Why do people lose motivation and how can leaders prevent that?

At some point, we all have felt as if we are losing motivation. Be it a project, an assignment, work related or personal. This is something we also come face to face with, while managing people, who at times lose motivation and as managers we are supposed to motivate them. 

Motivation is an internal urge or passion towards a cause. That cause can be anything, your work or your hobby or just the thought of something. We come around some highly motivated people and some not so much in our daily lives. So, what makes somebody motivated and what causes that motivation to fizzle out?

Human beings by default are motivated. Not necessarily to the same cause or activity. Different individuals can have different motivations, which is fine, everybody wants to feel motivated and find meaning in stuff they do. It is inbuilt into their system. This motivation is what drives them to learn new skills, take new ambitious challenges to move closer to their cause. It gives them a jolt of dopamine, which is neurotransmitter linked to motivation and pleasure. It helps them want to engage in that activity consistently. Human beings want to explore, experiment and learn new things, they don't like being boxed or put into mundane activities which they detest. They might find a unique way to do a certain activity but if somebody tells them, "this is the way to do it" and if they are supposed to follow protocol, they might not like it, either leading to procrastination or quitting.

This begs the question why too many people feel demotivated at work? And the answer can be many reasons, but the most pertinent remains the inability of organizations to acknowledge the human beings and the way they are naturally inclined to do things. An organization is a complex apparatus of moving parts and people, its managers are usually people who like to build systems and demand adherence to that system from their workforce. This saves them a lot of effort which they would otherwise spend in worrying about mistakes that might happen if people were to be allowed to do things their own way. This protocol or systemic demand comes at the cost of personal human development. It doesn't leave them much room for learning. Becoming a robot at a job is no fun.

Take Andy, a supply chain professional for example who joined a company X. He had many ideas when he was fresh and wanted to implement those. He was told that there were opportunities for experimentation and radical new ideas to be implemented. But the honeymoon didn't last long. He soon found out his boss had no time or patience for experimenting. He was more concerned with protocol than personal development. It's like he was afraid of him trying new things because it might not go exactly as planned. In short, his boss was too afraid of things going south than the reward of things going north. At first, Andy wasn't deterred. He worked to improve some processes and tried to make a few tweaks here and there. But since Andy's Boss was under pressure to meet a number of deadlines, he didn't have the flexibility to implement Andy's ideas. As the weeks turned into months, Andy's work became routine and boring and he shut off as a result. 

Now, if somebody feels that Andy was unreasonable and he should have carried on, that might very well could have been the case but to blame Andy for shutting off is not practical. That is the way humans are designed, shutting off is their body's way of letting them know that they should be doing something better. It is a human's adaptive unconscious to know that their human potential is being wasted. So, who is at fault? Is Andy's Boss the culprit? Well, may be.

Leaders under organizational roadblocks, do tend to kick the can down the road when it comes to activating employee's urge or passion to undertake a curiosity ride. Many organizational protocols are even for the leader to follow. Leaders can't ignore policies or performance metrics and start acting like a one man show. So how can a leader do it? Despite these difficulties there are many ways a leader can let the employee activate their curiosity stream and experiment within the policy framework. The key here is to let them be, but keep observing. It is more like flying a kite. Let the kite fly high but always have it in your sight for safety. There are three small but consequential tweaks that can trigger employees' curiosity stream to keep them from getting demotivated, encourage them to play to their strengths, creating opportunities to experiment and help them personalize the purpose of work.

Self-expression is critical to an employee's performance in any role. Unfortunately, our organizational structures have made everything uniform and stop recognizing people for who they really are. No employee wants to perform repetitive, pre-programmed work consistently. They want to be valued for their unique skills that they bring to the table; they need a sense of differentiation. If a leader can do that and start identifying every employee by their unique ability to perform a task like no other, he can hit a jackpot.

Experimentation can be achieved in unique ways. It is not always necessary to be done on the job. Experimentation can be a part of a social experiment, a group project or even at social bonding. A change can be observed and effectively acted upon in a simulation during a game. These are called experimental safe zones. Experimentation within this experimental safe zone leads to employees learning and implementing their own approaches and trying them out, and then get feedback about how the environment responded to their ideas.

Purpose if personalized, can lead to a focused cause and effect between our inputs and team's progress. Sense of purpose soars when we can offer insights to our team on what might work better than others, causing a personalized approach to finding experimental success.

For leaders, the potential is already flowing, all they need is a concerted effort to reach into their self-expression, experimentation and personalized purpose within all their activities.

Conclusion:

People lose motivation when they are not allowed to be their own self and experiment, to bounce off ideas on the turf. The innate urge to change the status quo, drives a person and in some sense becomes their passion. This uniqueness needs to be nurtured, employees need to be allowed to innovate through their self-expression, experimentation and personalized purpose to make the most impact, while being motivated to do so. The status quo, protocol, organizational systemic approach should not deter a leader to let their employees fly like a kite while he observes them all this time.