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Achieve your full potential with these motivational strategies from Susan Fowler.

According to author and global leader in personal empowerment Susan Fowler, it’s time to start treating motivation like a science. Now, that doesn’t mean you walk around in a lab coat, start experimenting on your employees, and take meticulous notes of your findings. The hard part’s already done. All you have to do is apply the strategies outlined in Susan’s book, Master Your Motivation: Three Scientific Truths for Achieving Your Goals, and you can keep yourself and your staff productive, engaged, and fulfilled day in and day out.

In our recent AuthorConnect Chat, we sat down with Susan to talk all about these scientific truths as well as why money is the wrong motivator, how to eliminate employee turnover, and what crisis mode can teach you about competent business leadership. What follows is a brief overview of Susan’s presentation and the three C’s she discusses in greater detail in her book Master Your Motivation.

1. Create choice.

Everything starts with choice. In order to achieve optimal motivation, according to Susan, you need to feel like you’re in control of what you’re doing. As an employee or staff member, giving yourself autonomy over a situation can be as simple as changing your attitude. Rather than seeing a project as something you “have” to do, acknowledge the choice you’re making in doing the work, keeping your job, and thus keeping the roof over your head.

It may seem counterintuitive for managers and business leaders, but it is critical to offer freedom to your team. Allow for more choice in your workforce, and you’ll receive optimally motivated results in return.

2. Build connection.

Susan explains that after choice, humans need authentic connection, or relatedness to a greater mission. When it comes to personal goals and habits, she suggests you take a hard look at your own core values and then make sure your day-to-day tasks align with those values. Building on the necessity of choice, Susan claims, “We need to make choices that we feel are meaningful,” which happens through connection.

In the business world, values are a staple for internal branding and hiring practices. But in order to earn optimal motivation and productivity from your workforce, Susan advocates for a two-way street. Find out what your employees’ personal values are. Then build bridges of connection between the organization’s goals and their own. Not only will team members see the bigger picture, but they’ll also be more inclined to meet—and even exceed—expectations, because it also benefits them to do so.

3. Develop competence.

To be motivated, the final foundational need is competence, or that sense that we are well-equipped to take on and accomplish our task. As Susan said during our AuthorConnect Chat, “If we don’t feel that we have the competence, the skills...then we will never have that optimal motivation necessary to thrive.”

If this is missing from your life or your work, find ways to educate yourself either within the workplace or on your own. And if you find your team members or direct reports are lacking confidence in their work, put clear steps in place for them to learn and grow. This will boost both their motivation to succeed as well as their overall productivity and quality of work.

Choice, connection, and competence are each powerful motivational tools on their own. But combining them can make you an unstoppable achiever and powerful business leader. Watch the full AuthorConnect Chat with Susan Fowler below to gain more strategies to empower you and your workforce, and order Master Your Motivation books in bulk to transform your team or organization today.

https://youtu.be/nKTsIIA1oNM