Leadership Development is full of motivational speakers.  People who feel it is their purpose in life to stand in front of you and motivate you to be your better self, visualize success, lead more authentically, rise above yourself to achieve the transformational essence that they have to offer.

I am not your motivational Speaker

Recently someone told me that my role as a consultant is to motivate them to change. This person shared that by my sharing of research data, internal project completion data, and how the structure of their current organization is causing dysfunction, they now feel demotivated. My response:

“If you need motivation by feeling good about yourself, you do not belong in a position with leadership accountability. Being in a role that carries leadership accountability means people will actively dislike you and work to manipulate, confuse, undermine, and become apathetic to your charismatic leadership.

Being in a role that carries leadership accountability means that people will actively like you and work to support, comfort, listen and see you as an alright person due to your charismatic leadership.

The same person will dislike, like, dislike, then like you again. Because you have leadership accountability and did not motivate them … I hope that you understand from the data what is working to increase and what is not working to decrease.”

They smiled, stood up, grabbed their drink, and left me alone at the table.

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Are you still looking for motivation?

1. What happens when you are motivated?
2. When you are motivated, what are you doing?
3. This demotivation is gone; how are you spending your time?
4. Where are you when motivation happens?
5. Walk me through an example of when you have been motivated.
6. What else can you call motivation?
7. Take some time over the next week and note what you want to preserve.
8. Take some time over the next week and make a list of the tasks you complete that are demotivating and those that are motivating.
9. Who seems to be motivated? When you observe them, what do you notice?
10. For 7 days, flip a coin every morning. Heads start 1 new thing that day; do not worry about finishing it. Tails, you do nothing different. Take notes on the differences you notice.