Motivational Wellness – What it is, What it Does & How it Works
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What is Motivational Wellness?
The benefits of motivational wellness are rooted in almost 50 years of self-determination research. Specific organizational benefits of motivational wellness include:
Better Relationships
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Higher Productivity
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Increased Commitment
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Motivational wellness balances three key areas to create sustainable success and wellbeing:
- Task management.
- Relationship management
- Self management
In organizations, we are always managing all three of these interdependent areas. When we neglect one area too much, the others suffer. For example, if an organization focuses too much on task management while almost wholly excluding relationship and self management, interpersonal trust and collaborative effectiveness will suffer. The ability to manage tasks effectively is then depleted. Further, as people ignore their personal needs for life balance, they become chronically stressed, which leads to illness, absenteeism, presenteeism, and overall disengagement.
On the other hand, when we balance task, relationship, and self management successfully tasks are supported in a sustainable manner, creating a platform for ongoing growth and excellence.
What is the Secret to Maintaining Balance?
In order to maintain balance, each person must find a way to manage each area (tasks, relationships, self) in ways that are:
- Meaningful (aligned with a sense of values, importance, and purpose)
- Energizing (imbued with a sense of pleasure, interest, or enjoyment)
- Effective (we are mostly able to do what we intend to do)
We call your collective level of meaning, energy, and effectiveness the “Me Too” factor. How is your Me Too factor doing right now?
How Meaningful Actions Sustain Us
Having a satisfying rationale for why we are doing a task can increase engagement. For instance, when we’re able to see how our work is making a contribution to the organization a positive shift in our motivation can take place. The task itself becomes important, rather than just a means to an end. We see the importance of what we do. We become, not a cog in a great machine,
Meaningful relationships at work can be sustaining
but a meaningful part of a larger endeavor. Even in difficult times, a meaningful reason for doing what we do, can help carry us through with a sense of integrity. If we lack such a reason, then it becomes difficult to endorse our actions. We push the unconvinced parts of ourselves along with great strain. Work becomes draining.
Even more powerful, is when we discover our own sense of purpose with the organization we serve. At this point, our efforts become wholly aligned with the efforts of others toward a common goal. Work may be challenging, and that’s part of the fun. Our own personal commitments become one and the same with organizational goals. We are doing the very work we would volunteer for, while making a living.
How Energizing Actions Sustain Us
We use the word “energizing” to describe those actions that give you an energetic boost just by doing them. The purpose can be in the action itself – just because it’s fun, pleasurable, enjoyable, or interesting.
Appreciating beauty can be a source of pleasure
Pleasure is nourishment experienced through the senses such as taste, smell, touch, sight, sounds, and internal sensations. When you think of pleasure, think of what is pleasant for you. If you come into work and it smells bad, or if your chair is giving you a backache, or if you’re trying to focus while others are shouting at each other nearby; those things might affect your ability to engage at work. Change the scene: your chair is supportive, you’re listening to calming sounds on your headphones, and a picture of your favorite person on earth is facing you. Work can then becomes more pleasurable. Difficult situations become more doable because your environment is supportive.
Similarly, if we are not able to find interest in what we do, work can easily be overcome with a sense of drudgery. But when work is interesting it can become a delight.
Even work that is tremendously purposeful can become drudgery if the processes do not maintain our interest, or if we find engagement in the work to be continually painful rather than pleasurable.
How Effective Actions Sustain Us
Lastly, our ability to be effective in our work is vital for our continued engagement. It’s hard to enjoy something while not being able to accomplish what you intend to be accomplishing. Part of our enjoyment and interest stems from a sense that we are progressing, that we are actually doing what we set out to do. Purposeful work is no longer purposeful when it can’t be done.
Some psychologists see effectiveness as the beginning of motivation. After all, if we don’t think we have a chance to succeed, why try?
So Then…
Creating motivational wellness on an individual level means managing all three of our key areas (tasks, relationships, and self) in ways that are most meaningful, energizing, and effective. We are then able shift from feelings of apathy, fear, or resentment that hold us back, to feelings of excitement, interest and purpose that propel us forward and keep us wanting to do more. This authentic alignment frees us up from doubts caused by mixed feelings and provides the energy for sustainability and growth.
Furthermore, our own authentic alignment allows us to synergize with other people, like those in our work team, who have similar interests and purposes. These types of synergies are a key ingredient in sustainable organizational success.
It is absolutely critical to sustainable high performance that organizational leadership create an environment where this type of personal balance and team synergy is possible. It is also critical that each individual take responsibility for their own Me Too factor. When individuals are able to take responsibility for themselves, but management is not actively creating an environment that fosters meaning, energy, and effectiveness employees will go elsewhere to find a better match.
Why Does Motivational Wellness Work?
Motivational wellness works because it helps us achieve our basic needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence. When these needs are met, we naturally feel safe and inspired to do our best work, and to volunteer the best in ourselves. Self Determination Theory is a body of research started by Ed Deci and Richard Ryan in the late 1960s. Self Determination research is continued today by hundreds of scientists internationally. This body of research confirms that we all have basic needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence regardless of our age, gender, race, culture, or form of government. It also confirms that when our motivations are aligned with what is authentically meaningful and energizing, and when we’re also able to experience effectiveness in our endeavors it leads to fulfillment of basic needs. Further, as we meet our basic needs, we are more prone to act again what is most meaningful, energizing, and effective for us. In essence, a virtuous cycle of wellbeing and performance takes place as we align our motivations and needs. Excellence becomes sustainable.
Would You Like to Achieve Sustainable Success?
We invite you to join us in learning how to bring out the best in yourself and others. We teach motivational wellness skills that help create the engagement and alignment necessary to achieve long-term growth and success. We offer a strengths-based approach that recognizes what people and groups do best, and then uses those strengths to achieve excellence.
Use the form below to contact us if you would like to find out more about how we can bring out the best in your organization.
If you would like to read more on the subject of motivation check out the following:
- What Maslow’s Hierarchy Won’t Tell You About Motivation: a great article by Susan Fowler.
- Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self Motivation by Edward L. Deci. A great primer on basic human needs written by one of the founders of Self Determination Theory.
- Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work . . . and What Does: The New Science of Leading, Energizing, and Engaging by Susan Fowler. This book focuses mostly on how to utilize meaning in business settings. I’ve met Susan and she is a true practitioner of what she preaches in this book.
If you read the above books and still want to learn more, you could seriously geek out with the following handbooks full of scientific articles on motivation.
- Self-Determination Theory: Basic Psychological Needs in Motivation, Development, and Wellness by Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci
- The Handbook of Self-Determination Research by Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci
- The Oxford Handbook of Work Engagement, Motivation, and Self-Determination Theory by Marylene Gagne
- The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation by Richard M. Ryan
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