Leadership after Lockdown - ‘Leading the Way 4’: Motivation and Empowerment Uncovered

Notes and Quotes on Leadership

Can leaders motivate and empower their people? There are plenty of books and ‘motivational’ speakers who will say … “Yes of course!”

Take a closer look at both motivation and empowerment …

The key to understanding motivation is to realise it is not something another person can give you. Any feelings of motivation we experience come 100% from within. We are all, in fact, ‘self-motivators’.

So, here’s my take on how motivation works for us …

Firstly, you need to have an ‘interest’ or desire, eg, to write, to start a business, to gain promotion, to lose weight / get fit, to be the best at what you are pursuing.

Secondly, you need to have some sort of identifiable outcome / outcomes that you desire that relate to the above.

And finally, you need to develop and start a routine / process / habit / system that will allow you to consistently pursue your ‘interest’ and to achieve the outcomes you desire which, in turn, will fuel your motivation to develop your interest further.

In business good leaders will assist their colleagues to identify the challenges or areas of interest in which they can make progress within their current role. Outcomes can be agreed which will benefit both the colleague and the business with some coaching probably required to ensure colleagues understand what is needed to succeed with their challenge / area of interest.

And James Clear (Atomic Habits, 2018) writes that “working on challenges of an optimal level of difficulty has been found to not only be motivating, but also to be a major source of happiness. As psychologist Gilbert Brim put it, ‘One of the important sources of human happiness is working on tasks at a suitable level of difficulty, neither too hard nor too easy.’”

As with motivation so too with empowerment …

Empowerment comes from within. Understanding that we create our reality from the Inside-Out … from our own thoughts, means that we are unable to empower anyone else except ourself!

David Marquet in ‘Turning the Ship Around’ explains the flaws in so-called empowerment programmes … “Many empowerment programmes fail because they are just that, ‘programmes’ or ‘initiatives’ rather than the central principle – the genetic code, if you will – behind how the organisation does business. You can’t ‘direct’ empowerment programmes. Directed empowerment programmes are flawed because they are predicated on this assumption: ‘I have the authority and ability to empower you (and you don’t)’. Fundamentally, that’s disempowering. This internal contradiction dooms these initiatives.

And, through their own behaviours, their willingness to listen without interruption, through their inspiring stories, through their emotional intelligence and empathy and through their authenticity, leaders can create an inspirational environment which will assist their colleagues to motivate and empower themselves to achieve their goals and the goals of the organisation.

Charlie Jackson

October 2021