What You Can Do to Motivate Unmotivated People

One of the most common questions I get in workshops and coaching conversations is this…

“How do you motivate an unmotivated person?”

This question has two basic problems.

1. There are no unmotivated people, and
2. You can’t motivate anyone other than you.

Let’s quickly deal with these two issues.

There are no unmotivated people.

Consider this…

A person who sits in the break room and complains about “the company” is motivated. They might not be motivated to leave the break room and get to work. They are motivated to sit in the break room and complain. Therefore, they are motivated.

Everyone is motivated to do something. The people on your team may or may not be motivated to do the things necessary to grow your business or meet your team objectives, and they are motivated.

You can’t motivate anyone other than you.

There are two important ideas that support this point.

First, you have no control over what other people choose to do (or not do). You can influence other people by the way you respond to them and situations, and you cannot control them. You control your words and actions. They control their words and actions.

Second, people are basically motivated by getting what they want or avoiding what they don’t want. That statement is probably an over-simplification of the whole study of human behavior and motivation, and it’s a pretty good starting point for understanding the basics.

Here’s the implication of that general idea: motivation basically comes from inside a person not from the environment. Their motivation is probably influenced by their desire to get something from or avoid something in their environment, and, still, the motivation comes from within them.

To really learn how to “motivate an unmotivated person,” I suggest changing the single starting question above to two better questions that help you keep the focus on what really affects motivation and what you can do rather than on what you can’t do.

Here are the better questions I propose that you ask…

1. What does this person want to get (or avoid) from the behaviors they exhibit?

This question is bigger than it first appears. While it includes monetary and other tangible rewards, it also includes more subtle things like how they are viewed by other people. When you ask this question, begin to think broadly about everything a person might experience as a result of their behavior – responses from other people, freedom to choose how they spend their time, doing tasks the way they like to do them, etc.

2. Is there something I can do to change the environment or my response to them so that they get what they want from more appropriate behaviors rather than from “bad” or “unmotivated” behaviors?

After you get a good guess at what the person is getting from their behavior that they see as rewarding in some way, look for ways to create situations in the environment that give them the same (or a similar) reward for a “better” behavior.

Human behavior is both complex and simple. The basic concepts are pretty simple, and the specific application to a single person at a given point in time within a particular context can get pretty complex. I don’t suggest that these two questions will completely correct the motivational problems you face with your team. I do suggest that these two questions will get you closer to finding a successful solution than the single question most people ask.