How Do You Motivate Agile Teams to Become High-Performing Teams?

Few understand the secrets to motivate agile teams or create high performing teams. The carrot and stick approach is outdated — learn what to do instead.

Most people have no idea how to motivate agile teams or create high performing teams. And even if you tell them, they don’t seem to remember or care.

I’ve had more than a few conversations over the last few years that led me to this conclusion, and I have heard some pretty outlandish and offensive things.

• “the teams are lazy”
• “I know I would treat this with more urgency than they do”
• “can we tell who is working on what?”
• “for what they are paid, they should work a lot harder”

In each case, it started with someone outside the Development Team who was frustrated at the Team’s pace of delivery. They talked about various approaches they would take to motivate the agile team.

I even had a Product Owner demand that a development team work overtime and weekends to hit a key delivery date that was promised by someone outside the team. That product Owner didn’t see that the lack of team autonomy directly impacted…