Following on from my previous post on the theory side of motivation, I wanted to add something about how this knowledge can be used in practice with clients.
One of the key messages from the theory is that it's not a lack of motivation we should be thinking about, it's barriers to motivation: the motivation is inevitably there, but we sometimes can't feel it because other things get in the way. In my experience, the key barriers are 1) fear, 2) absence of goals, 3) general depression / low mood and 4) lack of readiness.
I think these need a post each, so here is the first.
Fear
1) inference chaining or Socratic questioning (I'm not sure if these are different - they look the same when I do them, but I might well be missing something...).
This is a process of asking a series of questions which help your clients to get right down to the nub of the issue. Often the fear experienced by clients is not rational (I'm wincing a bit at that word - but I hope you know what I mean). Fear is often experienced as a generalised feeling, and it is then hard to identify whether or not the feared outcome is likely to happen, and whether it would actually be all that bad anyway. Inference chaining can help clients to work out what exactly the fear is, the probability of it occurring and the impact that it would have if it did.
For example, if you had a client who felt too frightened to cold call a potential employer, you might ask them
'What is the very worst that you could imagine happening?'
They might imagine that they get through to the perfect person and then find that they freeze and find that they don't way a word. They might think that the employer will get frustrated and hang up on them. And then you could ask:
'and then what would happen?'
They might imagine that they employer would remember their name and decide not to ever employ them again
'and then what would happen?'
Your client might reflect that they would never get to work for that particular person
'and then what would happen?'
And finally, your client might wonder whether they might then look for a job in a different organisation.
You could then talk to your client about the chances of that happening, and whether working for another employer might actually be ok. By identifying the fear, very specifically, your client might be able to assess whether the feared outcome is real, likely and problematic, and to work out whether there is something they can do about it.
2) Make it an experiment
Fearing failure can be a pretty powerful barrier. As well as being unpleasant, failing can also have a detrimental impact on our confidence and self esteem, and can make us less likely to try things in the future. So it's easy to see why it's such a common barrier to action. One approach that sometimes works is to see if you could encourage your client to think of the action simply as an experiment. So rather than being a plan that might succeed or fail, they could try to see it as a research project that might go one way or another. It depersonalises it, so it's not your client who is succeeding or failing, but the hypothesis.
A client might find that they are not applying for a job that they are interested in because they are frightened of failing. You could try and work with them to get them to think of sending their CV in as an experiment. Rather than applying for a job, they are simply wondering whether their CV is the right kind of CV for a job such as that. Just curious as to whether it might be thought of as appropriate. Any lack of success is then less personal and often therefore less painful.
If they are accepted through to the next round, that's great. If they are not, they haven't failed; they have found out that their CV is not right for that kind of role at the moment.
3) What can you do to increases your chances of a good outcome?
This one really follows on from the Socratic questioning I mentioned above. Once your client has spent some time working out exactly what their anxieties are, they are then in a position to come up with some specific strategies to increase their chances of success. In the example given above, of a client who fears that their mind might go blank in an important conversation, your client might decide that they could make some notes before the conversation of the key things they want to ask, and the things they might want to say. This isn't a foolproof solution, but might help them to feel more secure and be more prepared for the phone call.
4) Boost confidence
The final idea here is to spend some time with your client boosting their confidence. Confidence helps in so many ways with job hunting and career success, and feeling good about yourself and what you have to offer can make you more likely to give things a go. One fruitful conversation with your client is about previous successes. If they are going for a job interview, you could ask them to re-live an interview in the past which went well. Ask them to remember in some detail what happened in the interview and how they felt. You could perhaps have a discussion about how they prepared for that interview, and whether there was anything particular they did which helped to make it a success.
If they are struggling to think of past successes, you could ask them to think about what they have learned from or since that event, and have a discussion around what they are going to do to make things different this time around.
Friday 28 March 2014
Saturday 22 March 2014
Motivation
We often find that clients are struggling a bit with motivation. It's a complex issue, but I think I'm beginning to get my head around it.
There are some theories that can help us to understand motivation a bit better. First there is the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation - intrinsic motivation is where you're doing it just because you enjoy it (eg me eating cake), and extrinsic is where you do something because you know it's going to lead to something else (eg me going for a run). Intrinsic motivation is generally thought to be more powerful, and tends to lead to more sustainable action (as evidence by the amount of cake I eat vs the number of runs I go for). But there are different types of extrinsic motivation, and some are better than others. The best kind of extrinsic motivation comes when the knock on impact of the action is something that genuinely matters to the individual eg studying hard at school in order to get in to get into medical school (if that is your dream), or working hard to earn money to feed yourself and your family.
So that's a basic distinction. Then there is self-determination theory (Ryan and Deci 2000) which breaks down a little the kinds of things that get us motivated. This theory proposes that we are driven to meet three key needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness. This theory links nicely with the evidence about job satisfaction, which suggests that some of the key factors that bring job satisfaction are autonomy, the opportunity to develop your skills and good colleagues.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs (and this concept has been very much embraced by the most recent positive psychology movement) gives a very encouraging perspective which is that we all have a desire to improve ourselves, learn and develop. And this will inevitably happen, unless something gets in the way.
So, what else?
Well there is self-efficacy, which seems to have an impact on pretty much everything I ever seem to come across. This is the confidence to feel that you are going to be able to manage it. There is outcome expectations, which is related but distinct, which is the degree to which you feel that you are likely to succeed - the higher your belief of your chance of success, the more effort you are prepared to put in to achieving your goal. There is something called future orientation - which is whether you think much about the future, and instrumentality, which is the degree to which you link current behaviour with future outcomes. High degrees of both lead to higher motivation. There is your locus of control, - those with an internal locus of control feel that they have the power to influence the outcome, and those with an external locus of control feel that they have no influence on what happens. Those with an internal locus of control are much more likely to feel motivated to act. And finally there are goals, which can lead to clear identification of the steps involved and increased motivation to put plans into action.
I think I need another post to start to look at the practical tools that we can use, or suggest to our clients to take advantage of this understanding of motivation, but there is one last thing, that I find really interesting and helpful. It is that action leads to motivation. (Kearns and Gardiner 2011). Usually, we feel that we need motivation in order to act. When the motivation comes, then we will start moving. But actually, motivation usually only kicks in after you've started. The useful lessons that we can learn from that is that if there is something that you need to do, your best bet is to start it - even if you don't want to. More often than not, after about 15 minutes, it will dawn on you that you're actually finding it quite interesting. I have personally found this a really helpful strategy. When there is something that I need to do but don't really fancy, I will simply get started, promising myself that I can stop it after ten minutes if I want to. I almost never do.
Kearns, H. and Gardiner, M. (2011) Waiting for the motivation fairy Nature 472-127
http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/2011/110407/pdf/nj7341-127a.pdf
There are some theories that can help us to understand motivation a bit better. First there is the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation - intrinsic motivation is where you're doing it just because you enjoy it (eg me eating cake), and extrinsic is where you do something because you know it's going to lead to something else (eg me going for a run). Intrinsic motivation is generally thought to be more powerful, and tends to lead to more sustainable action (as evidence by the amount of cake I eat vs the number of runs I go for). But there are different types of extrinsic motivation, and some are better than others. The best kind of extrinsic motivation comes when the knock on impact of the action is something that genuinely matters to the individual eg studying hard at school in order to get in to get into medical school (if that is your dream), or working hard to earn money to feed yourself and your family.
So that's a basic distinction. Then there is self-determination theory (Ryan and Deci 2000) which breaks down a little the kinds of things that get us motivated. This theory proposes that we are driven to meet three key needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness. This theory links nicely with the evidence about job satisfaction, which suggests that some of the key factors that bring job satisfaction are autonomy, the opportunity to develop your skills and good colleagues.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs (and this concept has been very much embraced by the most recent positive psychology movement) gives a very encouraging perspective which is that we all have a desire to improve ourselves, learn and develop. And this will inevitably happen, unless something gets in the way.
So, what else?
Well there is self-efficacy, which seems to have an impact on pretty much everything I ever seem to come across. This is the confidence to feel that you are going to be able to manage it. There is outcome expectations, which is related but distinct, which is the degree to which you feel that you are likely to succeed - the higher your belief of your chance of success, the more effort you are prepared to put in to achieving your goal. There is something called future orientation - which is whether you think much about the future, and instrumentality, which is the degree to which you link current behaviour with future outcomes. High degrees of both lead to higher motivation. There is your locus of control, - those with an internal locus of control feel that they have the power to influence the outcome, and those with an external locus of control feel that they have no influence on what happens. Those with an internal locus of control are much more likely to feel motivated to act. And finally there are goals, which can lead to clear identification of the steps involved and increased motivation to put plans into action.
I think I need another post to start to look at the practical tools that we can use, or suggest to our clients to take advantage of this understanding of motivation, but there is one last thing, that I find really interesting and helpful. It is that action leads to motivation. (Kearns and Gardiner 2011). Usually, we feel that we need motivation in order to act. When the motivation comes, then we will start moving. But actually, motivation usually only kicks in after you've started. The useful lessons that we can learn from that is that if there is something that you need to do, your best bet is to start it - even if you don't want to. More often than not, after about 15 minutes, it will dawn on you that you're actually finding it quite interesting. I have personally found this a really helpful strategy. When there is something that I need to do but don't really fancy, I will simply get started, promising myself that I can stop it after ten minutes if I want to. I almost never do.
Kearns, H. and Gardiner, M. (2011) Waiting for the motivation fairy Nature 472-127
http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/2011/110407/pdf/nj7341-127a.pdf
Wednesday 12 March 2014
Career Change: why would you?
As career coaches we spend quite a lot of our time working with people who are making or at least thinking about making a career change. I've just been reading about Carless and Arnup's longitudinal study on what makes people change career, and what happens to them afterwards.
First it's quite interesting to note that not many studies have been conducted on what makes people change career. There is quite a lot on what makes people change jobs - the HR and Occupational Psychology brigade are particularly interested in that from an organisational perspective. Then there are several studies that look at what factors lead to the intention to change career, but curiously (perhaps?) the intention to change career is only moderately correlated to actual career change (ie most people who say that they intend to change career don't actually do so). So it's nice to read about a study that looks at people who have actually taken the plunge, and to examine what's gone on.
Encouragingly, the study suggests that people who change career are overwhelmingly pleased that they did it. They tend to report higher levels of job satisfaction and work engagement (how 'into' your work you are), more job security and shorter working hours.
The factors that lead to a job change are partly to do with the work place itself and partly to do with the individual. The study suggests that those high on extraversion and openness to experience are more likely to make a change. Extraverts tend to be more positive and optimistic, and tend to have wider networks, which all make getting a new job easier. Those open to experience tend to like change - they find the familiar boring, and are curious to try new things, so are more likely to want to change.
Demographics come into play too. Older workers are less likely to change career, as they have more invested in a particular arena and are less willing to start at the bottom again. High levels of education increase your chances of change as you tend to be more able to learn new skills and the skills you've got are more transferable.
Finally, there are a few, fairly predictable, work reasons for change. Those with low satisfaction, those being bullied and those who feel their jobs are not secure tend to be more likely to be looking around for something new.
I'm not sure that this research is particularly helpful for career coaches. The evidence that most people end up happier after a change could be a useful one to share with a client who is struggling to decide. Beyond that though I think it's just interesting. I hope you do too!
First it's quite interesting to note that not many studies have been conducted on what makes people change career. There is quite a lot on what makes people change jobs - the HR and Occupational Psychology brigade are particularly interested in that from an organisational perspective. Then there are several studies that look at what factors lead to the intention to change career, but curiously (perhaps?) the intention to change career is only moderately correlated to actual career change (ie most people who say that they intend to change career don't actually do so). So it's nice to read about a study that looks at people who have actually taken the plunge, and to examine what's gone on.
Encouragingly, the study suggests that people who change career are overwhelmingly pleased that they did it. They tend to report higher levels of job satisfaction and work engagement (how 'into' your work you are), more job security and shorter working hours.
The factors that lead to a job change are partly to do with the work place itself and partly to do with the individual. The study suggests that those high on extraversion and openness to experience are more likely to make a change. Extraverts tend to be more positive and optimistic, and tend to have wider networks, which all make getting a new job easier. Those open to experience tend to like change - they find the familiar boring, and are curious to try new things, so are more likely to want to change.
Demographics come into play too. Older workers are less likely to change career, as they have more invested in a particular arena and are less willing to start at the bottom again. High levels of education increase your chances of change as you tend to be more able to learn new skills and the skills you've got are more transferable.
Finally, there are a few, fairly predictable, work reasons for change. Those with low satisfaction, those being bullied and those who feel their jobs are not secure tend to be more likely to be looking around for something new.
I'm not sure that this research is particularly helpful for career coaches. The evidence that most people end up happier after a change could be a useful one to share with a client who is struggling to decide. Beyond that though I think it's just interesting. I hope you do too!
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