“How can I motivate other people?”

“How can I motivate other people?”

This is probably the most common question I hear, in different forms, from a lot of people in training.

Since my work is with Japanese members of global teams, it sounds roughly like, “How can I motivate my team to speak up more?” or “How can I motivate my team to push back more in meetings?” or “How can I motivate my team to share their thoughts during the meeting (not after)?”

This discussion can get complicated really quickly.

Or it can be kept dirt simple.

The question is not how to motivate people. It’s more like, “Why did you hold back from saying what you actually wanted to say?”

The motivation is already there, for something. It might not be what I was hoping for, but whenever a professional is listening to people talk about something related to their expertise, they 100% will have thoughts, questions, opinions, doubts, nuances, etc. And it’s pretty unlikely that they didn’t want to say any of them.

So it’s just a matter of whether fear trumped their motivation to speak.

And if fear won, well, let’s start there.

Over the years, I have come to see motivation kind of like a person’s beating heart. I don’t need to mess with that. It does its own thing.

But if I know where they are trying to go but are afraid, perhaps I can help.