What You See is Why You Do
I’m frequently asked for help motivating employees. The fact is, motivation is not that hard… provided you’ve built the right foundation!
When someone tells me that his department has a motivation problem, my first question is, “What’s your vision?”
The most common response is a blank look. Vision? Isn’t that some silly psychobabble or convenient buzzword?
Unfortunately, the concept of vision is often treated that way. Your vision, however, and your enthusiasm for it, are what make the difference between people who just show up and do their jobs and people who are excited and determined to excel.
People are motivated by their hopes and dreams, by causes, by being part of something that matters beyond the next paycheck. If you are the CEO, your enthusiasm is what brings the vision to life. If you are a manager, VP, department head, etc, then your enthusiasm in how you communicate the vision is what brings it to life for your team. If they see that you don’t care, why should they care?
I was recently listening to an Old Time Radio Science Fiction podcast of the classic Fritz Lieber sotry, “A Pail of Air.” At the end of the story, they played John F. Kennedy’s famous speech in which he vowed that the United States would land a man on the moon and bring him back again. Even now, 50 years later, it is still a powerful speech. Listening to him, it’s easy to see how his vision galvanized a nation.
The good news is that you don’t need to be John Kennedy to galvanize a company. People devote hours to charities and hobbies because they have a vision of making a difference or achieving something significant. The key is to craft an exciting vision and then let your enthusiasm show.
I’ve often observed that the apparently unmotivated person at the office is the same person whom you’d find outside each evening training for a marathon or a hundred-mile bike ride (aka a “century”): it’s all a question of where they find meaning. I figured the concept was pretty clear, even though I’ve never run a marathon or ridden a century. I could never convince myself that it was worth the time and the pain involved in training for one of those endurance events.
Last summer, my father-in-law, Ira Yermish, died suddenly and unexpectedly. He was 64 and a serious endurance athlete, with seven Iron Man competitions and innumerable marathons and bike centuries under his belt.
This coming August, my wife, daughter, and I will be riding the Philly Livestrong Challenge in his memory. Livestrong raises money to help improve the lives of people with cancer, making this event even more significant: my mother died of cancer 13 years ago. Suddenly I have a cause, so training for a bike century just doesn’t seem quite so overwhelming.
Whom do you know who has died of cancer, or is living with it today? Please help make people’s lives better by donating to the Livestrong Foundation.
That vision thing? Yeah, it works.
