How motivated do you feel right now?
Start of a new year, a time to set goals, make commitments, start new things, stop old things.
You’d think that most people are pretty motivated right now.
Well, research suggest otherwise.
A Gallup study conducted in September 2023 revealed that globally only 15% of people are motivated in the workplace.
In Europe that falls to 10% &
» Read more about: Bitesize Leadership No. 35 – Motivation »
You’ll have heard of your comfort zone.
Coined by Alasdair White in 2006, the clues in the name really, it’s when any activity you’re doing is easy, takes little thought or as theorists call it ‘steady state’
You’ll start something, eventually your performance will improve, then it becomes comfortable.
Sounds great eh! Well, maybe not.
Psychologists who specialise in human performance discovered that after that initial uplift in performance,
Someone explained to me that motivation is internal. You can’t motivate someone; you must give them the opportunities to motivate themselves. It made total sense to me, & I even had lots of personal examples spring to mind that backed it up.
But then I discovered that it’s not totally correct.
I listened to a podcast with Dr. Richard Ryan, a clinical psychologist & co-developer of Self Determination Theory,
Many of us, when we break something, tend to see that item as no good anymore and will probably throw it away.
The Japanese though, have a tradition that when a piece of pottery is broken, they repair it using a lacquer mixed with gold. Known as Kintsugi, or Golden Joinery, a 400 year old tradition, people will repair the damage, creating an even stronger and more beautiful piece.
It’s worth remembering that when we break something,
It’s not uncommon for people to say to me, “You do all that soft and fluffy stuff don’t you?” Yep, that’s me.
We then follow that conversation where they tell me that it sounds nice, there’s a time & a place for it, but really we need to get the job done, we just don’t have time for all of that.
So, let’s dig into that.
Sounds nice. Time &
I read an interesting piece this week that said that as humans we have lots of protective mechanisms.
They are the ways that we look at the world around us to make us feel safe, to protect us from harm.
One of them is called Self Serving Bias.
This is when we attribute success to our efforts & our failures to other things.
Imagine an athlete being interviewed after their team has won.
The ancient Greeks used to define courage in a certain way. It was not based on war or endeavour, but on daily life.
They believed courage was needed in greater quantities for each day, even just to get through one.
They thought that courage was needed when your resolve & hopes of sharing new ideas were challenged. When someone disagreed with you, then courage was needed to enter into a battle of ideas.
We all know that our morals enrich our lives. They are the things that guide us, set our standards & are how we hold ourselves accountable to others.
But have you ever met a Moraliser?
A person who seeks to impose their views on others, telling them how to live & behave. They want you to conform & comply with their preferences. They defend their actions by saying they are trying to defend you from harm.
It’s not uncommon for me to be asked to coach someone who’s finding it hard to lead a team, whether due to being a new leader, a team that’s not performing or something in between.
The business really wants to help them, give them the tools and techniques to lead so that the results are great.
Often though it’s not tools and techniques they need.
It’s not a skills challenge.
What makes a great leader? Presence? Credibility? Probably all of these things & more. But what are they?
If you read enough books, you’d think being outgoing & openly confident.
But what if this just isn’t you? Does this mean you’ll never get to where you want to be?
Not. At. All.
Presence, Credibility; compared to who?
If you’re a keen cook but compare yourself to a Michelin starred chef,
My kids don’t believe me that there used to be a phone number that you would ring to find out the time.
That’s not the only thing. You could add to that vinyl records, cassette players, pay phones in big box on every street, I could go on.
The pace in which things change is mind blowing. For example, the year 2000 was 21 years ago. Yes, you read that right.
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When things are uncertain, how do you react, what do you do?
You may just accept that it’s unpredictable, need to deal with what’s in front of you. Or you may have a well thought out plan, exactly for this occasion, indeed all occasions.
These tend to be the norm. Well, there’s another way & if you recognise it, you’re known as a Probabilist.
Imagine you’re stood in a square,
We’ve probably all done it. Set of dominos, lined them up and pushed the first one, watching them all topple over. Slightly mesmerising, always impressive. Especially when you get creative, loops, bridges, twin tracks.
Oooo, get me!
Anyway, you’ve probably also heard of the domino effect too; a cumulative effect produced when one event initiates a succession of similar events.
So, here’s a thought. Instead of using dominoes, let’s use behaviours and people.
The film director Richard Curtis once said, “If you make a film about a man kidnapping a women & chaining her to a radiator for 5 years – something that’s happened probably once in history – it’s called searingly realistic analysis of society. If I make a film like Love Actually, which is about people falling in love & there about a million people falling in love in Britain today, it’s called sentimental presentation of an unrealistic world.”
Global society at the moment is pretty restricted.
My Grandad would always say that a bacon sandwich without brown sauce isn’t a bacon sandwich. “Brown sauce boy,” he would say, “is essential.”
I love that. The thought that something can make another even better. That it’s essential to bringing out the very best.
Well for me, Trust, is one of those essential ingredients.
Think of relationships, jobs, decisions, ideas. Now imagine them without Trust.
Trust is an essential ingredient to most things,
Have you noticed recently, that when you ask how someone is, you tend to get the same response. No matter who you ask.
It’s a kind of, slight shoulder shrug, nose scrunching, eyebrow raising thing. Every day’s the same, all rolling into one, doing exactly the same as I was yesterday and the day before and the day before type of response.
It’s all a bit Groundhog Day. (For those less than 25 years old,
Imagine working in a place where you feel recognised & valued, you feel part of something & you feel you can be yourself, no pretending, no facade, just be you. What would it be like working in a place like that?
As a leader you can enable this to happen.
So how can you? Try these;
1. Show Appreciation – find out what it is that makes those around you feel appreciated.
Things just don’t seem to be improving, it’s tough for so many reasons for so many people. We are tapping into our inner resources so much & we’re all aware of the word resilience even more so than before. So what is resilience?
Well there’s so many different definitions & contexts, so for this let’s go with;
“leaning into yourself or others during times of difficulty so that you can become stronger”
How many times have you been asked to show someone how to do something? They need to do it & you are the one that knows it best. It’s a great compliment isn’t it? Recognised for your knowledge & ability. Makes you feel valued.
You start to explain, but it doesn’t seem to land with them. They find it hard to do it. Maybe it’s your explanation? Maybe it’s them? One things for sure,
“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way that you carry it.” CS Lewis
We all face challenges. Every day. Some big, some small, but challenges none the less. But what is a challenge?
Challenge can have a negative perception for some. It means burden, adversity, difficulty. Those perceptions may be true, may be false, but they are that person’s reality & that reality is negative.
Your perception,
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