In his book ‘Human Motivation’, the researcher David McClelland identified three main types of motivation:

Achievement motivation – means that a person is motivated by their own achievements.  They are competitive, either with themselves or with others and they like to see steady improvements in their achievements.

Affiliation motivation – means that the person is motivated by affiliation with others.  They like to belong to a group and to have good relationships with the people around them.  They enjoy contributing to other people’s happiness and wellbeing.

Power motivation – means that the person is motivated by their own power to make things happen.  They want to ‘make a difference’ and to influence what happens around them.  They don’t have to succeed at everything, but they do like to be in on the latest developments.

McClelland goes on to say that most of us are motivated by a combination of 2 or 3 of these types of motivation.

With my NLP/LAB Profile hat on, I’d say that we’re probably motivated by different things in different contexts.

Whichever way you look at it, there’s going to be a majority of us that are motivated by Power – or Influence if you prefer – at least some of the time.

So, how DO you gain influence?

If you’re trained in NLP, you’re probably already ahead of me.  “Easy”, you say. “To gain influence with another person, you just need to be in rapport.  Then you can lead the other person to do what you want them to do.”

That’s true, if what you want them to do is slow down, stand up, be quiet or hand you a newspaper.  Those kind of simple behavioural leads work very effectively.

But what if you want the other person to give you a pay rise, fund your professional development, vote for you in an election or recommend your services to their network?

If the other person is going to be making a conscious decision, your influence strategy needs to be more comprehensive.  This is where your knowledge and expertise comes in:

Expertise + Rapport = Influence

The person you want to influence is much more likely to follow your lead if they believe that you ‘know your stuff’.  If you are a trusted source of reliable information and guidance, then the other person will follow your lead much more often.  And this can only happen if you not only DO know your stuff, but you can also explain your thinking clearly to someone who doesn’t share your level of knowledge.  Without patronising.

And notice, Influence is not the same as Control.

When you have influence with another person, it doesn’t mean that they will ALWAYS follow your lead.  It means that they will often do so.

When you have true influence, if the other person doesn’t follow your lead, they have clear reason why and those reasons do not detract from your influence at another time.

So, how do you gain influence?

If you want long-lasting influence, you work at two things.

1. Your knowledge, expertise and ability to communicate your thoughts
2. Your rapport skills

I’m sure you can think of people you know or have seen in the media, who have great rapport skills, great communication skills but very short-lived influence because they didn’t know enough or were driven by unusual values.

Equally, you can probably think of people you turn to with complete confidence because they have given good counsel over a number of years.

Which one do you want to be like?

Some experiences will stay with me forever.  Back in 2002, I participated in a residential ‘meet the buyer’ event. It was my first time at this kind of sales opportunity and I was keen to make sure I gained a return on my investment.

With that in mind, I’d studied the advance information about the buyers who would be present and made notes for the scheduled one-to-one meetings across the two days. All well-prepared, I settled in to enjoy the speakers, the company and the general conversation.

At dinner after the first day of meetings and speakers, I found myself sitting beside someone who was very definitely on my target list. He represented a technical organisation that employed some of the best brains in the industry and I just knew that our style would suit them.

I’d already come to the conclusion that talking business over dinner wasn’t a good idea. Added to that, this person was showing signs of being a fairly introverted personality type and wasn’t joining in much of the general chat around the table. I initiated some fairly low-key conversation with him and soon we were chatting away very comfortably.

I enjoyed his company and had forgotten that this man was one of my main targets for sales. Probably a good thing!

The following day we had a pre-planned meeting scheduled and as I took my place at the table allocated for the two of us, he launched straight in with,

“So, Dianne, NLP – is it a load of b******s, or what?”

If I hadn’t warmed to him over dinner the previous evening I might have been offended at that. I was a little alarmed, I hadn’t banked on my prime target already being anti-NLP.

So I took a deep breath and began,

“I don’t know. Maybe if I tell you some of the ways we use it…” he nodded and I continued with my description of some of the client projects we’d undertaken and the results they yielded. I talked a bit about some of the individuals I’d coached and brought through mental blocks or difficult emotional baggage, concluding with,

“So, does that sound like a load of b*******s, or what?” Being nicely brought up I would not normally have used such language to a client (and my mother would be very shocked to know I had) but in the spirit of maintaining rapport I knew I had to mirror the language.

To my immense relief he smiled and said, “No, not at all”.

As a result of that meeting, I coached several of his business leaders over a period of about four years. A great outcome, but I’ll never forget that opening line.

Some while afterwards (as is often the case) I thought of a much better response I could have given:

“Is NLP a load of b******s? Yes, it is.  It’s the dog’s b******s!!”

We’ve all done it.  Started the year, month, week or even the day full of big plans and enthusiasm only to find that the goal was more challenging than expected and that the initial enthusiasm wasn’t enough to carry us through to successful completion.

What to do then?

Here are some thoughts about how to stay productive and how to succeed at the difficult things.

1. Start with why

Simon Sinek was right.  You have to start with WHY.  Why are you undertaking this project, task, goal, job or contract?  Many years ago, as a member of a voluntary organisation I undertook the preparatory training of all the incoming chapter Presidents for one year.  As part of the training weekend I gave them each a bright yellow card.  The heading at the top read,

“The reasons I am taking on the role of President:”

I asked them to complete the card and to take it home and put it somewhere special.  “There will come a day when you ask yourself – Why did I agree to do this? That’s when you go and get this card and study it” I told them.

It worked.  The organisation saw fewer mid-term resignations than usual that year.

Your turn.  What are the goals you’ve got bogged down with, the tasks you’ve lost enthusiasm for or the projects that have slid down to the bottom of the priority list?  Ask yourself, “What are the benefits I will see when I succeed at this?”  “Why did I originally want to do it?”

Sometimes, the world has changed so much since you made the plan that it’s no longer relevant to pursue that outcome.  More often it’s simply a matter of remembering why it’s important and you’ll rekindle the enthusiasm.

2. Know your preferences

Do you prefer to focus on one thing at a time or are you more productive when you have multiple projects running?  It’s important to know this about yourself.

Linked to cognitive styles and your preferred hemisphere, there’s a real personality difference here.  Left-brainers usually prefer to work on one project and see it through to the end before starting the next one.  Right-brainers often do better with multiple projects and regular shifts in the type of work.

If you’re more left-brained and you find yourself running out of motivation for a task or project, you might regain some enthusiasm by re-visiting the overall plan.  The complete story will usually be more exciting than the particular bit you’ve reached right now.  Seeing how each stage sets up the next and the way the result build up to the successful conclusion is often all that’s needed to get a left-brained thinker back on track.

If you’re more right-brained in your approach, you may find that switching to another project and doing something completely different is the way to stay productive.  If that’s the case for you, you may find it helpful to plan a period of time with two or three major projects running concurrently.  When your enthusiasm for one begins to ebb, you can switch to another and give yourself a change of pace or style for a while and still work on important tasks.

3. Plan your rewards

When you achieve a significant goal or complete an important project you may feel that is a reward in itself.  That may be true.  However, if you are finding it tough to sustain the level of activity that will get you the results you want, consider building in some form of reward.

For example, you might plan to reward yourself when the whole project is done.  The reward could be some time off to make a trip somewhere enjoyable.  That doesn’t have to mean an exotic foreign holiday – it could simply be an afternoon in the local park or a weekend visiting a special friend or relative.  This can then serve the dual purpose of rewarding your achievement and relaxing before you start the next big thing.

Perhaps more usefully, you could build in more regular rewards for achieving smaller tasks that contribute to your overall goals.  A half-hour break for a cup of coffee and a chat with a colleague might be a good reward for something that’s had you focused at your desk for 2 hours or more.  Treating yourself to some new music or a movie could be the reward for making a series of phone calls or selling a certain amount of products.  Setting aside an evening to spend on a neglected hobby or to meet up with a friend might feel like a good compensation for reaching a milestone in your major goals.

The important thing to consider is what makes you feel good.  What would you enjoy looking forward to?  What would motivate you to stick at the current task so that you could complete it and enjoy your reward?

4. Don’t suffer in silence

There are times for all of us when we feel overwhelmed by either the amount of work we’ve taken on or the challenging nature of that work.   When that happens, you may be inclined to hunker down and try to work through the problem on your own.  That doesn’t always work.  In fact, most people find that once they get into that state of feeling overwhelmed, they become less and less productive.

So what’s the answer?  Talk to someone.

If you have a coach, that’s easy.  Your coach is on your side and will help you think through the difficulties and re-focus on the important tasks.  That kind of conversation will break you out of the overwhelm and put things back in proportion.

If you don’t have a coach, talk to a friend or colleague you trust.  (And make a note to find a coach for the future!)  Two heads really are better than one and sometimes just the process of explaining your difficulty to someone else will begin to make it clearer to you.

 

…and finally

 

If you’ve done all of the above and you’re still not making any progress, call it a day.  Go home, relax, do something you enjoy and accept that you’re not perfect.  Recognise that you can begin again tomorrow and the fact that today wasn’t as productive as it could have been isn’t the end of the world.

The real secret of success is not to give up.  In NLP we say, ‘there’s no failure – only feedback’.  George Bernard Shaw put it more eloquently:

“In a good cause there is no failure, only delayed success”

During lockdown, I’ve been chatting to my Mum on the phone more regularly than usual. Being over 70, she’s even more restricted than me in her daily activities. We’ve discussed a lot of different topics in the last three months and there is one subject that keeps recurring:

How do you keep your brain active if you can’t go out and get some exercise? We know that physical exercise is one of the best ways to protect your cognitive health, but when it’s been pouring with rain for a week and you can’t even go and push a trolley round the supermarket, what can you do?

It’s a serious question for many people. Isolation is putting a strain on mental health, we don’t want to add cognitive decline due to inactivity to our list of woes. Doing the crossword or logic puzzles can help, but we know that what really stimulates the brain is new experience and movement.

Which took me back to some work I did with my friend Jane Battenberg (www.changewithin.com)…

If you’ve been reading my newsletters for a long time you may remember some years ago Jane ran a couple of workshops for me around the subject of neural plasticity and its uses in coaching. She devised some wonderful exercises, many involving activities done with the non-preferred hand.

So, discussing this with Mum, we came to the conclusion that simply doing normal everyday tasks with the non-preferred hand could be good exercise for the brain. Mum’s somewhat ambidextrous – she’s always been able to write legibly with either hand, so we assumed that some tasks would be more challenging than others.

The next day, she reported that she’d washed up with the ‘wrong’ hand without any damage to the china or glassware. She’d also attempted to brush her teeth with her left hand and found that much more difficult. However, she did say that it made her laugh so much that she had to stop even trying to brush her teeth for a few minutes and I figured that had to be a good thing.

Now, I’m left-handed and also somewhat ambidextrous, so I thought that brushing my teeth with my right hand wouldn’t be a big deal. But I had to have a go! It wasn’t really difficult and I thought I was doing quite well, until I noticed that my left hand wouldn’t keep still. Every movement I made with my right hand was being mirrored by my left. It was almost as if my left hand was saying ‘oh, give it to me!’

This reduced me to fits of giggles. Again, I figured that had to be a good thing. We can all do with something to laugh about just now.

I’m still practising brushing my teeth with my right hand AND keeping my left hand still at the same time. Not easy, but if it’s giving my brain a workout and making me laugh (not to mention sparkling teeth!) then it’s got to be a good thing.

Over to you – are you up for the challenge? Can you brush your teeth with your non-preferred hand? Does it make you laugh?

I’d love to hear how you get on.

It’s not over yet, but the lockdown that has seen millions of people all over the world confined to their homes for weeks on end has been eased in the UK and I’m happy to see that our friends and colleagues in many other countries are gradually regaining the freedom to leave their homes and spend time together.

In the early stages, psychological models relating to change, grief and uncertainty were relevant.  People went through predictable, but no less painful, experiences of shock, denial, emotional outbursts, depression and anxiety as the threat of Covid-19 led to governments around the globe imposing social distancing measures and the ‘stay at home’ directives that we came to know as ‘lockdown’.

It seems impossible to me that anything will return entirely to what we think of as ‘normal’.  We have been changed by this experience, individually, collectively and indelibly.  The nature of these changes, however, is different for each person and for each community, each organisation and each nation.

As I write, emotions are running high in communities, countries and on-line as the world reacts to the news of the death of George Floyd in police custody.  When I stand back from the emotions and view the scenes as a psychologist, I can’t help thinking that the weeks of lockdown are contributing to the depth of feeling about Black Lives Matter.  Those weeks of lockdown have affected everyone.

I live alone.  I’m accustomed to days I spend alone, working in my home office.

I’m not accustomed to whole weeks, months where I am ‘home alone’ and can’t go out.

As I’ve made my way through weeks of enforced isolation and a long list of ‘lockdown projects’ my mind flits between the experience and the analysis of the experience.  In NLP terms, I’m switching between 1^st and 3^rd positions.  At times I’ve been fascinated by my own – and other people’s – reactions to the situation, and at times I’ve simply been reacting.

So what have I learned?

1. I’ve learned… that although we have all, in theory, been subjected to the same rules each person has had a different experience of ‘lockdown’.  If you have been at home with your family your experience will have been very different from mine.  Stressful for different reasons, enjoyable for different reasons.  People who are working at home have a different experience from those on furlough, which is different again from the ‘key workers’ who have been going to work as usual but dealing with unusual events. Lockdown means something different to each person.
2. I’ve learned… that the experience and how we feel about it changes on an almost daily basis. The routine that felt satisfying and productive one day can feel constraining and pointless on another.  For no apparent reason, the whole situation can suddenly feel intolerable.  On another day it feels like a gift – a time to rest and re-think.  All of these reactions are valid.
3. I’ve learned… that human beings are social animals and it’s not good for us to be isolated. There is a reason why solitary confinement is regarded as the most severe form of punishment.  It’s important we take care of our mental health as well as our physical well-being.  Pretending everything is ok and I’m coping isn’t a good strategy on days when I’m not.
4. I’ve learned… that hugs are an important and necessary part of life. (I thought I knew that, but I know it in a new way now)
5. I’ve learned… that the telephone is a wonderful invention and hearing the sound of your loved ones’ voices is precious.
6. I’ve learned… that video conferencing is a great tool for all kinds of virtual social interaction – in the absence of REAL social interaction.
7. I’ve learned… that some businesses have reported quicker, more focused and more productive meetings via video conference. Some workers are finding it easier to focus on individual tasks when working from home.  Some companies say that working from home has increased trust – in both directions – between workers and management.
8. I’ve learned… that you cannot make eye contact on a video conference. That moment in a face-to-face meeting when you catch the eye of a colleague and affirm that your thinking is aligned on this issue?  It’s impossible via video conference.  You are alone.  No-one knows who’s looking at whom and you can’t create a private glance of complicity.
9. I’ve learned… (the hard way) that days of back-to-back video meetings are even more exhausting than days of back-to-back meetings in person. Experts suggest that the extra concentration required to pick up non-verbal signals and the stress of constantly seeing yourself on screen contribute to this.
10. I’ve learned… that I’m a reasonably good cook but my repertoire is in need of enhancement. I’m really looking forward to being able to visit a restaurant and enjoy a meal I didn’t have to cook myself. Even more, I’m looking forward to eating meals with friends and family.
11. I’ve learned… (almost) that when the situation in my ‘locus of concern’ is hard to understand, fraught with uncertainty and full of emotion, my best strategy is to focus on my ‘locus of control’. When the going gets tough, I work on my projects.  I wrote my list of ‘lockdown projects’ in the early weeks, when it became clear that normal life was on hold for the duration.  I considered taking a rest.  The idea of metaphorically putting my feet up and resting for three months had a certain appeal (especially when I was still recovering from what was probably The Virus) but when I thought about the future I realised I wanted to be able to look back on this time and remember it with some fondness or pride in what I had achieved.  I knew I didn’t want to see it as a wasted opportunity.  So I’ve been working on all the ‘one day’ projects.
12. I’ve relearned… that human beings are adaptable. Already, the ideas of going out to a bar or coffee shop, or inviting your friends over for a party seem almost unthinkable.  The return to some form of normality in terms of going out of the house and interacting with other people may be as disruptive for some as the original lockdown.  But after everything we’ve experienced over the past few months, I think we’re up to the challenge!

What have you learned, or re-learned, during lockdown?  I’d love to hear what insights you’ve been having.