How to really motivate internal teams

Every education marketer that I have ever worked with truly wants to be able to create impactful campaigns. And yet few of those campaigns really ever rock the world. So, what is the disconnect that has it be this way? And how can we bridge it so that we can really pioneer cutting-edge marketing approaches in the education sector?

Over the years through my work with hundreds of marketing, communications and digital teams, I’ve come to realise that the key to success with your campaigns is often only about 30% down to the campaign itself, and about 70% down to the people who are implementing it.

Okay, that’s not at all scientific. But my point is that if we’re not nurturing courage and collaboration in our teams, we’re not creating the necessary conditions to generate creativity and impact in our marketing campaigns.

All too often we focus more on trying to force a particular outcome (like an impactful campaign) while also maintaining the status quo within the teams that create them. If I had a pound, euro or dollar for every time a marketing director has bemoaned to me “I just need them to be more creative”, I’d be a very wealthy woman. But in their teams, nothing will have changed.

We challenge our teams over and over again with the same messages:

• “Be more creative”

• “Be more collaborative”

• “Be more strategic”.

And we expect it to happen. But it doesn’t. We’re missing something. But like a drunk British lad trying to order steak and chips in a Benidorm restaurant, we believe that if we just say it louder and slower, then they might understand and we might get what we want.

For how many years have you all been saying these things? And how much has really shifted?

Here are six things that through my coaching work with marketing teams I see will reliably and consistently bring about actual shifts in how motivated and valued they are at work, and thus how much impact they then believe they can create in their world.

(It’s worth saying that there are some really obvious things that I haven’t included in this list: compensate them fairly, give them a clear career trajectory, invest in their CPD, listen to them, reward them, celebrate them, acknowledge them… but this list goes a little deeper still).

1. Start with their goals, motivations and aspirations
   
   Let’s accept that people are inherently selfish. That’s totally fine and no judgement at all here. In fact, it’s useful! We choose careers because they interest and excite us. In education, there is a strong draw towards altruism and noble notions of wanting to have an impact on the lives of others. But even when our roles feel that they are in service of others, the desire to actually be in service of others is still a personal and self-focused desire. There is nothing wrong here. But let’s work with it.
   
   When it comes to motivating your team don’t start with talk about collaboration, joined-up thinking, or school strategies and mission statements. Start by relating to them all as individuals. Empower them to really clarify what makes them tick as an individual. Have them work with or fall in love with their own personal mission. And then - and only then - bring them together to see how all of those individual goals, motivations and aspirations can be fulfilled through their role in your organisation.
   
   When I’m coaching teams, I work with them all to uncover a personal purpose and individual mission statement for themselves. And only then do we move forward to explore it collectively and see how our working lives help to fulfil that for each of us.
   
   
   

2. Spend as much time focusing on their “being” as you do on their “doing”
   
   If we’re going for transformations in how our teams work, we need to look more at how they are being and less at what they are doing. The way that they are being lays the foundational planks upon which they will create the things that they “do”. It influences and informs it. In order to shift our “doing” (the things we create) we first have to shift our “being” (the way that we’re relating to the situation).

   Talk about being. Out loud. With each other. It might be uncomfortable, and having someone like me coach and facilitate those conversations might help. But however you do it, start doing it. (Ask me about how I do this with teams: tracy@picklejarcommunications.com)

   Ask the question “how are we being about this thing?”

   Are we being empowered, leaders, pioneering, can-do, possibility, power, energy, play, owners, accountable, creative, amplifying, abundance, joy, belief and trust?

   Or are we being disempowered, waiting, at effect, led, deferential, subservient, dissipated, closed down (“we can’t because…”), living in past experiences, distrustful and siloed?
   
   
   

3. Lay the foundations of support, trust and vulnerability
   
   A team that doesn’t feel trusted won’t be motivated. The opposite will often happen. When they read signs that they interpret as a lack of trust, they’re more likely to slip back into a mode of waiting. Waiting for you to tell them what to do. Waiting for you to tell them what you’d like. Waiting for you to give some direction or input.

   As leaders, we might think that we trust our teams, but sometimes our behaviours will suggest otherwise. We need to make sure that we:

   • Support their decisions and actions, even when we don’t agree with them or when we would have done something differently if doing it ourselves

   • Allow them to fail, and be there for them free of blame and punishment when they do

   • Be willing to fail ourselves and model the gift in doing so to our teams

   • Be willing to hear their thoughts and feelings free of judgement and defence

   • Be willing to share our own fears and struggles, vulnerably clearing the way for them to share the same

   • Support them to lead and manage, not do all the leading and managing for them (see point 4).
     
     
     

4. Separate power and control
   
   In order to motivate our teams, we need to remember and recognise that power and control are not the same. However, we often collapse them into being the same thing.

   Power is a state of being. Control is an act of doing. One does not depend on the other, although many leaders behave like control is needed in order for them to feel powerful. That is a perfect way to demotivate your team.

   Instead of asking what I need to control in order to maintain my power, start to ask what control do I need to relinquish in order to expand and nurture my power?

   This might require you to force yourself to put down your perfectionism, check yourself when you feel that you need to be “right”, not check every detail, relax approval processes, and work with your team on what it looks like for them to have full ownership and accountability for things.
   
   
   

5. Champion leadership everywhere
   
   When I conduct stakeholder interviews across marketing and comms professionals, and senior leaders in organisations, there is often a cultural context of “waiting”. I see this as universal in the education sector. It looks something like this:

   Senior leaders are busy waiting for comms and marketing professionals to decide the strategy and plan. Comms and marketing professionals say they can’t develop the strategy and plan until senior leaders say what they want.

   In this scenario everyone is waiting. The teams have a perception that “leadership” is the directly tied to hierarchy and role. They believe that direction has to come from above. And senior leaders have probably behaved in a way before that has teams believe this to be true (see point 4). In this paradigm nobody is actually leading. Everybody is waiting.

   In my work, I encourage everyone to relate to themselves as a leader and to see leadership, again, as a state of being not as a job title or role description.
   
   
   

6. Talk about team and what it means to be a team

   Do you ever have conversations about what being a team actually means and looks like? Or do we just assume that everyone knows and agrees? If the latter, you might be surprised at how different people’s perception of what being a team actually means. But when teams truly believe like a team - think of sports teams here - things change. When teams form around a common objective to win, they behave in a very different way than when they come together around an objective to serve business as usual.

   Some questions that you might find helpful to prompt the conversation in your team:

   • What does it mean to be a team?

   • If we were to play like a team, what would change in how we work and what we achieve?

   • As a team, what are our commitments to one another?

   • What do you all need to feel like you’re playing on this team?

   • What does this team want to win at?

Generating such motivation will take time, take constant adjustment, and it will probably require you to put some things down and let some things go. But you can get there.

---

Did you know that our CEO provides specialist coaching to marketing sand communication teams to help improve collaboration, connection, creativity and courage in how those teams work? Email Tracy Playle to schedule a discussion about how she can support you and your team: tracy@picklejarcommunications.com