No Motivation at Work? Why it Happens & How to Motivate Your Team Again

Many managers experience the phenomenon where their team is engaged, energized, and excited about a project, only to have that momentum and enthusiasm wane and eventually dwindle. Managers and leaders have been working thoughtfully to build engagement and reinforce team culture while their offices have been remote for the past few years. But in some cases, the attempts and strategies that worked a year ago are no longer making an impact. 

Employees who remained highly engaged throughout the most stressful parts of 2020 are now feeling checked out, lacking interest in their work, and are no longer motivated. 

Figuring out how to re-motivate your employees and keep the momentum going starts with figuring out what is causing your team to lose motivation in the first place. Once you’ve figured out what to look for, you’ll be able to identify common causes for employees to disengage and prevent them before they occur.  

Here are four common reasons why employees lose motivation and steam and how leaders can prevent the loss and restore the momentum in their team if needed.

Reasons Your Team Might Lack Motivation in the Workplace

Misalignment of Values

Do your team members care about the work they are doing? If your employees don’t feel connected to the project or assignment, they will be less likely to feel motivated or attached to the work. When the values of the individuals on your team align with the projects they are working on, that spark and energy ignite.

The Solution - Reconnect With What Matters

Identifying and staying true to your values is an important part of being able to maintain and sustain high performance in any endeavor. Values Endurance is one of Valor’s core competencies and is something our performance coaches routinely work on with C-level executives, senior leaders, rising stars, and other high-performers. It can be difficult to maintain your values and not get distracted by other requests of your time and energy, but when you can relate your work back to the things you care about, you can create that connection and see the meaning of your work. 

As managers, you can identify components of the project that your employees value. A common misstep is when managers assume that what is important to them is the same for the team or individual who is working on it. Instead, when discussing the project in the early stages, connect what your employee values and the assignment. According to a recent HBR article, these can be values like:

• Interest value: how intellectually compelling or interesting the task is 
• Identity value: how well aligned the skill set required to perform the task is with the employee’s self-conception or identity
• Importance value: how critical the task is to the team or company as a whole 
• Utility value: how impactful getting the job done will be toward furthering the individual’s career goals or preventing an unwanted outcome

The Confidence Trap

A common phenomenon for high-energy, high-performing employees is that their managers see potential in them and assign them tasks and projects that require them to stretch their skills and abilities. This can feel like a great compliment or can create a situation where workers feel like they lack the ability to carry out the assignment and they become demotivated out of a sense of a lack of self-efficacy. 

The other side of the demotivational confidence trap is when employees feel overqualified to perform a task. Their confidence in their abilities may be strong enough that they feel the project is beneath them so they don’t put value or importance on completing it. In these instances, referring back to their values, especially importance value or utility value can be a useful strategy.

The Solution - Provide Tools for Success

Managers can step in to coach their employees on their confidence and offer their support wherever it may be needed. This can look like providing time management or productivity resources to make the task feel more manageable, sharing success stories of other team members who were able to overcome similar challenges, or removing hurdles and barriers that might be causing undue anxiety or friction for the employee (ie: shifting other responsibilities or pushing other deadlines). Another way to help employees who lack confidence in their ability to carry out a particular project is to break the assignment down into smaller, more manageable chunks. 

Emotional Inflexibility 

There are infinite reasons why an employee can have a negative emotional response to their work or a particular task. Some can be directly related to the assignment itself. Some may be due to issues completely separate from work. Others can be purely coincidental. But improving the employee’s ability to manage and take control of their emotions can restore focus on the project and reignite the momentum needed to complete the task at hand. When workers are feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or frustrated, they won’t be able to give their tasks the proper attention and focus. 

The Solution - Listen Up

A common area of opportunity that Valor coaches work with your employees on is Emotional Flexibility, or the ability to adapt and strategically shift our reactions, responses, and behaviors in order to achieve the desired outcome. By having greater flexibility and control over our emotions, we are able to manage setbacks and disappointments, frustrations, and worries in a more practical way. Managers can foster this skill and help build resilience by setting time to listen to the employee’s concerns. 

By engaging in non-judgmental, active listening, managers can build trust with their employees and alleviate some of the negative feelings held toward work. Just being heard and feeling understood can have the effect of releasing a pressure valve and can cause negative emotions to lift a bit. In some cases, this can be enough for employees to become re-engaged with their tasks. Following the conversation, managers can take the employee’s concerns and consider how or if they can be addressed. 

Attribution Confusion 

Sometimes employees feel a lack of motivation or connection with a project because they can’t identify what went wrong or why things are not progressing as planned. This can happen when the project isn’t clearly outlined or when the employee identifies the cause of their struggles as being out of their control. If you find your employees tend to make excuses as to why they are struggling, this could be the motivational trap they are falling into. 

The Solution - Identify the Root of the Problem & Adjust

Managers can work to help their employees identify what really is the issue keeping them from moving forward on the project. If the reasons mentioned are things that are out of their control, such as not having enough time to complete the task, uncooperative teammates, or a lack of ability to perform the duties required, managers can suggest solutions that are within their control. This requires shifting the employee’s mindset, and can be placing the project in the context of the larger initiative or goal, providing them with more resources or access to tools to make the job easier, or suggesting rethinking the strategy for a different approach. 

Frustration and decline in motivation caused by a perceived lack of control can be reignited by reframing the situation, calling on Valor’s competency of Mental Agility, or the ability to see things from multiple perspectives and get creative when it comes to problem-solving. Setbacks, frustrations, and confusion are something that high-performing teams must be able to manage if they want to continue to grow and perform in a sustainable manner. Reframing these challenges as opportunities will go a long way toward helping to build skills in problem-solving and sustain engagement for the long haul. 

Improve Your Team’s Motivation with the Right Tactics

When managers sense a lack of motivation in otherwise highly motivated teams, the natural reaction can be to problem-solve from a project perspective. But often, by focusing instead on the triggers or traps for de-motivation, diagnosing what the culprit is, and applying the right approach or intervention, leaders and managers can reignite the momentum of their team members. Ready to reignite your team's motivation and regain momentum? Discover Valor Performance Coaching. Our effective strategies help overcome demotivation and drive performance.