Gregory Harris

Learning how to motivate people is a useful skill whether you need to apply it at home or in the workplace. Mastering this is a skill that has been used by many successful leaders throughout time and it’s a practice that will no doubt be required and studied continuously through future years.

But how do you motivate anyone? How can you keep people inspired and moving forward?

I want to take you back to a time when you were a young student at school, perhaps in your teens. Now I want you to think of a teacher that really got the best out of you, a teacher of a lesson that you enjoyed attending, a teacher of a subject where you actually studied hard. I can bet my bottom dollar that the very teacher your thinking of was positive, upbeat but more importantly gave you lots of positive praise on all of your work, whatever it’s grade or standard.

Now think of the opposite, a teacher who you disliked and a lesson that you simply didn’t enjoy. It’s safe to say that 9 times out of 10 this teacher wasn’t very forthcoming with positive praise and only managed a little when you did something outstanding.

Which one motivated you more? The one with the praise, right? Well that’s the first tip and perhaps the best tip of them all. If you want to get someone geared up, then give them lots of praise and encouragement. Be positive when they do something right and be positive when they mess up! One advancement for this tip that works incredibly well in the workplace is to give someone praise publicly. A pat on the back or simple recognition in front of colleagues and peers is worth tenfold of that given in public.

You sit down with your to-do list, ready to crack down and get some work done. You know what needs to get done and you are ready to do it. Well, now that you are all set up for your task, might as well check your email beforehand… answer any important emails before you start working. Look! Better answer that new email from your sister. Next thing you know you have been sitting at your computer for an hour and a half and you haven’t even started working! It is easy for these secret time suckers to leave you wondering where your day went.

Let’s look at a few different “secret time suckers” that you may not even realize are taking up a huge part of your day. Now, you may know about these and realize they are taking up a lot of time, but as you read this article, really think on how much time you spend on these distractions. Next time you sit down to work, set a timer and see how long you are actually allowing yourself to spend on these things.

First, let us take a look at email. Obviously, email is an important part of business and you don’t want to ignore your potential clients, partners, co-workers, or family, but that doesn’t mean you should be checking your email constantly. More often than not it disrupts your work if you check it too often and leads to spending much more time spent on it than expected. It is far to easy to lose an hour reading and responding to emails, clicking links within emails, and ending up surfing the web instead.