“I want to be a leader,” Matt said when we talked last week. Matt, 28, has been in his current job for 18 months.
According to a WorkplaceTrends.com study, 91% of young professionals (aka Millennials) aspire to be a leader. Matt has lots of company.
One of the most important skills for a leader is to be able to motivate others. Before you can learn to do that, you need to learn what motivates you. So, if you aspire to be a leader, let’s get down to learning what motivates people and how you can use that in your life.
Before I explain the keys to motivation, take a minute to reflect on something you love to do and that you’re good at. Are you like the runner in the picture above? Poised to launch out of the blocks to fulfill her role on the relay team?
Or maybe you desire to become a public speaker like someone you’ve heard or watched in a TED talk. Or maybe you want to be a star chef and own your own restaurant.
Jot down why you love to do that.
This past summer, I came across this book that gave me new insights: “Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work . . . And What Does” by Susan Fowler. She has a pretty impressive list of her own accomplishments, including cowriting three books with guru Ken Blanchard.
Fowler writes about the science of motivation, which is based on three psychological needs—autonomy, relatedness, and competence.
AUTONOMY is our need to feel we have choices, that we’re in charge, and that we’re doing things because we want to.
RELATEDNESS is about feeling cared for, caring about others, and feeling we are contributing to society and the common good.
COMPETENCE is about being good at something and growing and flourishing as we get better at that something.
Human beings must have all three to be motivated. I’m doing X because I want to, because I care about others working on X, and because I’m getting better at the tasks involved with X.
Like many young men, Matt loves to play video games. His parents have wondered how he could spend hours on end playing video games. They were pleasantly surprised he managed to finish his college degree and get a good job.
In the book “Glued to Games” by Rigby and Ryan, the authors say the reason males play video games with such dedication and intensity is because of autonomy, relatedness, and competence.
The players are in charge. They are often on teams and make new friends. And they learn lots of skills playing and winning those games.
Whether we can credit video games with helping develop the next generation of leaders is still up in the air.
But what about what you love to do, that thing you thought of when I asked the question above? Have you analyzed that activity to see if it rewards you with
For example, I love to cook. Cooking was my artistic outlet when I stayed home with our kids when they were little. Cooking allowed me to check off each of those motivational characteristics.
AUTONOMY–I was in charge of what I fixed, what new cooking methods I learned, and when and how dinner would get made.
RELATEDNESS–I was lovingly preparing a meal for my family. I took great pride in preparing food that was tasty and nutritious for them and fun for me to prepare.
COMPETENCE–The more I cooked, the more I learned. The more I learned, the better I got. I could disappear into a new cookbook for days, just absorbing new information and techniques that I could use.
What fills that niche in your life?
If you want to be a leader, like Matt does, you have to learn what motivates you before you can learn to motivate others.