Master Class [152]: Four Reasons Employees Lose Their Motivation
Motivation—the willingness to get the job done by starting rather than procrastinating, persisting in the face of distractions, and investing enough mental effort to succeed.
Carefully assessing the nature of motivational failure—before taking action—is crucial. Applying the wrong strategy (say, urging an employee to work harder, when the reason is that they’re convinced they can’t do it) can actually backfire, causing motivation to falter further.
These reasons fall into a quartet of categories that we call motivation traps. Here are the four traps, their distinct causes, and strategies to release an employee from their clutches.
Trap 1, Values Mismatch: I don’t care enough to do this
When a task doesn’t connect with or contribute to something workers value, they won’t be motivated to do it.
How to help an employee out of this trap?