Mastering Motivation
Motivating Yourself and Others with NLP
By Damian Hamill
Director of Training
Watt Works Consulting Ltd
This eBook is published by Watt Works Consulting Ltd,
Booths Hall, Chelford Road,
Knutsford,
Cheshire, WA16 8GS,
United Kingdom
© Watt Works Consulting Ltd, 2012
Copyright 2012 Watt Works Consulting Ltd,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by Watt Works Consulting Ltd
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1041-8
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Introduction
Hello and welcome to this eBook on the subject of Mastering Motivation: Motivating Yourself and Others With NLP.
For some time now I have been interested in the concept of motivation and how we can access it more consistently. Equally, I am interested in how an absence of motivation – the times when we expect or desire it to be present and it just isn’t - can be a very powerful message, if only we have the skills to receive and understand it. If that sounds a little off the wall, please bear with me and I hope it will become a little clearer.
I think it is fair to say that although there may be a great variety of things that people want to get motivated to do – every one of us wants to be able to become motivated for one purpose or another. Human beings tend to be action-oriented creatures. We don’t just sit and vegetate - or at least not all of the time anyway.
Most people have a range of things that we could do. Those that tend to claim our time, resources and energy are those that we might say we are motivated to achieve. Equally, there tend to be some things that we know we ‘should’ do – there are good logical reasons for it – but for some mysterious reason motivation doesn’t seem to rear its head to spur us on. Why? Well, I hope in this eBook to give you some answers to that very reasonable question.
Section 1 – Motivation: Why it Matters and What it Looks Like
You may be reading this eBook for a number of reasons. Perhaps you are an individual who wants to be able to get more motivated to do stuff generally. It may be that there is a particular task or project or opportunity at hand that you want to increase your motivation levels to achieve.
Alternatively, you may be interested in discovering skills to motivate others – as a manager, parent, coach, team leader, HR professional or the like. Whatever your interest, I believe that this eBook will give you a new way to understand motivation and a structure to explore and evolve some of the factors that we believe are critical in appreciating this precious state.
Yes, you read that correctly. I described motivation as a ‘precious state’.
I say this for two reasons – firstly because motivation is, in my opinion, precious – it is of enormous value when used correctly. In a moment, we will look at some research that confirms this.
Secondly, I describe it as a ‘state’ as it is an experience, or an awareness of oneself at a particular point in time. When we use the word ‘motivation’ we talk about it as a ‘thing’ – something that can simply be bought, or collected or manufactured like some sort of commodity. I want to encourage you instead to think of motivation as an experience or awareness that emerges for a person or group when the correct conditions are present. It cannot be reliably bought, bullied, seduced or otherwise coerced into existence. Later on we will be exploring what those conditions for the spontaneous and natural emergence of motivation may be.
But first of all – why is motivation important?
Well, at a very personal level, motivation feels good. It is enjoyable to experience the energy, the congruence, the flow and the commitment that we have when we are motivated to do something. It’s generally, not always, a pleasant state to be in. We feel alive, invigorated and more fully human.
The more cynical might say:
“So what? That all sounds a bit ‘New Agey’, ambiguous or fluffy to me. People in a work environment, for example, are paid to be there, to do a job and that should be all the motivation they need. If they feel good, that’s a bonus, but no-one is entitled to more than a day’s pay for a day’s work.”
We would suggest that such a perspective is perhaps not the full picture and certainly isn’t going to bring out the best in people. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that, contrary to what many people perceive, in many circumstances financial rewards simply do not work as the sole means of motivating people – indeed they may have the opposite effect. Motivation is a much more complicated phenomenon and understanding it well, rather than relying on corralling a bunch of paid recruits, pays clear dividends at the bottom line.
In 2007/08 the consultancy firm, Towers Perrin, carried out a study looking at 90,000 staff in companies in 18 countries around the world. Their research concluded that on average:
•20% of staff in any company were what they termed ‘Fully Engaged’ – that is not only doing their job but doing it willingly, happily, with commitment and ready to go the extra mile.
•40% of staff were what they termed ‘Enrolled’ – that is they did their job perfectly adequately but did not display the additional commitment of the Fully Engaged group.
•38% of the staff were what Tower Perrin categorised at ‘Disenchanted’ or ‘Disengaged’ – present in body but not in spirit and exhibiting no enthusiasm whatsoever for their work and doing the minimum possible.
We can perhaps assume that the remaining 2% were so demoralised that they were comatose and unable even to fill in their survey!
The fascinating thing is that these measures of engagement clearly and directly correlated with hard-nosed measures of corporate performance. This same study showed that the organisations with the highest levels of engagement showed an average increase in Operating Income of 19%, a 28% increase in Earnings Per Share (EPS) and 90% of the staff declared themselves happy to remain with the company. Contrast this with the organisations with the lowest engagement levels who showed a 32% drop in Operating Income, an 11% decline in EPS and a full 50% of staff wanting to leave for alternative employment!
If we look at the labels Towers Perrin used – ‘Fully Engaged’, ‘Enrolled’ and ‘Disenchanted or Disengaged’ - we can see that we are clearly talking about motivation under slightly different names.
This research shows that in human terms, in business terms and in every sense – motivation matters!
So, let’s explore and understand a little more about this enigmatic concept.
Let’s start by considering the origin of the actual word. My trusty online dictionary tells me that ‘motivation’ as a word came into existence around about 1870-1875 and the root of the word is ‘motive. We all probably appreciate that a ‘motive’ is a reason. Consequently, we might say that ‘motivation’ is:
An urge to act, inspired by a reason.
So what could those reasons be?
One of the lenses I will be using to