Research‐tested team motivation strategies

The first critical issue in team motivation is to be clear about the definition of “a team.” Nearly everyone who studies teams emphasizes that it is unnecessary to use team motivation strategies when teams are defined as any group of two or more people with similar skills who are simply working together to achieve a common goal (Bandura, 1997). For a team to exist (for motivational purposes), team members must play different roles or bring different skills to the table. Those different skills must be required to achieve team goals. So a team is an interdependent group of individuals, each possessing a different set of skills but who collectively possess all of the skills required to achieve team goals.