How to Motivate Your Team When You Hit a Set Back

There comes a time in every entrepreneur’s life when their team faces a setback and everyone is left feeling demotivated.

These are situations where you can either sink or swim as a leader. You’ll either be able to cope with the issue and steer your team in the right direction, or you won’t—either way, it’s a big learning experience.

Here are some of the ways you can motivate your team when you face a setback.

Reframe the Narrative

In the moment, setbacks can feel like brick walls that completely stop you in your tracks. But it’s important to reframe this narrative and make it clear that this is only a temporary setback and it can be resolved.

Communicate and Address the Issue

The most important thing is to acknowledge what the issue is, figure out what caused it and consider what the consequences will be.

It’s important for you and your team to discuss the issue together so that everyone knows what went wrong. Without doing this, it will be impossible for you to move forward.

Ask For Feedback and Discuss Solutions

Just because you’re the boss, doesn’t mean you have to come up with a solution all by yourself. Hold a meeting to discuss potential solutions. It’s also a chance to ask for feedback on how to improve, should an issue like this arise again.

Focus on The Positives

There’s always a silver lining to every situation, so think about all of the things that went well within a project—don’t just focus on the setback itself.

Prevent your staff from losing motivation by vocalising their successes and rewarding members of the team that performed well.

Control What Can Be Controlled

Setbacks can often be out of our control, but there may be aspects that we can control—and these are the things that you should be focussing on when trying to motivate your team after a setback.

There’s no point in wasting your, and your staff’s, energy on things that can never be controlled like an unexpected fault with a vital piece of software, or servers going down, but you can control how you react to it.

Work Together To Move Forward

Setbacks can leave your team feeling lacklustre and at odds, so it’s important to bring everyone together and become stronger as a team. It’s time to rally up your colleagues, instil them with your company’s culture and make it clear that if you work together you can get over the setback.

Can You Prevent a Similar Situation Happening Again?

Some issues are totally unexpected, but think about ways that you could potentially prevent them happening again.

Solutions could be as simple as having more resources on standby to get a project over the line, or having a backup strategy ready in case your client rejects your initial proposal.

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