Over the past couple of decades or so it’s been demonstrated that motivation is essentially internal. That means it relies a lot less on external factors, and has more to do with how people think than anything else. What people forget, though, is that demotivation is external.
People might rely on their internal thoughts, drive and passion for motivation, but if you don’t provide an environment that’s conducive, all bets are off. What you need to do is foster the motivation that people have within them. Inspire them to use it.
I thought this might be an ideal time to link to some articles that can help you to motivate your team (and not demotivate them!), here they are:
- BusinessInsider has a great article by Martin Zwilling which has some useful hints and tips to motivate staff without spending money.
- For those of you struggling to motivate Generation Y and iGen in the workplace, Michael Fertik has an article over at Harvard Business Review.
- Still at Harvard, David Sirota, Louis Mischkind and Michael Meltzer published an article in the Harvard Management Update about how to avoid demotivating your employees.
- Jonathon Farrington at Customer Think has an article that’s particular to motivating (and not demotivating) sales teams.
- Dr Zimmerman has an article on how to communicate with words that are motiviational, rather than demotivational.
- Executive Coach Craig Nathanson has a quick article with the top ten ways to demotivate staff.
If you have some articles worthy of listing on this topic, why don’t you let me know. I’ll be happy to include them here.
