Motivate Your Team in 30 Days

Many people attend motivational talks and seminars to get motivated. All kinds of people attend my motivational events and I always ask them, by a show of hands, "How many of you think I can motivate you today?"

All the hands go up in the air.

Then I tell the participants that they are in the wrong room, because I learned a long time ago that I cannot motivate anybody.

Let's understand that only I can motivate myself and only you can motivate yourself.

As a motivational trainer, all I can do is provide you with the ideas, concepts, and tools you will need, but the final decision of what you do with these things is up to whom?

You! Only you can motivate yourself! Would you agree?

If you do not agree, it is because you are focused on external motivation, which is only a temporary solution. Personally, I do not want to waste my time on temporary solutions.

The same holds true for motivating your team. You cannot motivate them, but you can inspire them and create an environment in which they motivate themselves.

Success is defined as the progressive realization of a worthy goal or idea. It is desire and the envisaging of success that creates self-motivation. When you can see, feel, and hear the outcome of your desire, you create the belief that it will happen. These expectations motivate you toward those images of success.

Motivation is a desire held in the expectation that it will be accomplished. It all starts with desire—having a burning passion for something. Without desire, you cannot be motivated.

Once the desire has set in, you must see, hear, and feel your dream—and be able to visualize it in detail as if it already exists. This is the only true form of motivation because it comes from inside you. This is known as internal or permanent motivation.

Motivation is a motive for action. We are motivated towards images of success, which we expect to provide us with pleasure and gain. At the same time, we are motivated to avoid failure, pain, and loss.

If we keep images of success, pleasure, and gain in our mind, we will be motivated towards them. However, if we keep images of failure, pain, and loss foremost in our mind, we will be motivated merely to stay away from them, or just not be motivated at all.

Unfortunately, so many people rely on external motivators, for example, lottery tickets and incentives. These types of external motivators have a problem—their effect doesn't last. As soon as you acquire an incentive, you'll want a bigger and better one. This is the carrot and stick approach.

As soon as you face up to a threat, the threat will no longer stop you. The only true form of motivation comes from you, for you. This is internal motivation—the only everlasting motivation.

Motivation is the ability to see, in the present, a projection of the future that you want. To do that, you will have to answer the questions in the following exercises.

Your fundamental beliefs are your values. Values are also known as principles, ideals, convictions, or purposes. Your beliefs are important to you, and will motivate you. The following exercise will help you set your life's priorities.

Values are the basis for the laws that govern society. Murder, theft, and assault, for example, violate society's common values. Society's values, and by extension its laws, provide us with the structure that helps us organize our lives.

By clarifying your values, you create a structure upon which you can build your personal and business life. You must understand your values before you can master the rest of the disciplines in this book.

The following table lists many of the things that motivate people. Rate each motivator according to how much you value it as always, often, sometimes, seldom, or never. Then go back and rank your "Always valued" checks in order of their importance to you. It is these values that will help you find your passion and motivate you and ultimately motivate your team.

Now that you have ranked the motivators that you always value, you can answer the following two questions in your notebook:

Rarely does one take the time to reflect on oneself. We are so busy in the "outside" world, how can we ever find time to "look inside" ourselves? When you do take the time, and reflect from the inside out, you make progress. In the following sections I have identified eight areas of your life that I would like you to reflect on.

These exercises are meant to help you see your situation, understand why you rate yourself as you do, and decide what actions you can take to improve your ratings. It will give you a base to measure your progress as you rate yourself in the future.

In the following exercise, rate yourself from 1 to 10 on how you see or feel about yourself, with 1 being poor, and 10 being great.

I believe that we came into this world as miracles, and as equal human beings regardless of race, religion, color, nationality, sex, title, or role. From that point on we have been exposed to family, religion, education, friends, the media, and so on. We have become influenced by many outside sources. We have accepted their messages or we have rejected them. Either way, we have become who we are based on what we have allowed to enter into our subconscious mind.

We have created our own fears, limitations, and beliefs and we have become who we are because of it. It is important to understand that our beliefs determine our attitudes and that our attitudes determine how we feel. How we feel determines our actions and our actions determine the results we get in life.

Your beliefs, based on past experiences and what you have let in from the outside world, determine your attitude. Your attitude will determine how you feel. How you feel determines the actions you take, and the ultimate results that you get in life. The first thing to do is to review your beliefs. You are now an adult and should be able to distinguish between fact and fiction—what do you really believe about you? What is real and what is not? Only you can change your beliefs.

How you see yourself, your self-worth, your self-esteem, and your self-confidence are all part of your attitude. How others see you, or perceive you, can influence your attitude, as it has in the past. That is external influence. If you accept that influence, whether it is positive or negative, you will let it affect you internally.

Most of us go through life accepting too many external comments that lead us to believe that we are not good enough, attractive enough, strong enough, experienced enough, and the list goes on. Until we realize who we really are, we can fall into these traps and stay there.

In our younger years we picked up a lot of baggage. Some of it was good and some of it was not so good. Most of the time, as children, we believed what we were told. Many people received positive reinforcement, while others received negative comments.

Anyone who was overweight, underweight, tall or short, handicapped, or different, knows what I am talking about. The comments that we accepted as truth became part of us and led us to believing in ourselves, or disliking ourselves, as we are.

Go to your notebook and write out the answers to the following questions:

Attitude is the key success factor and the foundation to your success.

Rate yourself on a scale from 1 to 10 on how you feel about your attitude, 1 being poor and 10 being excellent.

What is attitude? Attitude is your way of thinking or behaving. Your attitude towards people influences your behavior towards them. Your attitude affects your level of satisfaction with your life, and with your job. Your attitude affects everyone who comes into contact with you. Your attitude is reflected in your tone of voice, posture, and facial expressions. Your attitude can affect your health.

It is your attitude that will make the biggest difference in your life—particularly when it comes to what you want to be, do, or have.

Your past and present are a result of your past attitude. However, your present attitude will determine your future. Right now, you are the author of your future.

Attitude is the "advance person" of our true selves. Its roots are inward, based on past experiences, but its fruit is outward. It can be our best friend, or our worst enemy. It is more honest and more consistent than our words. It is a thing that either draws people to us or repels them. It is never content until it is expressed. It is the librarian of our past, the speaker of our present, and the prophet of our future. Yet, your attitude is under whose control?

The greatest thing about attitude is that it is not fixed and it is 100 percent under your control. Your attitude is up to you, as is your future!

When you become aware of those external influences and decide to lead from within, you start to take control of your attitude.

You have a choice to make. You could be like everyone else and think about it. But what happens when we think about doing something?

Quite often fear sets in and stops us dead in our tracks. Once fear sets in, indecision follows. With indecision comes procrastination. With procrastination comes paralysis, and nothing changes. That is one choice. There is, however, another choice.

In this chapter you learned to look inward and you answered a lot of questions that have helped you to discover:

In the next chapter you will learn how to become an effective facilitator and start preparing to facilitate a team effectiveness meeting.