How to motivate ?

How to motivate self and others ? A simple question but possibly the biggest challenge which most employees are facing post the pandemic. Employees have lost jobs and Managers have lost members of their teams. In both cases, its a huge crisis and after all that, how to keep oneself motivated is the key question ?

I was taking a session for a group of managers of a multinational corporation this week. While I was requested to design and take this session, I was told that they do not want to listen to theories on motivation but on “How to motivate team members and self after we face difficult situations at work ?

I was a bit stumped. But, after having worked in industry for almost four decades , I sat down and reflected on what motivated me, what demotivated me, who motivated me and tried to answer these questions to myself, based on my own personal experiences at work and life.

I realised that I had all the answers but still found it difficult to implement them in real life. So, I decided to ask the participants the very same questions which came to my mind, while designing this session. The outcome was fascinating. Let me summarise what I learnt from this session and how I found answers to these fundamental questions in life.

On my first question on “What motivates people ?”, I asked them to reflect on any incident in their personal or work life, where they felt highly motivated. What happened and what were the factors which motivated them at that moment. The answers revolved around freedom at work, challenging opportunities, empowerment, recognition, opportunities to experiment and fail and so on.

The next question was “What demotivated them the most ? “. The answers revolved around micro management, public criticism, lack of recognition, lack of freedom at work, routine and ritualistic work and so on.

My next question was “Who ultimately helped you bounce back in life or work ?”. While many shared it was their parents, siblings, friends, colleagues or bosses, most of them felt that it was ultimately the individuals themselves.

This whole session was engaging for me. When I then moved to some of the basic theories of motivation like Maslow, McGregor and Herzberg, they realised that all these theories point to the same factors which motivate people, demotivate people and so on. So, the inference can be that, we know all the answers in life and work. So, what prevents us from asking ourselves the right questions at the right time ?

It may be important to realise that the factors which motivate or demotivate us as individuals, are not very different to what it does to others. So, the answer is simple. We need to do to others , what we want others to do to us. This is equally true at work and in life.

Then the participants said that it is easy to conquer the world but may be more difficult to conquer oneself. That is the crux of the matter. It may be easier to advise others rather than oneself. It is also fun to give advise rather than implement any idea.

Another important lesson from my corporate life is that your followers at work or your children at home follow what you do and not what you say. It is better not to say anything and make them follow by doing things, which you want them to. Leaders always lead by example not by quotes.

So, I decided that I need to share this great insight with as many people as possible. Let us sit down and reflect. Let us look within ourselves. May be we have the answers for the most challenging questions in life. We also need to realise that we are responsible for bouncing back in life and work and whether pandemic or otherwise. Everyone else can support us but it is upto us to stand up and get back.

Lets look within.

S Ramesh Shankar

28th Oct 2021

Eating to live or living to eat

I sometimes wonder whether we eat to live or live to eat. It may not be either or, as it could be both too! I eat to live. I believe, I eat food to survive but some may live to eat and it is fine too. Eating to live or living to eat is a personal choice and everyone has a right to live life their way.

I have never enjoyed cooking. I enter the kitchen only when it is inevitable and I have no choice. I do help my spouse when she needs help in cutting vegetables or doing some other chores in the kitchen. But cooking is not my hobby. Sometimes when people ask me what I would like to eat – I would reply – anything and they would be amused. The people who enjoy food want to plan for it and put in a lot of efforts to cook and relish it.

I can spend an entire day with fruits and snacks to survive and not cook anything if I am alone. But for some others, this may be a torture. So, if I have a guest, I need to cook good food for them if they enjoy food and not offer snacks just because I can manage with them.

In my view eating to live or living to eat is a personal preference. I neither believe my philosophy of eating to live is wrong nor someone else enjoying food and living to eat is wrong. However, the problem is when one thinks the other is not ok.

When people want to take you out for dinner to a famous restaurant in a new city and you are not that excited, they feel disappointed. They may be right in feeling unhappy as they are putting in extra efforts to make you happy, but they don’t realise that food is not your priority. On the other hand, if you say no, you are making then unhappy since eating good food, is life for them.

In my view neither eating to live nor living to eat, is right or wrong. What is wrong is our belief that the other person is not enjoying life as we are doing. We tend to typecast people based on our own frames of life. The moment someone does not fit into our frame of life and living, we feel they are wrong.

Our ability to live life on our own terms and letting others live their own way, is a better way to enjoy life. The day we realise that we have a right to live life our way and others their way, we may be right. We also have to learn to respect the opposite of our worldview of life.

It may be easy to say this, easier to write about this but rather difficult to practise it. In life, most things we adore may not be what others do. The day we learn to live life our way and let others do their way , we have arrived.

Life is all about live and let live.

S Ramesh Shankar

15th Oct 2021

When the obvious is not so obvious ?

In life, sometimes the obvious is not so obvious. I have worn my glasses and kept searching for it. Such or similar incidents may have happened to many of us. While others who see us think it is so obvious, it is not that obvious to us.

Life is no different. The other day my daughter went for a dinner with her family. Her father in law’s glasses fell off his pocket. When my daughter saw a pair of spectacles lying on the floor, she picked it up and handed it over to the hotel reception thinking someone may have dropped it by accident. When they returned home, her father in law reported that he misplaced his spectacles. When she told him about this incident, he asked as to why she did not check with him before handing it over to the reception. It did not strike her that it could belong to her own family members.

In life, there are many things which are obvious to others but may not appear that obvious to us. I am fond of driving cars and love to drive at high speeds when the highways are clear. Sometimes when I have to apply the brakes at high speeds at road junctions I used to get irritated as to why people cannot see a speeding car. On the other hand, they also seem equally irritated as to why, me as a car driver, was driving at high speeds at road crossings. Isn’t it obvious that people may be crossing at such points?

When we reflect on such incidents, we realise that the world is viewed by each of us from different lenses. What we need to realise that neither we are wrong nor are they. It is only looking at life from different perspectives.

The issue is not about looking at life differently. But, the issue is when we form opinions of others, based on our own perceptions without cross checking with them. If we find a child sulking on a festive occasion at home, we may find it amusing. But if you check with the child, it may be because of an injury which she had incurred, during play the previous evening.

The lessons I have learnt from such incidents is that life is different for each of us and our realities are different. We see what we want to see while others see what they want to see. We need to learn to respect each other’s view and respect the different views.

We tend to look at others’ world from our own eyes and then feel disappointed that they are not able to see it the way we see it. The day we realise that each of us have a right to a different world view, we may feel better.

Let us learn to respect each other’s views and learn to live with the differences.

S Ramesh Shankar

15th Oct 2021