Part II - External Motivation the Hard Way

     I never had a gifted mentor to show me the way.  I’ve always had to motivate myself.  I think all of the “leaders” in my life saw the potential in me, but didn’t really know how to effectively draw it out and help me mold it.  Life forced me do that on my own.
     My basketball coach in high school was a field hockey specialist.  She coached basketball as part of her teaching obligation.  She tried.  It’s not as if she didn’t try.  I was certainly an erratic, hormonal teenager on and off of the court.  I’m sure I wasn’t easy to coach.  She used to bench me to make me mad and then she’d put me in the game.  That used to piss me off.  So, her external punishment motivation worked.  It got me energized, but in a negative way.  I never understood what she was doing until a few years after graduation I returned to my high school.  She was there and admitted she didn’t know what to do with me.  She was frustrated because she knew I had talent (duh, I went on to have a great career at Penn State and get a contract to play Pro!), but couldn’t get a handle on how to coax it out of me consistently.  She used the only method that seemed to work, lame as it was.
     The other type of leader I had was the kind I had to manage!  When I worked at HersheyPark, one of my managers was a guy who was very good technically, but not with people.  I was studying Industrial Psychology at the time and he would listen to the tips I fed him on how to handle personnel issues.  Somehow we had developed mutual respect even though he was several years older and my boss.  That was a precursor to my career as a management consultant.
     He provided opportunities for me to practice what I was learning, such as upgrading the interviewing process for the ride operators.  I helped him reduce his turnover and training costs while he helped me put theory into practice.  He didn’t “motivate” me directly.  He offered me the chance to motivate myself.  I would go to him with suggestions for improvements.  He would think them over, discuss them with his boss, and then tell me which ones were approved for me to implement.  In that way, he was a good manager for me because he didn’t try to do anything to get me to produce.  In essence, he followed the ideas that I proposed and kept the way open to implement them.  In retrospect, maybe he was a genius leader.  At the time, I always thought I was leading him.  At least he wasn’t trying to piss me off to utilize my potential.  He, too, did not know what to do with me.  He was astute enough to let the good things happen which benefitted his career, mine, the employees, and the company!
     Those are only two examples of past "motivators" of mine.  There were a few others along the way, but  it’s no surprise that I ended up in business for myself.  I’m doing what I had to do my entire life, motivate myself.
     I’ve been teaching motivation to business leaders for almost 30 years.  My formal education included all the theories of motivation.  I’ve built a career helping these leaders apply the theories as effectively as possible in their companies.  However, the need for every individual to learn to motivate himself was lurking around every corner.  In my inimitable wisdom, one day I realized how dependent I was on someone else to motivate me!  At that moment, I launched into a self-evolutionary phase to rid myself of external control of my life.
     My old self used to need someone to “piss me off” to set me in motion.  My new self has shed that process (it has taken years to do so) and replaced it with my own internal motivational system.  It’s customized and is constantly being upgraded, just like every other piece of software that gets developed.
     In order to tune into your own motivational guidance system, you must make that leap in perception that you are in charge of your own life as if it were a business.  You are the leader and no one is going to motivate you.  That’s a good thing.  Your personal motivational process will be far more effective and satisfying.
     Lucky for me that I had all those difficult challenges in my life!  I’ve been making lemonade with the arsenal of lemons thrown my way.  Lucky for you that I’m developing this aspect of my business!  You don’t have to figure it out the hard way like I did.  You can take advantage of both my personal and professional experience.  Unleash more of your potential without having to stumble around and figure it out as you go.  I’m here when you are ready.