Feed your Motivation...

Very personal to all us is our motivational drivers it is our very own recipe for success. We have to find the right ingredients and we can call them our nourishers.  This comes from the work by Teresa Amabile who wrote the book the Progress Principle.

In the studies she found that we are motivated by finding the best inner work life experience, which means we feel empowered by meaningful work and meaningful accomplishment.  We feed our motivation with small wins that gives us momentum and moves us forward, which she labels progress principle.

Intrinsic motivation comes from within us, how much of personal challenge we crave.  If something captures our interest, and we find it enjoyable, and it is the right amount of challenge.  Setting this up for others you would provide:-

• Clear goals
• Autonomy - freedom
• Resources
• The right amount of Time
• The ability to Learn & Develop
• Support when needed
• Conditions for ideas to flow

If we are truly motivated we will have tapped into our emotions, managed our perceptions and be able to drive our own motivation. The four main components of Nourishment are:-

1. Respect - we need to be recognised for our achievements, and our ideas given attention, we can ask for feedback and make sure that we are getting what we need.  If we feel unrecognised and not acknowledged for any contribution or effort it would very quickly turn into a toxin
2. Encouragement - Our own enthusiasm can feed others to support us, so there is an element of our own belief, our self efficacy.  A project that does not spike our interest or others and can very quickly become toxic.
3. Emotional support - We need empathetic support, others truly understanding what is going on for us at that moment in time. The very opposite would be sympathy, colleagues feeling sorry for us would not nourish us or move us forward.
4. Affiliation - We crave belonging, and at our very core we crave a sense of community.  Affiliation can also be a cause, being part of something for the greater good, so not necessarily people, but a product or service that you are proud to be aligned with. If we are not connected to something meaningful again it will flip to being demotivating.

Toxins in summary can be categorised as constraints, demotivation means no progress and if not picked up quickly can have long term effects on the individual and other team members.

Feed your own motivation by taking time to acknowledge whether you have the right nourishing environment set up.

Please do reach out for a workshop on motivation or one to one coaching bev@nuggetsoflearning.co.uk