Emotional Road Blocks on the Motivation Highway

Recently the topic of motivation and how to motivate job seekers came front and center for me after a recent training program I attended.  I love learning about motivation and motivating people. Motivation, like health advice, is one of those things that every expert in every field has an opinion on. Business wants to motivate its employees. Health care wants to motivate people to be more proactive in living healthy lifestyles. Parents want to motivate their children. Teachers want to motivate their students.  Science wants to study it, analyze it, and package it up neatly into a vaccination we should get annually.

The more I thought about motivation, the more I realized that there is not much we can do to actually inject motivation into another person’s body like a flu shot.  Motivation hovers in that magic place called the mind, not the brain. That is why it is so hard to pin down. It is also why it is a million dollar industry of books, videos, and experts. Everyone is right and everyone is wrong at the same time.

For me, I could only discuss motivation as it relates to myself and my surroundings. I look to ensure that my teenager is motivated to get to the next big step in his life. I look to motivation to ensure that I don’t just sit on the couch all weekend, but actually do something. I look to motivation to ensure that job seekers are trying to get a job.

The more I think about motivation, the more I understand that if you have to ask “What’s my motivation” then you don’t have any. I can’t tell you, you tell me.  I have learned through my observations on life and self-reflection that motivation is from within. For example, the doctor can tell a person to lose weight, but until the person has the desire to do so, then nothing will change.

Motivation comes from desire. Not just wanting something for your next birthday gift, but really wanting it. It comes from that inner place where you cannot stand your current situation a minute longer and you have a desire to improve. Once I have the desire, then I have passion for action. Motivation is a noun in the dictionary, but it leads to a verb- ACTION. 

As part of the process of achieving motivation, the person must do soul searching. This is the “touchy-feely” stuff that sometimes scares people and send them to therapy. Desires and motivation come from that secret place inside ourselves that tell us what and why. Sometimes we are not ready for what is there and may unlock some things too hard to deal with. That is when we hit the emotional road block.  

 As I work with job seekers, I have to understand that my role is only to support their desires for a particular job or career and help them make an action plan.  A workforce development professional’s role is only to support the motivation and not tell people what it is. If you have a job seeker that is highly motivated – then great! Get to work supporting the person, developing action strategies, and to be that coach, but if you have someone that is not motivated, and unable to get there, perhaps they have hit the emotional road block.

 
A couple thoughts on the emotional road block and motivation:

 § For some the answer is purely simple, they are not ready to get “touchy- feely” with themselves.On top of that, they would not want to share that “feeling stuff” with another person.  More often,we ask job seekers to get to a sensitive side to figure out what they want in life - when we try to motivate. “If I say anything, you will leave me alone.”  Strategy: Don’t force it. Focus on the non-touchy-feely stuff like job seeking strategy and process and wait until the person is ready to answer some tough thinking questions.

 §  Then there are folks that are going to say anything to please the person asking the question. Their thoughts are, “I know this is what you want to hear, so I am going to say this.”  Rather than being honest, these people are eager to please and at that moment, their response was pleasing to the workforce development professional. Many times these folks are self-centered and in denial,but by blind-siding the other person, their conscious is clear, and their motives protected. Strategy: After you have figured out that a job seeker is all talk and no action, then try to see if the true motivation for the job seeker is himself!

 Knowing all of this, where do we start? Should we motivate everyone in our path or push only those that want to be pushed? We need to put into practice smart strategies for dealing with each kind of person.  If someone can be motivated by using experts’ tools of the trade, then let’s go for it.  If it seems to be difficult for some people, taking a step back from the motivation for a moment should be the strategy.

 Before people are job seekers or program participants, they are people. They have a unique set of individual challenges and factors that drive them.  I think the $1 million dollar question is if we can motivate another person. I am not sure that anyone can be motivated. You either are or you are not. Once a person decides to be motivated, they will be, simple as that! As workforce development professionals, we need to guide them in the right direction and respect that sometimes the motivational highway has potholes and roadblocks before the exit to success.

Comments, questions? Feel free to email me at kcirincione@gmail.com ~Karen Cirincione