What’s the best way to enlist the help of your team?

If it’s not ‘right brain’ exciting or interesting work, and they won’t learn loads of new things either.

But. It’s something you really need their help with, if the business is to continue.

As the boss you could use coercion…

By forcing them to spend their weekend on this mind-numbing project.

They might do it!

But the damage to their moral and long-term commitment to you & the business could be substantial.

Another way is to ask for volunteers…

But let’s face it. Most people can think of better ways to spend their weekend.

Maybe in these situations, another type of reward might be effective. Like:

• The promise of an office wide party if everyone helps with the project.
• Provide a gift card to all those who agree to help.
• Or you could even pay them a small sum for giving up their time.

Although. Rewards like these can undermine intrinsic motivation and creativity. It matters less when the project doesn’t inspire deep passion or require deep thinking.

You can also increase your chances of team engagement, by supplementing your chosen reward with the following important practices:

• Offer an explanation why the task is important & needs to take place.
• Be honest, and acknowledge the task is mundane & boring.
• Allow your team members to complete the task in their own way.

A few years back, we transformed our business from a small network of retail stores, to a B2B organisation providing office technology solutions in monthly subscriptions.

It was a tough time, and we had to close all our stores at once & relocate into a business unit. This is when we really needed out of hours help from our team.

We couldn’t afford to close the business for 3 or 4 days, whilst we sorted everything out. So, we planned the move over the 4-day Easter bank holiday weekend.

Gathering the team, we we’re honest and explained we needed their help for 3 days of the bank holiday weekend, and we could only afford to pay them a normal hourly rate.

We backed this up, by clearly explaining what & why the activities needed to happen. Admitting it will be mainly manual, tough, mundane & boring work.

And do you know what?

To a person. They were all in. Even organising themselves into work groups & matching existing skills with the requirement.

The team were so motivated & organised, we got the project completed in 2.5 days instead of 3.

…that weekend, we became a team & moved a mountain together.