Motivation

I think one of the essential things that that I see lacking in educational institutions (vis-à-vis industries), is a motivating environment.  There is a saying, ‘you cannot motivate anybody; all you can do is to create a motivating environment’. Very true. It’s left to an individual whether to get motivated or not in such environment. Nevertheless, what’s the harm in creating a better motivating environment if it helps most of them perform better and enthuses people do more?

What’s required then to create such envt.? Just a few simple steps:

• Appreciate people (either junior or senior) for doing good work, even small ones. It carries a long-way (People may be poor, but why should there be the poverty for good words?)
• Recognize or reward (again it can also be small) people for their accomplishments
• Mention about their good deed in meetings and other occasions
• After recognizing their feat, give them some more tasks, even tougher ones, I bet, they will be happy to take it up
• Don’t reprimand them for first few mistakes; nobody does mistakes deliberately. Instead encourage by asking them to learn from those mistakes and improve upon it. Most importantly, don’t carry it along by making that person the scapegoat for every blunder from there on
• Ask them to share their experience with others to spread the news. See if s/he can be made the ‘go to guy’ for such solutions
• and there may be many more ...

Well, I’m not generalizing my first statement; there are exceptions. But these points are based on my observations in many institutions. So I’m confident that there’s some truth in it then! :-)