One of my sons is a sophomore in high school and I would say currently lacks motivation when it comes to school or any related activity that may help him toward a positive future lifestyle. His main motivation seems to be hanging out with his friends and skateboarding. I often read in our local newspaper about teens that appear to be motivated, they are doing community service, excelling in sports, or making the academic honor rolls. What is their motivation? The definition of motivation is “the general desire or willingness of someone to do something” I am constantly struggling with how to motivate or promote this willingness in my teens towards activities that will have longer range positive effects; like a good education but seems to fall on deaf ears.
Businessweek is not my normal reading material but I picked it up the other day and read a short article in the October 5, 2009 issue “The No-Cost Way to Motivate”. The focus was on how to motivate employees during depressed times. It states that while 9.7% of U.S. Workers who are unemployed, there is another 90.3% of the employed who are miserable as they feel management is taking advantage of them during these depressed times. As I read this article about how to motivate employees, I reflected on my teens and myself being management and how I may better connect and keep them motivated. Here are some of the points made by the author Patrick Leoncioni:
“One of the greatest causes of misery for employees is the feeling that the person they work for isn’t interested in who they are and what goes on in their lives personally.“
He continues, this has been found to be true for the highest paid executive to the football player on the field.
Back to the teens, similarly, more often than not, we hear like comments from our teens. We don’t care about who they are only how they are performing in activities that we value such as school. Is this the generation gap? My dilemma is how do you get around it, if your teen rarely shares anything that is truly going on in their life that is important to them or they never want to engage in activities with you unless they are with their friends.
Obviously parents do need to show genuine interest in not only how their kids are doing in school, or on the job but also socially or how they identify at the moment. Leoncioni mentions that a big part of this is helping people figure out why their job (school) matters to someone, somewhere, in some way large or small. Once again the relationship has to be more personal or on a personal level.
Motivation is making people feel they count and they are important. As a parent or a boss, letting others know that you are truly interested in what is going on in their life and how they feel. For teens the relationship would be to make them feel important with how they fit into the family and also the big picture of life. Personally I think the motivation has to come from within and some teens are more self-motivated than others. I will keep plugging along and trying to connect in more personal ways.
This is the link to the article in BusinessWeek – The No-Cost Way to Motivate
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I like your last comment staying physically attached, just a loving pat can last a long time.
Great advice. I think just as human beings we want to beleive others are interested in our lives whether it is at school, in the workplace, in our church, wherever. It is harder with teens – they are trying to become independent and sometimes that makes them not as open to us as we would like. They want to make their own decisions, which is great, but they don’t seem to realize or want to admit that we parents are great resources and sounding boards. Keep asking questions, keep joining in on what they enjoy doing if possible, and stay physically attached (hugs, touching their arms while you talk to them, patting them on the back as they pass-by, etc.).