What motivates you?

It was Thursday evening and a session was scheduled from 5PM to 8PM for a company rnin Thane. I was conducting a session on Leadership development. For a leadership rnrole, motivation and understanding about how to motivate a team is important and as a rnpart of my session I distributed a sheet of paper with the participants with these two rnquestions:rn1. What motivates you?rn2. Do you know what motivates your colleagues?rnThe participants of the program were given fifteen (15) minutes to pen down their ideas rnabout the above questions.rnThe age group of the participants was in the range of 25 to 35 years and I could see rnthat participants were struggling to answers. Some of the answers which the rnparticipants wrote were promotion, cash incentive, new mobile phone, car, and house.rnAccording to Scheffel, when we talk about motivation, we distinguish two different rnkinds: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is in fact exactly the same as rnengagement. It comes from ‘within’ and it has to do with the joy or fulfillment a certain rnjob or task gives a person, rather than the reward it will bring. Extrinsic motivation is rntriggered by external factors. In the absence of these factors a person will not feel rnmotivated. rnScience has found that positive emotions are at the root of human motivation. It is how rnpeople "feel" that drives the motivation deep within them. My personal feeling is that rnmost of us fail to identify what really motivates us as we do not make enough efforts to rnstay motivated. rnI had attended a program titled “Teacher as Leader” and from then onwards I always rnfelt that role of teacher is much larger than I thought. It is possible to motivate people if rnteachers /leader have basic understanding of human behavior, and they know what rnmakes people tick. Science has already found that positive emotions are at the root of rnthe human motivation. Therefore, leaders and teacher must acquire the knowledge of rnwhat truly inspires human beings to enthusiastically perform at a high level. Teachers rncan use this knowledge for understanding student behavior and learn what actually rnmotivates every individual student. This practice is missing currently in most of the rninstitutes and schools.rnA person can be working as a recently promoted manager or can be working as rnmanager since past ten years or even longer, one thing never changes and that is rnhuman nature which is often unpredictable. Motivating each and every person in the rnteam can be a very frustrating and challenging for the team leader and same would be rnthe challenge in case of a teacher as well. Teachers would also face the same struggle rnwhile try to motivate students to learn new things.rnComing back to the point about what really motivates a person I wish to ask. Do you rnreally know what can get you out of bed early in the morning? How passionate are rnabout your goals, aspirations, and interests? In other words, do you really know rnyourself? It is important as a teacher or as a leader to know oneself. Most of the rnsuccessful people have high self awareness and they know their interest and career rnaspirations in order to motivate self every time. My opinion is people who do not know rnwhat truly motivates them may find it difficult to motivate others.rnOnce you know what motivates you then you can then look into the future to create rnmotivated learning and development for your students. Teachers at management level rncan positively find out what motivates their students by getting to know what desires will rndrive each students. This is about emotional understanding. This can be done only rnwhen we spend some good time with students and that too in an informal way where rnstudents open up and share freely about their choices.rnI am confident that some of our senior teacher friends would be already doing it very rnsuccessfully in a class room where students come with different back ground and rnteachers have a tough task of keeping them motivated to learn. Some teachers could be rndoing it due to their natural ability and some could have acquired this specialized skill rnover a period of time.rnMy sincere request is to all our teacher friends to take a deep dive first within to learn rnabout oneself and then learn to appreciate students at emotional levels and rncommunicate with them so that we learn what motivates them.rnI will be happy to learn more on this area and would request all teachers to share their rnviews. I am sure your inputs will guide me to explore more and will give direction to this rnstudy of mine