Newly thinking about~ Motivation

Management coaching is about tweaking thought processes – we freshen them up so thinking doesn’t go the routes of un-thinking acceptance and auto-pilot. Let’s take motivation.

I often urge managers to stop using the using ‘motivation,’ replacing it with ‘self-motivation’ instead. For instance, when you’re thinking about someone’s just-blah attitude and wanting to improve it, instead of asking yourself, “what can I do to motivate this person?” ask yourself “what’s not right here, keeping this person from being self-motivated?”

Motivation is an inside job: When you think about it, you can’t really motivate someone – they have to draw from their own Ho‘ohana and self-motivate. Only then will they commit to the actions they take, because in effect, their commitment is to their own intention.

What we as managers do, is create the overall workplace environment they’re in so that nothing stands in their way once they’ve done that, i.e. they

• Make a personal decision
• Connect that decision to the intention of their ho‘ohana
• Commit to the action necessary
• Take the action and
• Follow-through completely, because again, it’s their intention

Life at work is pretty sweet when this whole sequence happens, isn’t it! And what do the fans in the stands proclaim? “Wow, that person is motivated!”

Well Tim Milburn’s got a post up at studentl.inc about ‘demotivation’ today, where he is tweaking my thought processes …

When we talk about improving motivation in our conventional management-speak, what we’re really talking about is not doing some of these things that cause demotivation. These are the things that sabotage a self-motivated person, throwing a wet blanket on their energies.

Click over and take a look at Tim’s post:

How to DEMOTIVATE those you work with

Yes, I have been mentioning Tim quite a bit lately … can’t help it; he’s on a roll!

Some of the things Tim mentions:

• Give them MEANINGLESS work.
• Set expectations extremely low or too high to reach.
• Ask them to do things you haven't trained them for.
• Only talk to them when they do something wrong.
• Forget their name...or better yet, keep calling them by a different name that sounds similar.

Ouch! What would you add to Tim’s list? How might your boss be demotivating you?

Comments

[christine]

Put all of their creative ideas on the back burner.

[Rosa Say]

You are so right Christine; I wince just thinking about that one.

[Saymorre]

Thank you for this article, it has me self-motivated for my next career adventure.

[Rosa Say]

You are very welcome Saymorre, thank you for reading Talking Story and commenting for me!