Motivating team members is a difficult and sometimes daunting task. The need to always be on your game making other people happy and excited can, frankly, wear a person out.

Sales team leaders understand this. They know the need to keep the front lines motivated. It’s difficult enough to be on the phone, or in person, day after day dealing with people who have a wall up taller than Dolly Parton’s hair! (I do love you Dolly!)

How do so many team leaders do this? There are many ways –

• Incentives
• Attention
• Pats on the back
• Competition
• Free hummus…no?

But one thing that almost every team leader does, is try to motivate a team member by telling them how well the other team members have done.

Especially in multi-level marketing companies, they always want you to get “on fire” by showing you how well other folks on the team are killing it. They’ll send messages back and forth of the incredible sales that have recently happened.

The problem with that is, if all you hear about is that everyone is hitting great sales, then it can be more demotivating than anything. What happens when you have a cruddy day and don’t get anything?

Well, if you have ten messages from other team members who’ve all had stellar day, then you find yourself feeling like a failure. “OH NO!!! HE SAID THE FAILURE WORD!!! WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO USE THAT WHEN MOTIVATING PEOPLE!!!”

Really? Why not? Do we really think that letting someone who’s trying to kill it, know that you had a cruddy day, is going to cause them to have one as well? That’s beyond ridiculous.

I was doing a leadership event many years ago where we were teaching people how to grow their business. At the end of three days, we talked about some mistakes we had made. At that point I literally heard a guy sigh loudly.

When I asked him what that was about, he said, “Finally! You guys have flaws! I was worried that I could never be this perfect.” I laughed and assured him that we had MANY flaws. It’s our flaws that made us great.

When you’re real with those you’re trying to motivate, it is more motivating then when you’re not. YES we want to be positive. YES we want to push negative junk aside. But hearing that you had a bad day, allows me to be ok with my bad day.

It allows me to NOT feel like a failure.

Question: What’s your take on leaders not sharing failures?