Motivation: Where Art Thou?

You’ve done your vision board and scoped out your HR strategy. You’ve completed individual development plans for your staff and can picture the road to building a high performing team. Your new year’s resolutions include exercise, eating right and getting a good night’s sleep.

You know WHAT goals you want to achieve.

You’ve read the books and mapped the plan. It’s no secret nor surprise what’s needed to complete the steps and achieve goal. (Like that time the personal trainer told me it was EASY to lose weight: “You just take in fewer calories than you expend. It’s math!” Yeah, I know how math works. That’s not my problem.)

You know HOW to achieve your goals.

It’s when you look at your bucket list and you’d rather just a bucket. It’s when your vim and vigor turns to wine and vinegar. It’s when the going gets fuzzy, the trail disappears and the steam is lost.

But do you know WHY success can be so elusive?

Motivation is individual, situational, contextual and dynamic. This means that what works for you is unlikely to work for someone else and that your own level of motivation may change from circumstance to circumstance. It also means that your level of motivation can be impacted by external factors – especially if you are unaware of your triggers and talents. Finally, you may find that what has worked for you in the past may not do a darn thing to get you pumped up in the future. Motivation is a slippery dude.

What you can do about motivation.

There are four aspects to motivation that, when we understand and leverage them, can help us get and stay energized about and on track to achieving our goals. Here’s what you can do once you’ve set an objective that’s important to you:

• Energy: Explore what drains your energy regarding the objective
• Needs: Consider what you need in order to do your best work
• Talents: Leverage and be sure to engage your natural talents in the effort
• Purpose: Align the objective with an overarching purpose

The better we are at managing each of these areas, the more motivation, resilience to change and openness to learning new things we are able to experience. For more information about these aspects of Motivation, check out the Hierarchy of Motivation™ from Motivation Factor®. It is one of the models I use to effect lasting change in individuals, teams and organizations.

To learn your unique motivation factors and how motivation works with you, join UPschool where members have access to the powerful program, What Drives You?