What can you do to take responsibility for feeling motivated and engaged at work? How do you help yourself to thrive and shine?
We often talk about the importance of a good leader and manager, and of course, it is very important to have a manager that gives you the prerequisites to do a good job and to feel motivated. But it is also very important for you to take responsibility for this yourself. To ask yourself what can I do? Even though you have a manager, it is a team effort between the two of you. It takes two to tango, right?! So what can you do:
1) Be clear on what you need to feel motivated
Reflect on what is important for you to feel motivated. When do you get the feeling of flow, when you lose track of time? What are the components for you to feel engaged and have fun at work? When you have the answers, communicate them to your manager. This will give him or her the chance to give you the prerequisites to feel motivated and engaged. If she/he doesn’t know what you need, it is almost impossible for your manager to serve you.
2) Be clear on what you don’t need
Reflect on what makes you lose motivation? When does that spark of yours blow out? What makes you frustrated? When you have reflected on this, invite your manager to a dialogue on this and tell him/her what makes you lose motivation. This will give your manager the chance to make sure you don’t get assignments that don’t do you well.
3) Give yourself what you need
We are often very good at serving others and the company and forget about serving ourselves. The stress level in our society is higher than ever and more and more people are depressed. It is more important than ever to listen to yourself and your needs. What do you need to feel good? What makes you feel satisfied and pleased with yourself, other than accomplishments at work? What gives you energy; walks in nature, cardio training, meditation, yoga, time with friends, gardening, cooking? If you will give yourself time, to your own needs, you will not only feel more motivated at work. You will be a better partner, parent, friend and colleague. Someone who is fun to spend time with and has the energy to give more to people around you.
4) Focus on what you are good at
We tend to only focus on the things that we need to improve, and the things that we are not good at. Of course, it is good to always develop and become better. But if we focus on the things we are less strong at we will forget about our most powerful assets, our strengths. If you focus on what you are good at you will have more fun at work since we often enjoy doing things we´re good at. You will most certainly do a better job since you will use your strengths instead of your weaknesses. You will feel better and more competent if you focus on your areas of expertise and your strengths, rather than feeling lousy and incapable. If you feel competent and secure this will show and you will be more trustworthy.
5) Have faith in yourself and compliment yourself
We tend to not trust ourselves and be very harsh on ourselves. It is so much easier to punish ourselves and telling yourself that “I might be wrong, so I shouldn’t try” or “I will not succeed, why bother…” or “I think I can do this, but I am probably wrong”. The thing is, that you know best what you can do and if you trust yourself and follow your intuition you will succeed! Listen more to what your gut feeling says and ignore the skepticism, both from yourself and from others. If you don’t try you will never succeed! If you fail, you know what you can do differently. Have faith in yourself and show yourself some love and give yourself compliments!
I wish you the best of luck!
Anna-Maria Waara, CEO Waara ledare
To see more about our partner, please visit their website: http://waaraledare.se/
