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Building Your Success Team |
Now that you've
built your success team, how do you get the most out of it? By tapping in
to their own natural motivations. Here's a shortlist of some of the most
common reasons people help out - take note of which ones you tend to use
when seeking help from your network, and which ones tend to motivate you....
1. Money
People exchange their time and energy for money all the time. But money
alone is rarely enough to get great, motivated action.
2. Status and Power
Hollywood and the political arena are perhaps the two most obvious examples
of how the promise of future status and power can motivate ordinary people
to extraordinary actions.
3. Challenge
For some people, it is the challenge that gets and keeps them involved.
What's important here is balance. Too much challenge and people shut down;
too little, they get bored and walk away.
4. Enjoyment
When you are really enjoying something, do you tend to want to do less of
it or more of it? Me too!
5. Appreciation
Cynthia Payne, the famous British madam immortalised in the film "Personal
Services", tells the story of one of her most popular "girls",
a rather plain Jane named, well, Jane. Even on a slow day, when many of
her prettiest girls were available immediately, men would wait for hours
for the chance to be with Jane. When Ms. Payne asked one of Jane's regular
"clients" why he preferred Jane to the other, prettier girls,
he said "The thing is, Cyn - she's so damn appreciative!"
6. Involvement
When it comes to living the life of your dreams, one of the least effective
pieces of time management wisdom is the notion of "delegation".
Apparently, we should be constantly looking for activities that we can delegate
to our assistants, colleagues, spouses, and children, freeing up our time
for "more important things".
There are several problems with this approach.
a. Many of us don't have assistants.
b. Colleagues, spouses and children tend to respond poorly to "delegation",
largely because....
c. No-one ever delegates the fun stuff!
In fact, more often than not delegation winds up costing us time and energy
in teaching, managing, and worrying about whether or not tasks we could
easily do ourselves are being adequately done by others.
The solution - involvement! Try replacing the idea of delegation with that
of "inviting people to participate" and watch their levels of
involvement, motivation, and creativity take flight!
7. A Sense of Worth
What is the most popular link on the DCT website? The link to The Hunger
Project, which allows people to donate a cup of food to a hungry child just
by clicking a button. Despite our societal protestations of increasing selfishness,
my experience is that people will still do far more for others (and the
sense of self-worth that engenders in them) than they ever will do for themselves.
Bonus Tips:
On "Being Taken Advantage Of"
The notion that people "take advantage" of one another is based on the myth
of reciprocity - that if I do something for you, you are now obligated to
do something for me. Here's how it usually works...
I do something for you which I don't really want to do in hopes of getting
something from you later that I want. When I don't get it, I say I was taken
advantage of. People even get angry with God about this - "I was a really
good person, I ate my broccoli and went to church and didn't covet my neighbour's
wife, but bad things happened to me anyway".
The problem is that in most cases, the bargain was never made explicit -
if it had been, the other person may well never have made it. Fortunately,
there are two simple solutions to this...
1. If you want to play tit-for-tat, make sure all agreements are explicit
and mutual.
2. If you don't want to do something, say "No".
On "The World as a Mutual Support System":
There is one other distinction which I believe to be critical to getting
the most out of what other people have to offer, and that is the idea of
the world as a mutual support system. One of the most common ways this idea
is expressed is:
What goes around, comes around
What makes this a very different idea than reciprocity is that we do not need to look to get back from the same place in which we give. The Jewish notion of "tzedakah" says that the highest form of charity is to give anonymously to those who cannot possibly give back. Not only does this relieve the receiver from the burden of reciprocity, it opens the giver up to receive "fair value" back from the whole universe.
The key to tapping in to the mutual support network?
1. Give, give, give, give, give!
2. Don't look to get it back from where you gave it.
And if someone does something nice for you, don't pay it back - pay it forward!
Today's Experiment:
1. Review the seven keys to motivating your team listed above
2. For each of the people on your list, make a note of how you could actively incorporate one or more of the keys to keep their motivation and interest high.
Already recognised as one of the outstanding trainers and coaches of his generation, and after nearly a decade at the forefront of human performance technologies research and development in the UK, Michael helped found Quantum5 to create an outlet and forum for further developing and implementing his wide-range of existing and future innovations. Since 1990, he has been teaching and training NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), one of the first human performance technologies to win widespread acceptance in the corporate sector.
Michael is perhaps best known in the field for developing models of "Conversational Change", user-friendly ways of creating pervasive personal and organisational change. He has coached and trained a diverse range of senior-level people ranging from chief executives of multinational companies to members of the Saudi Royal family. He has also been working as a professional actor throughout that time, most notably as "new-age American" Randy in the BAFTA award winning BBC sitcom Satellite City and as Hamlet in the Reduced Shakespeare Company's The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged). For more info check out his website at www.successmadefun.com