How do you motivate a diverse team (age, knowledge, background, etc.)?

Be genuine, real, transparent. Provide a vision and some structure behind what you’re trying to accomplish as a team. Share meaningful feedback when you get it and highlight that “we win as a team” and “we lose as a team”. No one individual success is possible without the support of everyone on the team.

I’m a big sports fan, and have played a lot of sports myself, and I take a lot of inspiration in how to lead and motivate my team from sports team philosophies.  Which is, in sports, if one person drops the ball or doesn’t receive the ball or whatever, we could lose the match.  Likewise, if one person on my team is not working well or not as productive as they could be, the whole team suffers. It will be hard on everyone in the team.   So whether it’s someone who is 50 years with children in college who has different motivations and life objectives than a young 20 something year old, what I do is bring everyone together, and explain what it is to work on a team.  When we have to deliver a project or we begin a sprint, I make sure that everyone knows exactly what to do, what they are personally responsible for, and understand how failing to do something will impact others on the team and the team as a whole.