Monday Morning Motivation

Remember, the best way to motivate others is to give them the opportunity to motivate themselves.  Having your employees hit the ground running on Monday morning often has more to do with what you do on Friday than what you do on Monday.  If you want to have a great Monday, you need to start preparing on Friday. 

People tend to feel great on Fridays.  The weekend is coming and the excitement about the weekend, for some people, is better than the actual weekend itself.  I find it interesting that if you ask people what their favority day of the week is, many people will say Friday.  One would think that Saturday or Sunday would be the clear winner, but Friday also ranks pretty high on the list and in terms of motivation, you can use this to prepare to have a great Monday.

To begin, pick a time on Friday when you can get your team together to prepare for the following week.  Keep the following in mind when picking the time:

• If you decide to have an early meeting, providing breakfast can put everyone in a great mood
• Long lunches tend to happen from time-to-time on Fridays, avoid times like 11:00 am or 1:00 pm so your employees don’t feel rushed during lunch or the meeting
• Don’t pick 4:00 pm, they may show up physically, but they’ll probably have already checked out mentally

This meeting should not be about gathering status reports.  So don’t go around the table and have everyone simply update you on what they’ve done this week.  This tends to be boring for everyone in attendance and not particularily helpful for you the manager.  Think of this as more of a celebration of the successes of the week.  Hold back giving corrective feedback, do this in private if necessary.  Of course, this isn’t meant to foster competitive one-upmanship either.  Direct the meeting by focusing on what’s been accomplished this week and what that means to the team, division and/or company in terms of impact.  Use questions like:

• What big milestones did we hit on important projects this week?
• What projects were completed? started? 
• What got finished that was important, but that’s been overlooked in the past?
• What did we do this week that will directly impact the profitability of our company?
• What did we do this week that we’re proud of? (for example handling a customer service issue well, making a sales call we’ve been avoiding, etc.)

As they share, be sure to link these accomplishments, big and small, to how they benefit the team, division and/or company.  People want to be a part of something that is important.  Remind them how their successes contribute to the success of the company and how the success of your company benefits your customers and the markets you serve.  Keep this conversation positive and genuine.  Next, help them prepare to tackle the next week by asking things like:

• What should we work on next week to make it even better than this week?
• What are the biggest obstacles we are likely to face next week?
• What can we do on Monday to set ourselves up for a great week?
• Are there any important projects that have been neglected that we can start on or complete next week?

Through this process, what you’re essentially doing is reinforcing the positive behaviors and results in one week and leveraging those towards the success of the following week.  In NLP, this is called “future-pacing” and involves linking positive emotional states to future events.  So, by future-pacing, you help to install a positive sense of anticipation about the following week so that when Monday arrives, they’re ready to hit the ground running.  Again, getting your team to focus on Monday morning may be best achieved by preparing on Friday.

When Monday morning arrives, all that is necessary is to do a little bit of office quarterbacking to get everyone to pick up where you left off on Friday.  Since everyone is already primed and fully associated with their objectives for the week, its easier for them to tap into motivation, even on a Monday.

Now does this mean that no one on your team will feel sluggish and slow to get going on Monday, probably not.  However, getting your team ready to begin running on Monday by preparing on Friday will certainly help things along in the right direction.