purpose Archives - Global Institute of Organizational Coaching

Most of us think about what we eat when we hear the concept “fueling” our bodies. In fact, there are over 242,000,000 results for the topic of nutrition when researched on the internet. Although fueling your body is about what is eaten, it is much more than that. The concept takes in what you do on a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual level. Fueling our bodies effectively is also a protective factor in resilience. We can live more fully when we discover ways to fuel our bodies differently and commit to them.

Physical

The physical component of fueling your body is comprised of nutrition, exercise, sleep, and recovery. Recovery is often overlooked because for many people it doesn’t resonate with care of the body. Jim Loehr, in “The Power of Full Engagement” shares a number of recovery rituals from moving away from your desk at lunch to eat and go for a walk to shutting down work at a specific time daily and committing to that time. Other rituals can be as simple as taking time for deep breathing and meditation. From a nutrition perspective, it is your responsibility to know your body including what foods energize it and which foods deplete your energy. How often and how much you eat also factor into analyzing this aspect of fueling your body. Tom Rath and Jim Harter in “Wellbeing” share “with every bite and drink we take, we make a choice. We can select something that is net positive and benefits our health or we can choose something that is a net negative.” This is a great way to evaluate your diet. Next, physical exercise boosts energy levels and leads to significant increase in mood. Finding the right exercise for you is key because if you like doing the exercise you are more likely to maintain a regular schedule with it. Finally, we need 7-8 hours of sleep each evening. Rath and Harter believe that sleep is our body’s way of hitting the reset button. Most of the recent research shows that without sleep our bodies do not repair daily damage on a cellular level and our brains do not recover. John Medina in “Brain Rules” shares that loss of sleep hurts attention, executive function, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning, and even motor dexterity.

Emotional
We fuel ourselves emotionally when we accept our feelings and learn how to manage them differently. Marc Brackett in “Permission to Feel” shares that until the 1980’s emotions were widely viewed as noise and only got in the way of achievement and success. He adds that when we suppress our feelings, they only get stronger. Much of the work that came from Emotional Intelligence publications in the late 1990’s, including “Working with Emotional Intelligence” by Goleman suggested that self-awareness followed by emotion management was the key to addressing emotions. Brackett has a counter-view to that perspective as he believes that labeling the emotion being felt is essential to successful regulation of the emotion. He has a RULER technique that begins with Recognizing what is being felt, followed by Understanding what is being felt. Brackett encourages us to become emotion scientists seeking to understand what is being felt without value judgements followed by a desire to listen and learn from our emotions. Next comes the Label. Historically, research suggested that people could name between three and six emotions. Now Brackett’s list includes over 100 which individuals can explore to be more precise in naming what is being felt. Once you have the best label you can move to a decision about how to best Express the emotion. And finally, the emotion is Regulated. I have been using the RULER technique with clients recently and they are experiencing greater success with emotion management when the first three steps are completed prior to trying to manage the emotion.

Mental

Fueling the body mentally challenges us to create mental flexibility and powering ourselves by focusing on what matters most. It’s also the space where we check in on the stories we are telling ourselves. A perfect question for this component is to ask yourself if the story you are thinking or sharing is taking you into the best version of yourself or away from it. Mental strength also requires us to manage the noise in our lives. Shawn Achor in “Before Happiness” shares that noise is any information that is negative, false, unnecessary or prevents us from being able to reach our full potential. He places noise in four categories; unusable, untimely, hypothetical, or distracting. A needed skill for everyone is to build the ability to filter through all of the information received on a daily basis to determine what is factual, usable, timely and relevant. How often do you evaluate the external noise in your life based upon these criteria? Achor contends that if we just reduce the noise by 5% we can be considerably more successful with the endeavors we are engaged in.

Spiritual

Our spiritual fuel is a commitment to our passions and our purpose. Are you aligned with your purpose? It is truly when you align your activities with your purpose that deeper feelings of satisfaction and contentment emerge. Simon Sinek in “The Infinite Game” likens purpose to “just cause”. A just cause is “a specific vision of a future state that does not yet exist; a future state so appealing that people are willing to make sacrifices in order to help advance toward that vision”. Another author, Jim Loehr in “The Power of Story” captures the essence of identifying one’s life mission/purpose. He suggests that your purpose should continually renew your spirit; get you going every day; provide an indomitable force towards action; and ground you in your quiet moments. The essential question that we are called to answer about our mission/purpose is that of legacy. What is it that we want to be known for? What do we want to leave behind as a testament to a life well lived? As a graduate of Antioch University, I often reflect on our mission; a quote from Horace Mann “Be Ashamed to Die Until You Have Won Some Victory for Mankind.” What quotes or thinking inspires you into deeper connection with your purpose?

Take a moment to go back through the list to identify areas of strength as well as areas of opportunities. Reflect on where you would like to be more efficient in fueling your body and make a plan to integrate two or three new behaviors into your life. Keep track of the improvements and notice when you see changes in how you feel, think, and behave.

Motivation Through Three Lenses: Self, Direct Reports, and Teams – by Dr. Peggy Marshall

Motivation is one of the most talked about phenomena and possibly the least understood. It becomes even more complicated when viewed through the lenses of self, direct reports, and teams. Some of the motivators are the same for all three and yet some are very different. First, let us start by defining motivation. For about the past 50 years, Deci and Ryan have been the definers of motivation through the lens of Self Determination Theory which focused on the levers of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. A simplification of the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation comes from Gagne and Deci (2005) as they positioned intrinsic motivation as autonomous motivation and extrinsic motivation as controlled motivation. Those two words are extremely significant as we move forward with this article on motivation as choice becomes center stage when we are working with ourselves and others on motivation.

No discussion of motivation would be complete without addressing the process of change along with the “why” for the change. Norcross in “Changeology” shares that we need to be “psyched up” about the change to pursue it. Many authors agree with his thinking with regards to the need for emotional alignment with the new behavior as we need to want to make it happen for it to happen. Sinek in “Start with Why” Simon Sinek shares that we need a strong “why” to begin the process of change. Think about New Years resolutions, most of which have been forgotten by now, maybe even yours. Many individuals in setting a New Years resolution start with “what” they are going to do. If their “what” is not aligned with a strong “why”, it will make the process more difficult, potentially frustrating and lead to giving up.

Kotler in “The Art of the Impossible” believes that motivation is a “catch-all for three subsets of skills: drive, grit and goals.” Drive leads with curiosity, passion and purpose which can automate the desired new behaviors. Pink in his book “Drive,” connects autonomy, mastery, and purpose to the key motivators of new behaviors. Both authors are consistent with their thinking in that it is purpose that creates momentum for motivation. Purpose becomes the forward pointing arrow that sparks us when we feel like giving up. Loehr and Schwartz in “The Power of Full Engagement” share that purpose is “the most powerful source of our motivation, perseverance and direction” which serves to maximize our energy when aligned with what matters most to us.

In determining purpose, individuals often start with values to understand what matters most. Although our values may change slightly throughout our lifetime, many stay consistent over time. Stulberg and Magness in “Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success” The Growth Equation | Art and Science of Success | Brad Stulberg & Steve Magness share that self-transcending purposes aligned with what is valued most is the best way to create motivation and is also important when motivation wanes. Kotler shares this belief calling it the “massively transformative purpose”. Focusing on the self-transcending purpose that provides the individual with a perspective of changing something bigger than self can also lead to increased performance.

Often our clients may have difficulty in determining which values are most important to them. The Values Center has on on-line personal values assessment that provides a report which is useful for coaching. An interesting component of the assessment is that it groups responses into categories of self-interest, transformation, and common good. For those clients wanting to explore more transformative and common good values, the report also provides opportunities for reflection and next steps.

Once the values are clear, clients can use the Intended Change Theory process to align the ideal and real selves in a behavior change process. In this step, clients visualize a desired future state and infuse it with the belief that it is possible to achieve the state. A discussion of strengths that will be needed to create the desired future leads to clarity and helps to build motivation toward the desired change. The client “gets real” by determining which values identified earlier will support the necessary changes and then determines where real self and ideal self are not aligned which can impact motivation for change.

When motivating self, individuals, and teams progress matters; Amabile and Kramer in “The Progress Principle” share that making progress is central to motivation and success. They share four ingredients to progress that include small wins, breakthroughs, forward movement, and goal completion. Note goal completion is not the only ingredient, identifying the steps along the way keeps clients focused and motivated. As with any behavior change process measurement and tracking is also important to staying motivated. Most habit researchers emphasize that without tracking individuals and teams do not have evidence of how far they have come nor do they have insights on how far the goal remains.

Although the focus of this article has been mostly on individuals, the concepts also apply to direct reports and teams with the difference being the relationship. When coaching direct reports on motivation, it is important to recognize that what motivates your direct may not be what motivates you as the leader. That is where the values tool can be so effective. Recognizing what drives the direct report can make the difference between average and top performance.

Finally, from a team perspective, Kotler shares what contributes to team flow. These attributes include shared goals, shared risk, listening, strong communication, blending egos, equal participation, familiarity, and sense of control. I would add understanding the values of team members will help with each one of these attributes as it creates an understanding of the earlier discussion of curiosity, passion, purpose, autonomy, and mastery. It is through understanding one another that relationships deepen and create more motivated teams.

If you found this article interesting and want to learn more about the topic, Global IOC will be hosting a Wednesday Webinar Zoom call on March 10^th at 10 AM EST on the topic of Motivation through Three Lenses: Self, Direct Reports, and Teams.

Gagne, M. & Deci, E. (2005) Self-determination theory and work motivation. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26, 331–362.