Self-motivation and Leadership

The following article by Kapil Edke explains what it means being self-motivated and why many people are not self-motivated.

What is self-motivation? It simply means inspiring self to do things which are otherwise not must. If someone else is inspiring and energising you to do those things, it is not self-motivation. However, if urge to perform comes from within then surely it can be called as self-motivation.

In today's organizational context, this term holds the key and differentiates above average from average. We have reached a stage today where people above certain hierarchical level need not be told what they should do, need not be given work, but they should decide themselves what work should be done by them and where should they focus their time and energy so as to best optimize the output. In this process, those who are ordinary concentrate upon routine tasks which are both necessary and sufficient for their survival in the organization but those who are above average, self-motivated, plan new initiatives, set higher goals for themselves which are otherwise not formally asked for. While doing this, they leave their competitors behind and grow ahead in the corporate ladder.

Why many people are not self-motivated? There are many reasons behind this, some obvious, some not so simple:

1) Complacency: This is the most crucial reason. The statistics show that people become complacent after they achieve the results formally expected from them and take pride in their achievements, without thinking about improvement and enhancement.

2) Improper time management: This is the second most major reason. It is frequently observed that people mismanage their time, and spend too much time in achieving what they are expected to achieve. This process itself exhausts all their available time and they are left with hardly any time for anything else.

3) Work life balance: Some people fear that taking new initiatives and doing more work would mean that they are workoholic and would leave little time for other activities. However, the statistics show that self-motivated people do not necessarily have poorer work life balance as compared to their peers. That means, there ios no correlation between being self-motivated and being workaholic.

4) Negative attitude: People fear that they would not be able to achieve results in areas which are not clearly defined for them, as they may be more abstract. Hence, they feel spending energy in these areas may be waste of time. However, it is observed that even small results in these areas can be greatly appreciated by superiors, as they are something extra, like a delight.

The data shows that most of the great leaders in the world were/ are self-motivated and don't get satisfied or complacent easily. Perhaps that is the single most important reason behind their success! I think this is something to ponder upon for everybody ...