Feeling demotivated at work? This will help.
There is a huge chance that, as you’re reading this, you’re feeling completely demotivated at work.
If I asked you why, you’d tell me things like: the culture is toxic, the leadership doesn’t care, my boss is micromanaging, nobody listens, I feel underused, I am tired. You’d tell me how you no longer believe in your work, how you don’t feel you’re making a difference.
And you know what? All that is probably true.
BUT.
Some of you also absolutely love some things about their jobs or companies. You might tell me how much you’d like to stay. How you see opportunities there, a future.
Yet day after day, you seem to be unable to pick yourself up and get going again.
A client of mine recently shared a similar situation and crucially they also shared what they were doing: how they were spending a lot of time in conversations about how rubbish everything is, about how the leadership didn’t care.
We called those “lazy conversations”.
They’re the default conversations that happen when things are not going well. The complaints, the gossip, confirming to each other how right you are in thinking everything is rubbish.
So how come you still feel so bad, even when you are so right?
How come you can’t seem to be able to do anything about it?
My client decided to change tack.
They allow people a short while to complain about the situation and then they ask a simple question: OK, what can we do?
This puts people in creative mode. In solutions mode.
Allows people to focus on what they can control. What they can do. Allows them to find something to do. To use their skills and experience and immense brain power and do something that matters and can change things.
Your job is simple. Ask yourself (and others) the question: given the situation, what can I do anyway? How can I make things better?
You may decide to leave, of course. But if leaving is not an option, this question allows you to refocus your energy. Find motivation again and again.
Don’t have lazy conversations.
Ask better questions.