Laura Stack* has experienced many attempts to motivate workers through her career, but is left wondering whether the effort is worth the results.
Everywhere we turn in the modern office, we see motivational posters, motivational quotes, and the leftovers of past motivational initiatives.
Does all this effort work? Well… that’s debatable.
It seems to work, at first.
However, one of my colleagues tells me the only thing he remembers about a motivational speech by (then) Bruce Jenner 15 years ago was that Jenner had 10 children.
That’s the one fact that stuck, not Jenner’s account of working his way up to record-breaking scores in the Olympic decathlon.
Motivation can be wonderful, but I’d argue it’s somewhat overrated.
A savvy worker knows motivation can get you started, but it isn’t enough to sustain performance.
You can’t depend solely on motivation to boost your productivity to the highs required to hit record performance levels.
Here are seven reasons why.
It’s short term:
Motivation doesn’t last, especially in the face of hard work — and it definitely won’t get you through the long slog alone.
This explains, in part, why so many of us fail to complete some projects and tasks, especially those involving creativity.
Motivation doesn’t magically cause creativity to bloom, and worse, it quickly expires.
Motivation may crank your work engine, but self-discipline and focus are the fuels that get you through to the end.
It doesn’t work if you fail to take action:
You can feel ready to take on the world, practically jumping out of your skin with eagerness.
However, if you don’t take action right away, motivation might not matter.
Strike while the iron is hot, or you may never strike at all.
You have to be inclined toward motivation for it to work:
The jaded, the disengaged, and the unhappy don’t respond well to motivation.
If no money’s involved, forget it.
Nothing’s stopping them from just ignoring motivation or even pushing back, sometimes to the point of ruining it for others.
It doesn’t help if you don’t have the right training:
You can have the most motivated team members in the world, but they won’t be able to do their jobs well if they lack the training for them.
You can offset this through personal initiative, if you’re willing to own your job and learn what you must by simply doing it or via research.
Not everything can be learned this way.
Even when it can be, you lose productivity, time and money that a few hours of training could easily offset.
Bigwigs don’t always take motivation seriously:
I’ve heard senior leaders bluntly state if team members need motivation to do a good job, they don’t want them.
Further, they perceive an organisation willing to “indulge” in motivation as both willing to carry poor performers and lacking in focus.
All it takes is one hardnose to ruin a motivational initiative.
I’ve seen it over and over in my career.
Group motivational efforts don’t work well:
They don’t take individual goals into account.
It’s just another annoyance to those who don’t take them seriously.
Maybe you’ll end up with a transparent light-up bouncy ball, a plant to take care of, or a motivational rock.
These are all items colleagues or clients have received as part of motivational programs.
However, the initiative will last only until the plant dies.
We’ve become desensitised to it:
You have been given all the motivational posters, videos, audio recordings, quotes, messages, etc.
When you stop even noticing them, what’s the point?
This problem has gotten to the point where amusing de-motivational posters have become popular.
I hate to knock motivation, but let’s face it, it’s not the prime element of productivity.
Ironically, it’s not even the prime motivator of productivity, any more than a sparkplug or fuel injector is the prime motivator of a car.
It can help you get started, but the factors that keep you going are training, tenacity, focus, self-discipline, determination, and the right resources.
Even if it’s regularly renewed, as it should be, motivation is not enough to get you through to the finish line.
* Laura Stack is a keynote speaker and author who has written seven books, including her newest work, Doing the Right Things Right: How the Effective Executive Spends Time. She can be contacted at theproductivitypro.com
This article first appeared on Laura’s blogsite.
