As a teacher, everything you do in the classroom has an unprecedented ripple effect, including your general attitude. This article discusses how a teacher’s lack or abundance of motivation affects their students.

Think back to your school or college days: think of one teacher who inspired and enthralled you, and another that didn’t – why was this? What were the differences? As well as sharing a passion not just for their subject but for learning, one key difference was their motivation. Excellent teachers are fuelled by their passion for student learning. This often grows through the effort it takes to become a qualified teacher, whether that be through a traditional university route, or by starting off with an online teaching course. As a teacher or teaching assistant, you are now in the position to pass on vital skills and knowledge to your students.

An excellent teacher fuels the natural curiosity to learn that is in us all. But why is motivation important?

A successful learning environment

Motivation is key to a successful classroom whether it is a class full of primary school children or a workshop in a college setting.

A motivated teacher has a different outlook that one who is simply ‘going through the motions’.

Motivation is what energises, directs and sustains positive behaviour in the classroom. It means creating challenging goals alongside activities and tasks that help a student or class reach these dizzying heights.

Sparking the desire to explore and to learn, a motivated teacher doesn’t necessarily mean someone who bounces around the classroom with unfettered energy. It isn’t about being popular, either.

Value and respect

In considering motivation and teachers, we need to think back to the two examples we started with.

What kind of learning environment did the good teacher create? And what kind of environment did the not-so-good teacher create? Was this experience particular to you or was it shared by the whole class?

The truth is, you may have found some lessons and a certain teacher boring, but the person sat next to you found it interesting and seemed to do well.

A motivated teacher is one who personalises and individualises learning. And to do so, they create a learning environment in which they value and respect each individual learner.

There is a saying – try to teach a goldfish to climb and it will spend the rest of its life thinking it is stupid – and this is what underlies the teaching methods of a teacher motivated to help ALL their students to learn.

Personality

Teaching is not a personality contest BUT, personality and likability do play a part in fostering a successful learning environment.

Teacher training today looks at every aspect and every minute of the lesson, from the greeting at the door of the classroom, to the respect within the four walls of the learning space, to how a lesson is ended.

It is also about a teacher interacting with students outside of the classroom when they engage with students in the hallways, the canteen, the schoolyard and other areas of the school or college.

When a student feels a personal connection with a teacher, they engage better. More importantly, they want to engage with someone they see and feel as liking them but valuing and respecting them too.

Teacher motivation in the classroom – what does it look like?

What makes a good teacher is a combination of all kinds of factors, principles, skills and more than a dash of personality;

Motivation has long been studied by modern and ancient scholars. What do you think it is? What motivates you to learn and to teach?

Are you lacking in motivation? Are you looking to achieve a goal, but it feels like it is slipping further away? Does life get in the way of your study and career plans? Do you feel like giving up?

Maybe you have already given up?

Many of us are familiar with a lack of motivation – and getting it back can be tough.

In this two part article, we will look at what motivation is and what influences it. In the second part, we will round up six things that successful people do to get and stay motivated, even in difficult times.

PART 1 – What is motivation?


carrot dangling from a string

 

Motivation is defined as the ‘process that initiates, guides, and maintain goal-orientated behaviours.’ Motivation is the ‘thing’ – the carrot – that causes us to act.

It is the driving force behind all kinds of action, such as the need for a glass of water to reduce our thirst, to reading a book on how space flight is achieved in order to gain knowledge.

Motivation involves biological, emotional, social and cognitive forces that activate and drive behaviour. In everyday terms, motivation is used to describe why a person does something.

Why do you go to work every day? Why do you go the gym? Why do you run?

There are various theories of motivation, but for anyone with a big goal in life, they will soon discover that the simple desire to accomplish something is not motivation enough.

Running a Marathon

Let’s consider the decision to run a marathon. For 26.2 miles, your body will take step after step. You may complete this feat to raise money for charity, or to get fit, to achieve a personal best, or just to say that you have run a marathon.

These are all desires. Motivation is the ‘thing.’ It’s the reason – or the carrot – that compels you to train for the marathon, it’s what moves you off the sofa on a dark, windy night to run a 1-mile training run.

To achieve your goal of running a marathon, you will need to persist through obstacles, enduring many difficulties and challenges.

Three Components

There are three components to motivation, and in part two, we will look at how successful people put these in action

PART 2 – How successful people get and stay motivated


snail stuck in a gap
Finding your motivation and hanging on to it can be tough, especially when it seems like obstacles and hurdles come at you one after the other.

Successful people seem full of vim and vigour, turning negative situations into positive without seeming to question or lose their self-motivation.

So, what is the secret?

SSSEEE or 3s,3E

This is the magic formula you need…

     I.        Set Goals

We are told that setting goals is essential in our careers and our lives as a whole. Set your mind to something, keep it in sight and go for it.

Your goal to be fit and slim by summer is all well and good, but how come plans to squeeze into a smaller bathing suit go out the window with the first whiff of chocolate?

Your goals are not lofty enough. Radical motivation thinkers believe that goals need to be audacious, almost untouchable and unachievable. And yet we are told not to aim too high. So, which is it?

Motivation experts point to entrepreneurs that have achieved lofty ambitions that at the outset many would have said were impossible to reach. Look at Elon Musk and his stellar career thus far… now do you see what we mean about BIG ambitions and goals?!

    II.        Share Goals

So, you are running a marathon? Tell others and you will soon be amazed at how many people offer to run with you as you train.

Completing an online accounting course? Friends and family will offer to look after the kids for an afternoon, or they might have a book that you may find interesting.

The power of support is essential in achieving your ‘lofty ambitions,’ even though they may laugh at first, they will step up when they see your determination and motivation. If they don’t, then this is no great loss, as detractors are demotivating.

   III.        Serve who?

The final S in the series of three is to look beyond yourself and to who else could benefit from you reaching your goal.

It may be the people close to you – training for the marathon will make you fitter, leaner and less stressed, all known benefits of exercising – and your family will love the ‘new’ you.

Your career goals primarily focus on you, but if you do bag your ideal job, your nearest and dearest will also benefit – maybe you will be earning more money, working better hours and taking them on grand holidays.

There can also be philanthropic benefits to your goal. Musk, for example, wants pollution-free cars. This will mean that the whole planet will benefit, even those people who don’t drive or own a car.

The feeling of serving something bigger and greater than ‘little old you’ is part and parcel of motivating yourself to remain on the path to your goal.

  IV.        Eat

Successful and motivated people have lots of things in common, and the 3Es will illustrate this.

The first is E is eat. Eating healthily means your body is fit for purpose. Those high-fat, calorie laden takeaways are all well and good as a treat, but if you are eating them daily because you don’t have the time/energy/motivation to cook or to eat well, then your whole physical being is compromised.

Eat healthily and look after your body, which brings us to the second E…

    V.        Exercise

If you look at the likes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and others, you will see a lifestyle that you may associate with the rich and famous. You might think, ‘of course they have time to visit the gym for two hours a day’ – but they didn’t get where they are today by being a couch potato.

To achieve their lofty ambitions and goals, they worked towards them constantly. That meant late nights and challenges, but in order to maintain their businesses and their motivation they eat well and exercise.

It doesn’t have to be an air-conditioned gym. A half hour power walk round the block will do just as well.

  VI.        Energy management

Nope, this doesn’t mean switching your TV off – you should be doing that anyway – but managing your own energy.man asleep at desk

There are times when burning the midnight oil is essential in pursuit of greatness. You have an assignment to complete and you need to focus without distractions, so working on it at 10pm when everyone else is in bed makes sense.

Productive sleep is about a sleeping pattern that suits you, so that when you wake up, you feel invigorated and well rested.

If you don’t, you may need to take a look at when you sleep and for how long. We are taught to sleep through the night in a large block of time, usually between seven and nine hours. But there are other sleep cycles that can work better for some, so check which sleep cycle might work better for you.

Round Up

To get and stay motivated, you need to understand what motivation is and where it comes from.

Once you have a greater understanding of what motivates you, you can swing into action, just like successful entrepreneurs and academics across the world.

You need a goal that feels just beyond your grasp, and you need to share it. It is also helpful to understand who else will benefit by you reaching this goal. You need to eat well and exercise to keep your body in peak physical condition.

You also need to manage your energy levels, and that means getting the right amount of ‘productive sleep and rest.’

If it were easy, we would all be doing it. We have to accept that at times, some of the challenges we face will dent our motivation. We may lose all sense of where we are going and why for weeks at a time, but we need to get back up and focus on the goal.

This is why we constantly need to assess and review goals, where we are and what we are doing. We need to look at the people that surround us and understand their impact on our lives and our motivation.

What motivates you? What destroys your motivation?

Employee motivation is the key to a happy, productive workforce. Look at some businesses, and it’s easy to see that they must use strong techniques to motivate team members. Everyone looks happy, seems to have been in their post for a long time and the business goes from strength to strength.

Attitude has a lot to do with how employees react and respond to the culture within a workplace. If there is an air of trust, employees tend to respond better. But when the environment is tainted with doubt, mistrust and suspicion, employees tend to vote with their feet. When they are ready to move up, they may well move out.

For anyone completing a Human Resources Management course, they will know that losing staff could spell disaster for a company. The skill set that the person has will be removed from the company. This means a business can be left relying on someone else to deliver the same level of service and skill, but they may struggle to do so. And the downward spiral continues.

As a business, you need to maximise revenue and increase productivity with staff working as efficiently as possible, but without team members struggling or feeling over worked. In fact, to get the best out of people, you need to put the best in. You need good techniques to motivate team members! By providing a happy, healthy workplace for your employees, you will see a boost in productivity, efficiency and overall happiness – so let’s start right now!

5 techniques to motivate team members

employees using employee incentives while having lunch together

1. Communicate. And communicate better

A common gripe from disgruntled employees is that they don’t know what is happening. If you know there is a strong rumour mill within your business; you need to counteract its negativity. And now is the best time to start!

If there are changes afoot – and which business doesn’t go through periods of flux and improvement? – then tell your people. You can do this in all kinds of ways – call a meeting, send out an email or create a monthly newsletter that highlights some of the great stuff that has been happening in recent weeks.

When it comes to employee motivation, the smallest of things can make a huge difference. The bigger a company gets, the further apart management and shop floor staff seem to become. If you are part of the management team, why not take some time out of your busy schedule to go and say ‘hi’ to people?
This sounds like a soft touch that will hardly have an impact but when staff members are made to feel that they are important, it will make a huge impact to their underlying motivation for working for the company. Effective human resources management is about communicating with employees to making HR the go-to people when it comes to motivating staff.

2. Listen and empower

One of the most important techniques to motivate team members is to simply listen to them. Taking the time to hear and understand what your staff have to say is just as essential to a smooth business as management talking to them.

When someone is completing a certain set of tasks on a regular basis, they can sometimes see a different way of doing things. As management, you may want something completing in a certain way because… well, you just do.

But why? Imagine the boost to team or to an individual’s motivation if they had a say in how things are done, in how their job is completed and how they think better results can be achieved?
This is just as much about empowering staff as it is about listening to them. Many employees will have ideas and responses to how you can improve the businesses efficiency. They may also be able to tell you what skills they lack, and how they can go about improving their own skill set.

This benefits a business enormously and seeing as every business wants maximum, efficiency, productivity and financial return it makes sense to listen to everyone with an input.

3. Provide incentives

people working in an open plan office

Providing an employee incentive programme is a common tip that many people when it comes to employee motivation but, use wisely as it can be a double-edged sword.
On one hand, it can seem like ‘buying off’ staff but when used as part of a wider setting, staff incentives can be a great way of firing up staff motivation. We are not, however, talking about a Christmas party:

4. Allow your employees to demonstrate autonomy in the workplace

Providing your employees with autonomy, or a bit of independence, goes a long way. Those who are less dependent on their managers, colleagues or workplace demonstrate higher levels of work productivity. Providing the opportunity to do so allows your staff to feel trusted and more in control of what they do during a workday, allowing them to work harder in their own interests.

There are plenty of ways to give your employees more autonomy in the workplace. For example, you could provide flexible/hybrid working, where your staff can work from home for a certain amount of time per week if they would like to. Or, you could give them more choice over their schedule, work pace and the order in which they complete their tasks every day. Finding ways to give your employees a certain amount of dependence, however this will work for your business and workplace, is essential to their motivation and overall happiness.

However, it isn’t the best idea to jump from dependent staff to complete autonomy. So, try to integrate certain autonomous aspects slowly to allow your employers to adapt to the new ways and really come into their own.

Helping Boost Employee Motivation

Successful completion of a Human Resource Management course can open many doors. For any business, looking after their most valuable assets – people – is a sure fire way of maintaining a strong presence in the marketplace. Motivating staff is crucial to retaining the right people in the right places.

What are your favourite techniques to motivate team members? Give us your suggestions below!