You can motivate anyone. You can encourage only someone you believe in.
The research on motivation pretty much comes down to this: Praise works better than criticism.
Encouragement, on the other hand, involves the acknowledgment of a negative thing – something that the person being encouraged doesn’t know they should or should not be doing. They might think they’re doing just fine, that they’re effective and ambitious. Encouragement often involves bursting that bubble.
To be encouraging you must believe two things to be true. One, the person is not trying hard enough, (which is probably not something they want to hear) and two, if the person did try, he or she could do great things.
The key to encouragement is tact, and the key to tact is specificity.
For example, you might say: “I think you have the potential to be a fantastic leader and have three people work under you…but in order to do that, we need to improve your time-management and organizational skills” vs. coming at them saying: “You are really disorganized.” Approaching it from the potential route is much more empowering.
Notice that encouragement involves accountability – and not just for the one being encouraged. The encourager is accountable too because encouragement without guidance and support isn’t encouragement. It’s discouragement.
Bottom line is you have to discourage before you encourage. That challenge is scary – for both parties. But the reward is sweet. Not only have you helped someone achieve a goal; you’ve helped them achieve a goal they didn’t previously have!
But what if no one is doing that for you? First, realize that you don’t know how to do everything that’s required in your work.
Next, pretend you are your own supervisor and ask yourself these 5 questions:
- “What am I good at?”
- “What do I need to improve?”
- “Do I make use of available resources?”
- “Do I ask questions when I need help?”
- “Do I examine current best practices?”
Big stuff, I know! Take all the time you need to be specific.
Next, develop a new professional goal and write down the steps required to achieve it.
Lastly, give yourself a deadline. This last step is really important as tasks without a deadline seem to continually slip.
Keep in mind that when you’re encouraging, you’re instilling courage. That’s huge.
If you need assistance, reach out to me on email.
