If you are having trouble facing another year of running your business, don’t give up in despair. You can improve things, no matter how difficult or even impossible it might seem.
What you can do is to form a bond between each and every individual in your business; a bond that links them to the enterprise and to each other in a way that allows them to move forward no matter what.
A bond like this is created through shared beliefs and shared efforts. It is the energy source of motivation, with a visible impact on our attitude; it makes the difference between forcing ourselves to go to work and looking forward to it each day.
At work our wristwatches seem to run faster and we forget about the things that used to drain the energy out of out of us.
For you, the boss, building such a bond means that there will come a day when you realize that you want to be with this team come what may, success or failure.
Creating a bond will depend on you. It is not something that can be outsourced. A bond powerful enough to make a difference depends on three beliefs, and unless you believe in them yourself no one else will either.
There is a saying in television news, probably apocryphal, that goes, “This business is all about sincerity. If you can fake that you’ll do well here.” In the real world, though, you can’t fake it. For the CEO or manager there should be an old saying that goes, “He that believeth not shall not be believed.”
The three fundamentals of motivation and team bonding are these:
¦ We are all in this together.
¦ What we are doing is worthwhile and important.
¦ We have what it takes to succeed.
It is quite possible that you don’t really believe that you are all in this together. Maybe you never believed it or maybe the day-to-day demands of your work, especially the constant fixing of problems and mistakes, have eroded or erased that belief.
If you think clearly about the situation, though, you know that your business cannot succeed unless every person on the team does his or her job well. From a mom-and-pop pizza parlor to a jet aircraft manufacturer, all the effort and quality assurance systems in the world can come undone in an instant by a single worker’s failing to stay focused.
There is a scene in a 1978 movie, “Heaven Can Wait,” in which the principal character has purchased a professional football franchise and is trying to show the coach and the team that he can be its new quarterback and take them to the Super Bowl.
The team, however, isn’t having any of it, and on the first two plays he calls he is immediately sacked.
Recognizing that the linemen are just going through the motions and letting the tacklers through, he makes a deal with them for just one more play.
If they protect him and he doesn’t connect with a pass to the wide receiver, he will go home and forget about the whole thing.
The movie, which is a remake of “Here Comes Mr. Jordan,” released 37 years earlier, is shown fairly often on television and you can see for yourself how the football play, and other things, turn out.
The important lesson for us, though, is that success in football requires total effort and focus of the entire team, not just the star quarterback. They win as a team or lose as a team. It is as simple, and as difficult, as that.
From a motivational standpoint, football is not intrinsically important.
Even those of us who love it realize that playing football is not finding a cancer cure or developing affordable clean energy.
For the players, then, much of its importance comes from pride in achievement in a competitive activity where your skill and teamwork are constantly challenged, often by those with superior physical skills.
Every business is doing something important. What you make, what you do, what you sell, what you deliver, is important to someone. You and your team have to recognize that in order to create the bond that leads to success.
The bond also needs the third fundamental: confidence that the team has what it takes to make the business a success, no matter what fate or the competition throws at them. That means thorough, ready-for-anything preparedness through training, cross training, and a learning-friendly environment. If you, as leader, take care of these fundamentals they will take care of you and your business.
In ordinary time, that will mean fewer mistakes and problems. And when things get tough you will be prepared to overcome obstacles and succeed.
Author’s note: If you would like to see these fundamentals used in a motivational talk, read Shakespeare’s classic “St. Crispin’s Day” speech in “Henry V” (Act IV, Scene 3). It doesn’t get better than that.
James McCusker is a Bothell economist, educator and consultant. He writes a monthly column for The Herald Business Journal.
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