This is not the way to motivate your employees

Be aware of your ego.

The Leadership Insider network is an online community where the most thoughtful and influential people in business contribute answers to timely questions about careers and leadership. Today’s answer to the question: How do you keep your team motivated? is written by Chris Fussell, chief growth officer of McChrystal Group.

“Ship, shipmate, self.” I’ve always found this refrain from the Navy to be powerful. I spent my military career on the SEAL Teams; and while our community was a small part of the Navy, I’ve always had great respect for the ethos of the larger Navy that is embodied in this type of thinking. On any high-performing team I’ve been a part of, putting mission first, and team before self, was always key to collective success. The worst behaviors in organizations, in my experience, are those that get this approach backwards. When the collective mentality of any organization is self and self-preservation first, it’s a sure sign of pending doom.

In any bureaucracy, there’s a natural tendency to let the system become an excuse for inaction. But in today’s complex world, breaking through traditional barriers and creating a culture of cross-functional collaboration is absolutely critical. As we learned first hand in the Special Operations community, today’s world moves with levels of speed that traditional organizational structures are simply incapable of countering. Cross-silo collaboration is no longer a nice to have it’s a necessity for survival.

Silos and bureaucracy are well oiled machines in corporate America, but they are ultimately perpetuated by individual behavior. If we start behaving differently, we can create change. In other words, shifting your focus onto the team or the ship as a whole, not just your self, will have meaningful impact. But be sure to avoid these three behaviors that can be toxic to any high-performing team.

Source: techgig.com