How to Motivate Other People
An effective manager, or parent, gets the jobs done by motivating and directing the other people in the group.
Motivating your colleagues, (or worse – your children!), is a skilled and challenging task.
An enormous amount of research has been carried out but researchers have not always managed to explain their findings clearly.
This article aims to explain how to motivate others in a jargon free way.
There are two main ways people are motivated.
Research in the UK has shown that just over 40% of us are motivated towards pleasure, about 40% away from pain, and almost 20% can be motivated either way.
What do I mean? Well, if you are motivated towards pleasure you are likely to complete work before the deadline so you can have the pleasure of relaxing afterwards, you go to the gym for the pleasure of looking good, you study a course for the pleasure of learning and the new job you can apply for.
These people are likely to actively look for ways to improve their work, relationships and life.
If you are motivated away from pain you are likely to complete the work when you have must to avoid the pain of being criticized for not completing it, you go to the gym to avoid the pain of replacing the clothes you’ve outgrown, you study a course to avoid the pain of being made redundant.
How do you tell how a person is motivated? You can get a quick rough guide by asking them a question which identifies how they go about making decisions and listen carefully to their answer.
For example, you could ask, “how do you pick your holiday destination (or car/football team/children’s school/career, etc.
)?” People who are motivated towards pleasure will tell you about the great weather/accommodation/journey/food/facilities available.
People who are motivated away from pain will tell how it avoids the worst of the heat/the unknowns of new accommodation/long transfers/dodgy food etc.
How does this help? When you know how a colleague or loved one is motivated, you can ask them to do things in the right way.
For example: imagine you have a tedious task which must be completed before you can start more interesting activities, for a person motivated towards pleasure it would motivate them if you said; “Once we’ve finished this we can begin (the barbeque/interesting activity)”.
For a person who is motivated away from pain it would be more effective if you said; “ We need to finish this or the consequences will be (we’ll lose the contract/we won’t have time for a barbeque/etc)”.
Now, I know this has been a tiny, tiny, snapshot into how to motivate others.
There is a full free report available on my website [http://www.
crossroadslifecoaching.
co.
uk/jobsatisfaction.
htm]
Motivating your colleagues, (or worse – your children!), is a skilled and challenging task.
An enormous amount of research has been carried out but researchers have not always managed to explain their findings clearly.
This article aims to explain how to motivate others in a jargon free way.
There are two main ways people are motivated.
Research in the UK has shown that just over 40% of us are motivated towards pleasure, about 40% away from pain, and almost 20% can be motivated either way.
What do I mean? Well, if you are motivated towards pleasure you are likely to complete work before the deadline so you can have the pleasure of relaxing afterwards, you go to the gym for the pleasure of looking good, you study a course for the pleasure of learning and the new job you can apply for.
These people are likely to actively look for ways to improve their work, relationships and life.
If you are motivated away from pain you are likely to complete the work when you have must to avoid the pain of being criticized for not completing it, you go to the gym to avoid the pain of replacing the clothes you’ve outgrown, you study a course to avoid the pain of being made redundant.
How do you tell how a person is motivated? You can get a quick rough guide by asking them a question which identifies how they go about making decisions and listen carefully to their answer.
For example, you could ask, “how do you pick your holiday destination (or car/football team/children’s school/career, etc.
)?” People who are motivated towards pleasure will tell you about the great weather/accommodation/journey/food/facilities available.
People who are motivated away from pain will tell how it avoids the worst of the heat/the unknowns of new accommodation/long transfers/dodgy food etc.
How does this help? When you know how a colleague or loved one is motivated, you can ask them to do things in the right way.
For example: imagine you have a tedious task which must be completed before you can start more interesting activities, for a person motivated towards pleasure it would motivate them if you said; “Once we’ve finished this we can begin (the barbeque/interesting activity)”.
For a person who is motivated away from pain it would be more effective if you said; “ We need to finish this or the consequences will be (we’ll lose the contract/we won’t have time for a barbeque/etc)”.
Now, I know this has been a tiny, tiny, snapshot into how to motivate others.
There is a full free report available on my website [http://www.
crossroadslifecoaching.
co.
uk/jobsatisfaction.
htm]