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There is a saying that like attracts like. So to motivate others, whether it is in personal life or in business life, it is important firstly to understand what motivates you.
You must look in the mirror when you ask who is responsible for your successes or your failures. As goes the ancient Greek aphorism, and as Alexander Pope suggested, "Know thyself."
In psychology, motivation refers to the initiation, direction, intensity and persistence of behavior. Motivation is a temporal and dynamic state that should not be confused with personality or emotion. Motivation is having the encouragement to do something. So motivation in itself does not last; it needs to be rekindled on an ongoing basis.
In a business setting, psychologist Abraham Maslow determined that money is a motivator but its motivating effect lasts only for a short period. On the other hand, praise, respect, recognition, empowerment and a sense of belonging are far more powerful motivators than money.
When leaders provide these elements of motivation, employees will look for a better way to do a job, they will be more quality oriented, and they will be more productive.
So have you ever said to yourself, "I can motivate people"? Is this statement really true? It's important for you as the business owner to first identify your own motivation to see how you can support your employees by helping them identify what really motivates them.
The process of providing motivation within an organization requires that you have a vision for the future of the business and the goals that will represent being successful in achieving this vision. You also must know how to carry out the actions to achieve the goals.
It is important throughout this process to remain focused on the positive activities you want and not on the negative things that you don't want. And once you are focused on the positive actions to achieve the planned results, you will act as a magnet and motivate others to be attracted to your thought processes for your business success.
The following are some characteristics that you should believe within yourself to be a motivator:
- Be a problem solver.
- Believe in your products or services.
- Have the integrity to represent the truth to create honest relationships.
- Provide a written business plan that identifies the successful outcomes of your efforts. Remember, people don't plan to fail but they fail to plan.
- Develop a passion for your vision and goals in your business.
- Back up your own judgment and don't be misled by self-doubters.
- Make decisions that create events to achieve the planned goals.
- Think and operate in the present-future, not in the past-present; constantly ask "what, why, how" questions to create the desired future.
- Do things that you have never done before or that you fear the most; change is necessary to be continually successful and this will require that you break out of your comfort zone. Do one hard thing per day to increase your own motivation.
- Recognize that everyone makes mistakes. Don't treat mistakes as failures, as mistakes are correctable. This will encourage risk-taking, which is an important ingredient for any winning team.
- Always be an optimist, for as Sir Winston Churchill said, "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Make all goals SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Tangible.
- Delegate all activities with both responsibility and accountability to staff that have the appropriate skill sets and evaluate outcomes against specific goals.
- Use your experience and knowledge to be a coach and mentor to your staff to help them grow to another level of performance.
Your level of success in motivating others will depend on the level that you motivate yourself.
The clearer you are about the consequences of your own actions and the more intensely you desire to enjoy the consequences that these actions may lead to, the more motivated you will be yourself, which will attract others to your passion for success.
Reprinted from Capital Region Business Journal, Madison, Wisconsin, September 2006 issue
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