Managing, leading, and inspiring your team can be challenging in uncertain times. This article focuses on the latter: what are the best ways to inspire your team to boost its productivity and performance and let your business grow faster?

By Emile Fakhoury
First, let me start by defining the word team as I see it; it is a group of people who could come from diverse backgrounds and cultures, working together and, most importantly, have a strong trust in each other' to achieve the project objectives.

Not each project group is a team. Naturally, it takes time and effort to establish and enforce the links between members of the project to achieve a team-level spirit; therefore, it is a project team.

The team can fail and win together, but their strong trust makes them resilient to rebound and come back each time and not derail from the project objectives.

Many stress factors affect the project progress from various inputs from the schedule, quality, and cost elements. Together as a team, they embrace changes and stress factors to overcome them.

The team leader understands and manages these issues while relying on the project team to address these issues openly and objectively. Communicating transparently is the key to reinforcing the trust in the team members' spirit.

A team leader is not a boss; the word boss originated from the Dutch word "baas," which means "master," according to Jonathon Haeber. Its use was a uniquely American way of avoiding the word "master," which had quickly become associated with slavery by the mid-19th century.

This word should be soon banned in corporations and the business world as it not only kills innovation and creativity but also lowers team spirit and removes the trust in the team.

The team leader values team members and uses their positive influence to inspire the team. A good team leader would be the one who knows that the team can achieve the best performance by inspiration. They would learn some tricks to boost employee performance without applying authority. Therefore, the strategies that such a team head comes up with would be in coherence with the organization's needs and the workforce.

Time is changing, and many organizations will have to embrace the choice to enhance collaboration and productivity. The focus is on the communication to connect with team members and stakeholders, seek the team's benefits, and attract interest to achieve project objectives.

Leading by example will help inspire your team by showing how and why you are making decisions and tasks in your project, reminding each time the project objectives and benefit in an easy way using influencing.

A successful leader or manager uses influence, not authority, to enhance team performance.
Understanding the team's capabilities and motivators is critical to attaining the best results and exceeding your stakeholder's expectations.

Start by getting closer to the team members, listening to their concerns, and working to address them objectively. This will help manage both relations and expectations for your project and organization.

Organizing awards and team sessions, not only at the end of the project but also throughout the project life cycle, improves the team spirit and influences to achieve of optimum results.

Keeping good reminders of the project benefits and expectations well-aligned boosts the team spirit, overcoming challenges, and facing cyclic stress throughout the project's life.

Team members will align with you; you won't need to chase to complete tasks when you inspire and lead by example. Things will move smoothly concerning your team and stakeholders.

Emile Fakhoury is a Project Manager Professional working in the oil and gas and power generation industries. He regularly publishes on corporate matters at The Levant news.