A poorly motivated team can wreak havoc on a business, causing you to lose valuable clients whom you’ll never have the chance to regain. Not only do unmotivated workers fail to sell and perform other job functions effectively, perhaps most devastatingly, it’s obvious to clients when workers just don’t care.  Why would somebody want to frequent a business when the staff is apathetic and unengaged? This rings particularly true in the indoor tanning industry, where the overall customer experience is just as important as the products and services themselves.

It’s the job of owners, managers and supervisors to keep the staff motivated and engaged. It starts with hiring the right people and instilling a team-oriented culture that gets the ball rolling in the right direction. But it also takes daily maintenance to ensure that motivation doesn’t slowly slip away over time.

The first step towards becoming a highly motivating and productive supervisor is understanding human nature and why people do what they do. Motivation comes from inside each individual and is stimulated by outside forces. Every person is unique and will respond differently to various motivational techniques. This is determined by an individual’s personality, individualism, behavior and desire.

With this understanding, leaders need to know how to analyze these factors in the individual and take steps to motivate them accordingly. But, while it takes an individual touch to inspire certain people, there are some aspects of motivational leadership that are fairly universal. Many of these facets center around the subordinate’s feelings of being appreciated, listened to, and well utilized. It’s not about creating fear of consequences – a supervisor that manages with an authoritarian style is not going to be able to motivate staff as well as one that seeks the opinions of staff, helps them make the right decisions on their own, and empowers them to put their unique skills to use.

For more details on these concepts, check out Smart Tan’s Motivating Your Team mini training.