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.
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