Use the Right Approach to Get Motivated
Using the right motivational words are one way to get yourself and others unstuck and moving. Get-It-Done Guy explains.
They say that learning how to get motivated is the golden ticket to the chocolate factory of life. At the very least, if you happen to own a chocolate factory, knowing how to motivate employees will allow you to convince an entire race of Oompa Loompas to come be your workforce and the world’s largest green-faced, orange-haired a cappella singing group.
Let’s return to that bastion of motivation: the gym.
Recently I spent 3 weeks traveling. The hotel gym was small and there was no one else there to admire my manly-man body as I picked up and put down heavy objects. This made the picking up and putting down seem much more pointless than it had before. (I’m not saying that being admired is how I motivate myself to go to the gym, I’m just saying that without the admiration, picking up and putting down heavy objects isn’t as engaging as it might otherwise be.)
Long story short, I didn’t work out for the entire 3 weeks of my trip.
When I returned home, I informed Trainer Steve that I hadn’t worked out while traveling. “You doofus!” he proclaimed. “You have to work out. Otherwise you’ll never get the results you want. You will become a slug! A lump! You will be a couch potato who does nothing but watch TV all day!”
I was furious. Not because he was right – of course he wasn’t right. I was furious because he was taking the area of my life where I’m super-proud, and trying to turn it into a cauldron of shame, despair, and, apparently, daytime television.
Motivation Comes in Two Directions
Steve’s intentions were good. He wanted to show how to motivate yourself to keep up with a gym routine. He was concerned that all the manly-man muscles I’ve worked so hard for would go away, or at least get slightly hidden under a teensy little layer of fat. Nonsense.
But he was using the wrong motivational words. By telling me all the bad things that would happen, he was pounding me with a stick, hoping I would change my behavior to avoid the stick. This is called “away-from” motivation. It’s comes from wanting something bad to stop.
In the workplace, you see away-from motivation when people want to eliminate defects in a product, or reduce the number of customer complaints, or keep a competitor from gaining market share. Away-from motivation triggers the fight-or-flight response, so it’s really good for kicking people into action.
Most advertising works on away-from motivation:
Your nose will fall off and people will laugh at you unless you buy our product! So buy it now, because otherwise, you’re a loser!
This works because away-from motivation gets people to act. If the action in front of them is to buy your product or service, well then, that’s what they do.
Goal-Directed Motivation Works Too
My gym motivation is not based on the fear of bad things, however. It was at the very start, with the discovery that I didn’t fit into my suit pants any more. I thought “OMG, I’m turning into a couch avocado (same shape, different plant).”
At that point, thet away-from motivation kicked me into action. But as I relate in my episodes on becoming a gym stud or studette, what kept me going back was very different: It was seeing the improvement in my manly-man physique and making friends with the whole gym community. That’s “towards” motivation. It’s motivation that comes from wanting more of something in your life. It comes from wanting a carrot and moving towards it. (The carrot is a metaphor, of course. You could be wanting any root vegetable.)
Most advertising works on away-from motivation.
In the workplace, you see towards motivation when people want to increase market share, win a contract, or increase customer satisfaction. Those motivations come from wanting more of something.
Both towards and away-from are valuable. They do different things and we use them in combination. Away-from motivation kicks you into action, but doesn’t tell you which way to go. Towards motivation gives direction to your efforts once you’re kicked into action. Both are necessary.
Match the Motivation to the Person
What Steve didn’t understand is that when you want to know how to motivate yourself, or how to motivate employees to do something, it works best to use the motivation that works for them naturally. My gym motivation is “towards being social.” An empty hotel gym doesn’t inspire me because my motivational element is missing.
Steve was trying to use “away from being a slug” motivation. Although that was the very important trigger that got me to start working with Trainer Tyler all those years ago, it’s not the motivation that keeps me going. The extreme mismatch not only didn’t motivate me, but actively made me resist.
To discover someone’s motivation—or even your own—ask them, “What will doing the thing they want to be motivated about do for you?” The phrasing is very important, because “What will it do for you” is neither a towards nor an away-from phrasing. The person will respond, “Going to the gym will let me see my friends, get a great body, and avoid being as slug, all at once!” That’s two towards (friends and great body) and one away-from (being a slug).
In the future, if you want to help them get motivated, give them two towards and one away-from motivation. If they say they’re having trouble finishing a report for a client, you can say “Finishing the report will bring in lots of money, you’ll feel great about finishing it, and the client won’t complain.” That’s towards money and feeling great, and away from client complaints.
Motivation Is Contextual
How to get motivated can change from context to context, so you can’t assume motivation style in one area will carry to a different area. For example, I go to the gym and I walk everywhere. Sounds healthy, right?
I’m drawn towards the gym by wanting a manly-man body. But I walk because I’m motivated away from driving. The fact that walking is good exercise and helps the manly-man body initiative is actually not part of the equation. They’re two similar behaviors, but one comes from towards motivation and the other comes from away-from motivation.
Using towards and away-from to choose motivational words, you can motivate yourself and the people around you. Notice where motivation is coming from avoiding something bad and where it comes from being drawn towards a goal. Then when you want to motivate yourself or others, use the right mix of carrot and stick. Now when Steve wants me to work harder, he shows me a shirtless picture of Zac Efron and asks, “Do you want to look like that?” My towards motivation kicks in, big-time.
Yours can, too. Whether you’re managing yourself or learning how to motivate the Oopma Loompas in your chocolate factory, forgetting the towards and away-from distinction will doom you forever, while remembering towards and away-from will help you take over the chocolate industry with panache (see what I did there?).
I’m Stever Robbins. I help high achievers accelerate or change careers. If you want to know more, visit www.SteverRobbins.com
Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!
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About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.
