For most leaders, maintaining motivation is an enduring initiative. Therefore, last week’s edition of the newsletter is not nearly sufficient to equip leaders for long-term motivation. Let’s continue the conversation.

This Week’s Edition

MOTIVATION: Maintain your motivation throughout 2021 – leverage your team as a source of motivation.

Clarify Your Thinking

In case you missed last week’s newsletter on motivation, we talked about staying motivated beyond the excitement surrounding a new year. How do we beat the odds: 90% of new efforts fail by the middle of February (due in large part to the loss of motivation)?

Confident leaders realize that motivation is needed on a daily basis. Once they realize this important fact, they are not surprised when early motivation declines. This allows them to proactively create a structure of motivational support integrated into every project or endeavor.

Ever since publishing last week’s newsletter on motivation, I felt like something was missing. Thinking about it and observing the leaders I work with, I realized I missed a crucial contributor to sustained motivation: the team effect.

Last Wednesday, I facilitated a leadership cohort. I asked them to think about where their motivation came from last year. Each leader described the impact the other cohort participants had had on their individual performance. Specifically, they identified elements of motivation they had received from other members all of which resulted in each of them surpassing their goals even in a pandemic.

This discussion helped transform each leader’s thinking as they began to think critically about how they could leverage the cohort context to help them maximize their performance.

Thoughts Lead to Actions

Some additional observations this week helped me realize how leaders can take actions that maximize motivation within the team.

On Monday, my daughter’s soccer team was motivated by an early first goal against their arch nemesis. This motivation began to lessen with every unanswered goal their opponent scored against them the remainder of the game. By themselves each player may have lost the motivation to continue, but collectively they buoyed each other to continue even in the face of the loss.

On Friday, that same varsity soccer team which had been defeated earlier, moved forward with no loss of enthusiasm. They were motivated as a team to find victory, which they did against an equally challenging opponent a mere four days later. Go Trojans!

On Tuesday, I conducted a strategic planning workshop with a team of highly sophisticated leaders whose challenges would cause lesser resilient leaders to quit. Their current organizational barriers were rapidly decreasing their motivation to find workable solutions. Yet, as they listened to one another and relied on each other’s expertise, I witnessed sources of motivation that propelled them to unlock a viable future vision and possible strategies they had not previously discussed as a group.

Are you currently overlooking how your team motivates you? Spend time evaluating your team. Write down how each person on the team motivates you or motivates someone else. If you find they are more of a de-motivator, you might want to reconsider their role. 

Motivation is a difference maker.  Working on a healthy team may just be the silver bullet to sustained daily motivation.

The team context is a powerful tool for creating accountability and motivation. Are you leveraging the team context to its full potential? Consider creating a structure around your team so as to enhance motivation, particularly on challenging projects. Over time, you may find that your team has become a sustained source of motivation for all its members.

What’s Your Opinion?

Share with me how you stay motivated each day. robin.pou@robinpou.com

Don’t let doubt count you out. Have a confident week!

Robin Pou, Chief Advisor and Strategist

If this was helpful, feel free to share it with another leader who needs to defeat doubt and complete their confidence.

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What is “The Confident Leader”?

During the Covid-19 Pandemic, I began a video series called “Panic or Plan?” It was designed to equip leaders to navigate the doubt they experienced and to rise in the confidence they needed to lead during turbulent times. It took off. I then started this newsletter to equip leaders in the same fashion each week for the doubt that crashes across the bow of their leaderSHIP.