What if team motivation was your goal

Whether you’re a leader or not, you have the potential and possibly responsibility to contribute to the motivation of others. Scary, fantastic and true!

Understanding that you can support the creation of a climate of motivation is important and when you start to realise this you start paying attention to different things…

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High performance headlines

  • Taking a deliberately black and white view, that you’re either helping other people’s motivation or reducing it, helps to focus your mind on your responsibilities here!
  • Whether you’re doing it on purpose or not, you’ll be affecting other people’s motivation all the time, with what you say and what you do
  • Perhaps the most important headline here is that by being aware of choosing your attitude you will realise the impact you are having on those around you
  • If you focus on creating a motivational climate by helping support the three Cs of building Confidence, building a sense of Control and building a sense of Connectedness you’ll always be building from the right foundation
  • It might not be your job to motivate someone else, but it is your job to engage with other people in a way that helps all of you fuel your motivation at the same time (and it’s definitely your job to make sure you’re not reducing other people’s motivation!)

The full viewpoint

The 3Cs of Confidence, Control and Connectedness provide a simple, powerful way of thinking about motivation that allows you to help create a motivational climate where as many of you have as high a quality of motivation as possible.

You don’t need to be using the words Confidence, Control and Connectedness at all. But you will be very mindful of the impact of your language and behaviour on yourself and others. That way you can be a great member of a culture that is serious about maximising the quality of motivation.

You’ll be thinking about your opportunity and responsibility to take part in conversations and activities with a mindset that is focused on identifying and staying in Control… you don’t fan the flames of despair and a victim mentality by whinging about stuff that you’re not in control of.

You’ll do a really great job of responding brilliantly to questions with Confidence and by using your strengths to role model great confidence leadership. You’ll also start to become really aware of whether you’re working in such a way that will help people stay focused on things that give them confidence and belief that they’ve got the skill and will to do what’s required. You’ll contribute to cementing robust confidence as well as growing confidence.

You’ll be really clear that it’s a personal responsibility to keep focused on building great working relationships that are grounded in Connectedness first. “We’re working together for a reason, to achieve something together that otherwise wouldn’t be achieved”. You’ll take every chance to celebrate great connectedness and you keep focused on creating the highest quality possible of connectedness across all of those you work with and you let them know the impact that being/feeling connected has for you.

With all these 3C building strategies you’ll be leading by example but also seeking to support others in their efforts to do these things for themselves. You’ll be doing this with the belief that it’s everyone’s job to motivate themselves and therefore play their part in a collaboration of motivation.

Where others say things or take actions that make it more difficult for people they’re working with to maintain high quality motivation, you’ll take responsibility to make them aware of this…in the same way that you’d make them aware of doing great stuff that maximises motivational quality.

Your challenge here is to have a really high performance view of motivation, your relationship with it and your responsibility towards it for others. Regardless of what might be written in your role profile or not, you can give yourself that responsibility and take it seriously. And if your bonus was based on the motivation levels of the team you lead, you’d be in for some well-earned reward.

It really is up to you.