For most of my working life I believed that motivating a team was something you did to them. A good speech. A visible target. Recognition at the right moment.
Some of it worked, briefly. None of it lasted, and I assumed the fault was in the delivery.
The wrong problem
What changed my mind was watching a team become visibly motivated with no intervention from me at all. Their circumstances had improved in one specific way: the obstacles had been removed. The approvals that took three weeks now took two days.
Nobody had given a speech.
What I do now
I assume motivation is already present and ask what is standing on it. Usually it is an approval queue, an unclear boundary, or a colleague nobody wants to name. Removing one of those does more than a quarter of encouragement.
This was not a pleasant realisation. It is more flattering to be an inspiring leader than an efficient clearer of obstacles. But the second one is the job.
