Energizing and Re-Energizing Your Team

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The concept of energizing and re-energizing your team may sound like a big task at first. You may think, “How can I make someone else energetic?”. This concept is actually far more within your control and far “easier” than you may realize!

The word “team” should not make us think this only applies to the workplace, though of course it can. We may be tasked with energizing or re-energizing our family, our team at work, an entire organization, or any other group we are a member of or we are responsible for, whether large or small.

The word “energizing” means to give energy or excitement to someone or something. The word “re-energizing” means to give fresh vitality or enthusiasm to. Below are some suggestions that we believe will aid in energizing or re-energizing your team!

Take Notice of Burnout

Before we can energize or re-energize our team, we must first assess whether or not there is something that will stop that energizing from happening. The biggest enemy to energizing or re-energizing a team is burnout!

Burnout is a state of emotional and physical exhaustion. This is typically brought on by long periods of stress resulting in a feeling of emptiness and frustration. Burnout, whether in the family or the workplace, commonly stems from the perception of being overworked and underappreciated.

Most people, especially those whom we’d consider to be the “go-getters”, will usually never say “I’m burned out”. There seems to be a negative stigma attached to that kind of admission. This is where the leader (supervisor, manager, etc.) must take notice and acknowledge it for them.

Sometimes, a person will be suffering from burnout and not even know it. They may call it “being tired” or “just having a bad day”, but if you’ll observe their behavior and compare it to previous performance, you will soon find that they may be suffering from this invisible enemy, called burnout.

Possible Reasons for Burnout

Some of the following are possible reasons for someone feeling burned out:

• Improper training – Does the team member feel inadequately trained for the job or were they given a new role but not enough training for that new role? The leader’s job is to take notice of this and provide the proper tools needed to remedy the situation. Just because someone is assigned to a position or task does not mean they are properly equipped or trained for that position or task
• Personal Issues – Does the team member feel overwhelmed because they are facing personal issues at home? When listening to a team member, you should closely observe their use of words. Sometimes, they will tell you (whether they’re aware of it or not) what is really going on. The observant leader will pick up on these ques and ask properly clarifying questions
• Professional Issues – Is there a staff shortage that may be contributing to the team member feeling burned out? While mental burnout does occur, sometimes the burn out is more physical than mental. No matter how much someone may love what they do, the limitations of their bodies will determine how well they perform, even if they mentally want to keep pushing through.

There are more possible reasons for burnout that I’m sure could be listed, but we’ll move on.

Steps to Energizing or Re-energizing Your Team

As I said earlier, this idea may sound like a big task at first. But, there is more we can do to bring energy to our teams than we may think. The following are some ideas that may aid in helping us to energize or re-energize our team!

• Be Energized Yourself – I love this first step because you don’t even have to be filling a leadership role to do this! Anyone on the team can bring vibrant positive energy to the team!!

This does not indicate that we have to act like we just drank five espressos back-to-back! That’s not the kind of energy we’re discussing. It simply means bring some joy and passion about what your team is doing.

Do you really believe in what your team is doing? If not, you should not be in leadership. If you are not energized about what your team is doing, why should anyone else be. As it has been said, “You cannot give what you do not have”.

• Communicate – By this we simply mean two things:
  • 1) Get out and talk to your team in person. This can be as you’re walking the halls or having a meeting via Zoom or Teams. The days of being the keyboard leader are gone. People want connection now more than ever!
  • 2) Give timely and effective feedback (as opposed to late and purposely harmful feedback). People respond better when they are given feedback on positives and negatives (not just one or the other) in a timely manner. People do not respond well when they are scolded for something that happened last month, or worse, last year.
• Properly Train Your Team – This one is usually where there is a large gap. It seems that leaders often believe that because we gave someone a certificate that our job as their leader is done. It is actually far from being done.

After we have deemed someone ready to start, we must then manage the decision we have made. We cannot afford to just turn them loose and see what happens. This is also where the leader who tries to run everything by themselves gets into trouble. This is because they can only be in so many places at once. This is where things like communication and proper training typically start to fall by the wayside.

• Build Motivation – Notice it doesn’t say, “Show up one day acting super motivated and scold anyone who isn’t as motivated as you are!”. It says, Build Motivation. Motivation takes time to build. This is especially the case when you are in the process of re-energizing a team. There is a reason the team became de-energized.

Take time to get the motivation for yourself first, then be prepared to share it with your team over time while showing them why they should be motivated too.

• Be Fair and Consistent – Fairness does not always mean equal. Not everyone will put in the same effort and therefore should not reap the same rewards. But…if you treat each team member according to their own investment into the team, everyone on the team who is fair-minded will know that you are just being fair and consistent to the team.

Few things are more demoralizing than seeing someone in management leadership showing favoritism, rewarding the slackers the same or more than the contributors, or worse yet, trying to please everyone.

• Reward and Recognize – This is yet another step that is often omitted in the leadership process. Some will say they are too busy and others will say that you shouldn’t need to be rewarded. This may be true when written down on paper, but in the real world both of these are just poor excuses. Those who ascribe to this mentality will have constantly demoralized teams and there will be high turnover rates until they change.

Study after study shows that people go above and beyond for the team, not when they are scolded for not doing that, but when above and beyond efforts and accomplishments are rewarded.

It is easy to talk about the things people should not have done, but it takes more leadership security not only to talk about but to reward those who go above and beyond. Besides, people don’t want to constantly hear about losers. They want to hear about winners!

These are just a few ideas that may aid in helping us to energize or re-energize our teams. We hope it has been helpful to you!

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