Tag Archives: motivation

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Changing Approach

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Sometimes we get stuck on a path .  Our personal values and experiences drive our behaviours and changing course can be one of the most difficult tasks you will encounter.

A foundational trait of strong leaders is the practice of empathy.  This is not simply the ability to understand and share the feelings of others but in the context of leadership it is the ability to leverage that understanding.  To change approach accordingly.

Collaborating

Your own preconceived understanding of how to act is often very difficult to alter but doing so has a high likelyhood of leading to the best path to achieving a goal.

Recognizing the wants and needs of others, understanding how they are feeling and using your analysis of this information together with your own thoughts will most likely result in better outcomes.

My Way

Practicing empathy requires openness on your part.  That is receptivity to others ideas and ways of thinking.  Ultimately the key value to this approach is the ability to accept that your way is not neccessarily always the best.

Your Way

Acceptance that other better approaches exist is fundemental to creating a culture of openness.  The result will be higher group performance as the strengths and weaknesses of everyone are blended together.

It is an old saying, but carries a lot of wisdom, “the sum of the whole is far more powerful than each of the individual parts alone”.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Complaining

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A complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction or annoyance about a state of affairs or an event.   In my experience complaining about things is a natural behavior, common to both myself and everyone I know.

For What Purpose?

Assuming there is some sort of motivation driving any particular behavior I wonder what motivates complaining.  That is, the behavior is focused on the negative, whats the value of that?

Logically the purpose probably falls into one of the following or in some cases multiple categories:

  • To effect a change.  For example things like; a repair, acknowledgement of fault; restitution and so  on
  • To make yourselve feel better by voicing your feelings, letting it go
  • Political manuevering to gain advantage (in theses cases the target of your complaint is something you want to discredit)
  • Group think, responding to peer pressure and joining the crowd, demonstrating you are with them not the others that are being complained about. (You belong to the IN crowd)
  • Pure vindictiveness, it’s an attack after all

Tread Carefully!

Complaining can develop feelings of self righteousness, morphing into indignation.  This might help you resolve some of your own  issues, but we are social animals and live with others.

Arrogant behaviours are not usually appreciated by others and could backfire on you.  Worse, constant complaining ( which is negative by definition)  can make you feel bad and unhappy.

For these reasons complaining  should be used sparingly and cautiously.  Understand exactly what you are trying to achieve and stop when you get it or if it appears you are not going to achieve your goal.

The negative results on you personally of uncontained complaining can be quite significant.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Exploring self awarness

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In the context of a leadership or personal power skill (i.e., earned power) self awareness is not just conscious knowledge of ones own character, feeling and desire.

More importantly is using this knowledge coupled with the feedback  cues from those you are interacting with to achieve the best result.  This results in good feeling s all around about the interaction.

In brief,  the more critical aspect of this skill is not the awareness about your own motivations, feelings and reactions, rather the impact these are having and how you use it for everyones benefit.

Awareness enables you to leverage this knowledge about yourself in real time to make every encounter positive and memorable for the others.  It is also the more effective approach to becoming the catalyst for the desired reaction.

Enabling others to do things they did not know they could

Your earned power is very dependent on using your self awareness effectively.  This is a critical skill in your behavioural toolbag to attain and maintain respect.

By optimizing your interraction with others it becomes more likely they will exercise their own leader within.

In a team environment the use of self awareness broadly by all team members simply feeds on itself creating a harmonious and hugely effective group. You can set the example to get this going.

This is leadership not from the front, but rather from within. The actions of the catalyst in the mix prompt the self awareness practice   to commence universally and ultimately it feeds on itself.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Push me into it

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Occassionally I influence external forces to push me into a behavior or situational change.  I always do this with cautious consideration of the risks.

Surprisingly I have found this to be an effective way to leverage my self awareness toward motivating positive change -my own change that is.

For example reinvigorating your carreer

Often circumstances, (for example dependents, debt, self worth)  can act as deterents to personal changes.

Wanting to change your job or even type of work you do (a full carreer change) can be daunting.  Desire can provide motivation but sometimes it is just not enough and the blocking factors act as an override.

Sometimes you probably just want to stay in bed with your pillow wrapped around your head.  Usually you overcome the lethargy and get up.  However on occassion you need help, someone pours water on you or pulls the sheets away. Up you jump.

Driving desired action

Consider a person in a job they don’t enjoy, perhaps even dislike, but can’t motivate themselves to find another.  This is a great opportunity to leverage the help of others.

Behave badly.  Increasingly so if needed.  Ultimately this forces some change.  Maybe an offer of retirement, an open invitation to leave (perhaps even a forceful one).

You create motivation and the change is made and like the action pouring of cold water on your head or removal of your sheets you have to jump up and do something.

This is just an example but forcing a job change would not be recommended as a starting place for this technique, I would work up to it before trying (if appyling to this extreme situation at all).

Think it over

If you are in a place of lethargy, unable to resolve/ motivate a change yourself, give this approach some thought.  I can testify from experience , this works.  The word of caution is there are some risks and things might not always proceed as you planned (so be careful).

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Fostering Initiative

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I had an interesting discussion today.  In a work situation, who is accountable to ensure you have enough work?  Is it you, or your boss?   In my view it is you.  That being said though, there is a balance between leadership, environment and you that needs to be optimal to encourage you to take the initiative when it is needed.

Personal Initiative

Culture and leadership practices together with your own personal ethic drive how much initiative you demonstrate.  If you have a poor work ethic and the organizational culture and leadership don’t clearly support an expectation of high personal initiative it’s not unlikely to see employees taking longer breaks,  personal phone calls, playing games and other distractions at their desk.

Over the years I have encountered too many scenarios where the work environment, lack of active leadership and low levels of personal work ethic led to inefficient operations.

What are some ways to address these situations?

Leadership – fostering a strong work ethic through example, coupled with clear communication of expectations around personal initiative and using both reward and consequence actions to re-enforce the organizations basic cultural framework are the key actions leaders can undertake to create a healthy and efficiently operating work environment

Personal Work Ethic – this is largely a learned behavior.  Leading by example is key to building a strong work ethic throughout the organization.  This is not just leading by designated managers/leaders,  but everyone can be an example for everyone else.  Strong work ethics from one individual can influence the behaviors and actions of ten others (or even more).   Clearly communication expectations and the appropriate level of reinforcement through both reward and consequence is key.

You can see it is critical to couple leadership behaviors with personal work ethic behavior to achieve strong and efficient operations.

In combination, lack of leadership and poor work ethic rarely improve and this perfect storm can lead to frustration by all stakeholders – leaders, workers and other impacted stakeholders like end customers, associated organization units and so on.