouse. Don’t be cheap. It’s going to make people more productive, so spend the money on it.

9. Let people fail on things that don’t matter.

It can be tempting to redirect someone if you see him or her steering in the wrong direction, but on non-critical missions letting a person make mistakes might be the better course for long-term learning. Failure is a big motivator; Stopping them midway is psychologically less impactful than making a decision that ends up failing.