Question No 2 from “The Full Nelson” 2006 end of year survey was:

“How to keep yourself and others motivated when the job is essentially the same thing each day?”

Oddly enough, this is a question that I get asked quite often. The context in which it is asked, can range from an aspect of motivation, to concepts associated with leadership and into the area of choices of profession.

Whenever I am asked this question or something similar I always reflect on the time I spent as professional swimming coach.

For it was at this time (twenty years) that each and everyday I basically had to come up with ways to overcome the boredom, monotonous, repetitive, but demanding nature of the everyday challenges of training for the swimmers I was working for.

There were many different ideas, structures and processes that I used to help me in this endeavour.

Aspects such as:

• Variety of workout structure
• Variety of training venues
• Variety of training partners
• Variety of focus within the training sets
• Variety of challenges
• Variety of technique
• Variety of motivation
• Variety of effort and intensity

Now it would not be hard after looking at this list to say the answer to:

“How to keep yourself and others motivated when the job is essentially the same thing each day?”

Is ‘variety’ and to be honest, it would be a great answer, but it would not be the way I have or would answer the question.

My answer to this question is probably the complete opposite of variety in that my answer is based on consistency, or more of the same.

My answer to this question is the key focus that I make sure that is at the forefront of my thinking as I go about constructing success strategies for any person, team or organisation that I am working with.

My answer is simply this:

“What and how do we work on today to make sure that we are better at it than what we were yesterday?”

My strategy is simple. Put something in front of the person, teams or organisation that I am working with, that we can work on being better at than what they were yesterday.

Sometimes that “something” was big, sometimes it was small. Sometimes it was obvious, where as at other times not so much. Sometimes it would make a significant difference where in others the difference was minimal.

I have always worked hard at building the rapport and understanding with the people I work with, so that when I ask of them or when I tell them something that is important, then hopefully the respect within our relationship will allow them to believe in me and therefore, they believe in the significance and importance of what I am outlining or asking of them.

Now, this may seem simple and the reality is to some extent it is. But that simplicity is dependant upon certain qualities, particular motivations and specific disciplines.

First, the quality that needs to be present is that the person must want to be better. Once again, sounds like a no brainer and to some degree it is. Most people do want to be better, but not everyone wants to do the work that will allow them to become better.

Therefore one of the specific disciplines needed is the preparedness to do what is required so that today you are better than what you were yesterday.

The motivation needs to be based around maintaining a personal sense of pride. The particular pride connected with developing the skills you are blessed to posses or the opportunity to develop new ones.

I would make sure at the end of every session, there was some type of individual debriefs and feedback, basically what had been done well in the session and then the areas that could be improved upon.

The next session I would outline the content and context of the training session to the group and as soon as everyone understood their particular parts of the workout, I would then commence talking to each individual and reintroduce a particular area that we identified from the session before that they should work and focus on during this session.

Consistency of Approach. Consistency of Discipline. Consistency of Improvement.

It gave the individual the understanding that although the session maybe generic to some extent, their were particular areas, specific focus and certain detail that was for them and them alone.

It had them knowing that they were just not making up the numbers and that I had looked at particular ways and specific areas where they needed to focus, work at and commit to and therefore improve upon.

I made it about them.

It was about their future, their career, their results, their improvement, their goals, their pride, their focus, their achievement, and their motivation.

I provided the opportunity, the understanding and the vehicle for them each and everyday to be better than what they were yesterday.

The same opportunity exists for you right now. So the real question is “Will you take and make the most of this opportunity or not?

The Journey Continues!