As most of your team members are likely to be unpaid volunteers, motivation of team members is going to play an important role in the success of any health plan for your community. When each team member feels important to the team and trusts the team they will bring their best skills to the group. This will boost the team and motivate its members to succeed (Figure 4.5).
Figure 4.5 A well-motivated health team in a Health Centre or in the community will work well together and be able to achieve their health goals. (Photo: I-Tech/Julia Sherburne)
In Box 4.4 you will find a checklist of some effective methods you can use to keep your team motivated.
Box 4.4 Keeping your team motivated
- Take the time to meet with and listen to team members.
- Provide teams with specific and frequent feedback about their performance, and support them in improving their performance.
- Recognise, reward and promote high performance; deal quickly with poor performance so that they can improve and learn from mistakes.
- Provide information on how the organisation has achieved or failed to achieve the community health goals.
- Involve teams in decisions, especially those decisions that affect them.
- Give members of the team the opportunity to grow and develop new skills.
- Provide team members with a sense of ownership in their work and their working environment.
- Strive to create a work environment that is open, trusting and fun.
- Encourage new ideas, suggestions and initiatives.
- Celebrate individuals' successes and take time for morale building team meetings and activities.
- Personally thank team members for doing a good job.
Look through the list of motivational ideas in Box 4.4. Which of these methods do you think will be the most difficult to achieve?
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Lots of these ideas are actually interconnected. If the entire team works in a good atmosphere and is used to giving help and support to all its team members then most of these motivational ideas will become routine and the team should go from strength to strength.