From what I’ve experienced you can’t motivate the soul, but you can create a work environment that is conducive to people feeling inspired and self-motivation naturally kicks-in. This begins by setting clear cut goals and then transparently promoting those goals within the organization. Allow your constituents the space required to self-embrace your company’s ideals, thereby empowering them toward unification. If you want people to have a sense of ownership and buy-into your greater plan, make sure you openly and ongoingly promote your plan and how they fit into the realization thereof. This type of inclusion creates an unbreakable bond that is unifying for all involved.

Make a point of creating an environment of optimism. One that is conducive to engendering unification that is absent of disparity and negativity. I’ve seen many situations where things take on a nepotism feel where favoritism, politics and cliques are prevalent. When you have a siloed effect among groups and members of the team where people feel pitted against one another, you have a recipe for a disaster. Sure, people may feel the need to compete internally, but this is not how you create unification. At the end of the day, people feel more inspired when they are part of an inclusive team and a greater, unified cause.

I remember a meeting I had with a software group out of Atlanta. They were interested in GlobalStar being one of their select services partners. The meeting was comprised of one executive after another going up on stage and promoting their area of responsibility. There was one executive who stood out over the others. He began pompously droning on about his adherence to the “Covey Principles” as in, Stephen Covey, author of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. At the same time, he contradicted those philosophies when he divisively spoke about the delivery team versus the sales team in a derogatory manner. 

I couldn’t help but speak up about how it is very possible and a must, to have teams work together in a unified manner. Of course, my speaking up did nothing for engendering a partnership, but it’s incumbent upon leadership to foster team collaboration. I felt strongly about this and therefore, we passed on the partnership. Unification means being more supportive of “team” victories than individual accolades where everyone within the organization feels supported and included. This requires leadership staying close to the pulse of what’s important to their team members. When you intimately know your team members, you can more effectively pinpoint areas of appreciation that lead to self-motivation which leads to unification.