Maintaining Your Motivation

Before we can motivate others, we need to achieve and maintain a high level of motivation for ourselves. With so many organizations running lean, I hear about self-motivation problems regularly. It’s hard to stay pumped up when there are so many demands being placed on us and when others around us are not particularly motivated. But staying motivated raises our value to the organization, something we always want to be mindful of. There are three steps that can help you develop your motivation: display a strong work commitment, strive for results, and develop yourself. Let’s look at ways to display a strong commitment to our work and consider trying just one of these.

Begin by knowing your priorities. Consider your values, goals and priorities for life and work. There are many tools and books available today to help you narrow this down. One I’m reading now is Ask Yourself This by Wendy Craig-Purcell. Discuss and validate your ideas with your family and others close to you. Consider how you spend your time relative to your stated priorities, determine if some adjustments need to be made, and develop a plan to make the needed adjustments. It’s too difficult to maintain our motivation when we’re not doing the things that matter the most to us.

Next is to set high personal standards. Identify your most important responsibilities at work and define superior performance for yourself. Set standards for yourself in each area. What aspects of the job are most important? Timeliness, quality, responsiveness, integrity, relationship building? Monitor your accomplishments and be sure to reward yourself when you meet your standard. Re-evaluate your standards and accomplishments every six months. This step is really important if performance appraisals are not done at your job or if you’re self employed.

Can you make your work more interesting? Identify your most routine tasks and look for ways to do them more efficiently or at least differently. Consider delegating more tasks to develop others and to enable you to take on new tasks. (This is something to consider at home, too!) Review and update your job description, suggesting new responsibilities for yourself that would be interesting to you and also benefit your employer. Perhaps you could swap tasks with a coworker, giving you each a fresh challenge.

Finally, commit to your organization. Be intentional in that commitment to your organization and reinforce it in difficult times. Pay attention to your thoughts, conversations, and actions. Do they reflect your commitment? Support your co-workers, employees, leaders, and customers daily. That support will come back to you in positive ways that will enhance your motivation.

Strategies for Achieving the Highest Level of Support - Commitment

Life at work is so much more enjoyable when we work with people who are committed to the same goals. We’re also more effective as leaders and our direct reports enjoy working there because they are contributing their best. How do we influence people to support our initiatives and increase commitment to the organization overall? We’ve looked at three kinds of power and saw the value of combining interpersonal power with expert power. In addition, there are three sets of behaviors we can employ.

The first tier contains the most desirable actions to take, because they build people up and enhance our interpersonal power. They are to reason, to connect, and to collaborate. When we use reason to influence others, it compliments them. Why is that? When we reason with people, we explain the rationale and logic to what we are suggesting. We’re assuming they are intelligent people, able to apply logic and common sense. It’s straightforward and non-manipulative, avoiding any attempt to “sell them” on something they may not like. This approach is particularly effective with analytical people or with proposals that are data-oriented.

The next behavior in this tier is to connect with those we wish to influence, tapping into their values and ideals and relating those to the work. This is a more natural process with people we know well and in work environments where employees are selected based in part on the values they demonstrate. It’s also easier when others hold the same values we do; it can be more challenging with someone in a generational group different than our own. For instance, Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) tend to be optimistic, ambitious, and loyal while Generation X (born between 1965 and 1979) are seen as resourceful, individualistic, self reliant and skeptical of authority. Values are very powerful motivators, though, so it’s worth the effort to identify others’ values and use those to connect them with the goal.

The final action in this powerful set is to collaborate with others by asking for their ideas on plans that will affect them in some way. This is another opportunity to honor people, showing respect for their input and recognizing their experience. It not only builds their self confidence, it also increases the likelihood of your success in two ways: it promotes commitment since they were part of the decision-making process and it may enable you to avoid problems you may not have foreseen without their input.

Over the years, I’ve learned the benefits of this set of influencing behaviors. I’ll share some powerful lessons in the future, so stay with me.

Three Levels of Support and How to Recognize Them

In the workplace, as leaders or individual contributors, we often have the need to influence others to gain their commitment and cooperation. (This skill is also quite useful at home!) There are three levels of buy-in we can get from others: commitment, compliance, or opposition. Although you may have to settle for compliance from time to time, your effectiveness may depend on your ability to get commitment from the key people you work with, both within your area and in other functions and departments across the organization. It’s important to examine your approach and its effect on others, to avoid being blindsided by another’s lack of commitment. Let’s look at the three levels in a bit more detail.

Commitment is your goal. You are most successful if the other person agrees with the action or decision you are asking her to carry out. A person with commitment is dedicated, puts forth her greatest effort, and shows initiative in finding the best way to do the work. Commitment brings with it self-discipline that does not need monitoring. People who are fully committed are willing to go above and beyond what is required without any outside pressure to do so.

Compliance occurs when the other person carries out the requested action, but is apathetic and makes only a minimal effort. Here you have limited success: you did get the desired action, but not necessarily the optimal outcome. Compliance is unlikely to result in innovative, collaborative solutions to a problem and will probably need more monitoring and oversight on your part. There are some rare cases, however, where compliance is all that is required, such as punching in at the end of a shift. Typically, though, even the simplest tasks can be done to varying degrees, for instance completing an expense report or leaving a room better than you found it (not just as you found it).

Resistance is the final possibility and applies to the person is opposed to your request or plan and tries to avoid carrying it out. It shows up in various ways and may be obvious or subtle. The person may actively work against you by going to upper management or soliciting others to oppose you. Alternatively, he may simply delay acting in the hope that you are not committed to the effort. Some of the most destructive workplace behaviors is when someone in resistance pretends to comply but tries to sabotage the effort.

There are a number of strategies for exerting influence on others. Before we get to those, consider these three levels of support, both that you get from others and that you recognize in yourself. Where are you getting full commitment from your co-workers? Did you do anything in particular to receive their cooperation? Are there situations where your efforts are opposed? How about your own show of support for others? Are you doing all you can to foster a supportive working environment? Supporting the efforts of others is a great way to strengthen relationships, build your own support, and nurture the workplace. Take some time to answer these questions and follow along as we explore ways to be more effective at influencing others.