Chris - Thanks for a great article. Another good read is 'The Mind is Flat' by Nick Chater which dispatches the idea of the unconscious. I couldn't agree more also about Myers-Briggs and NLP. But! -I hope this doesn't re-ignite the unresolvable debates on these subjects that have run and run for years, and are essentially about belief systems. De-bunking is a belief system too, that can be powerful in the training room! Whilst we can't often replace a system (of for example invented personality typing) with something better, after de-bunking it, we are at least left with common sense, which I believe is a good starting point for exploring simpler ideas that have some authentic basis in science.
The reason motivation as a movement never worked in the first place is that it requires an optimum level of emotional arousal I the individual to be effective. Motivational speakers simply shifted the audiences' arousal level from a place where they were either unmotivated or thinking critically. It's a pretty easy stunt to pull and actors do this all the time. In this area of optimal arousal that we call motivated we feel creative and in the 'flow'. Unfortunately as many a researcher in teaching and learning will testify this arousal level can only be sustained for about twenty minutes after which there needs to be shift in activity. This knowledge has informed teaching strategies but we are still waiting for it to be put into widespread practice. Ask anyone twenty minutes after a motivational speech if they are still going to go back to the workplace and change the world and they will probably say "Well I was, then!" For more information on how emotional arousal affects our motivation see my article on The Training Zone: 'Why Brainstorming doesn't work - and how it might!': https://www.trainingzone.co.uk/develop/talent/why-brainstorming-doesnt-w...
My answers
Chris - Thanks for a great article. Another good read is 'The Mind is Flat' by Nick Chater which dispatches the idea of the unconscious. I couldn't agree more also about Myers-Briggs and NLP. But! -I hope this doesn't re-ignite the unresolvable debates on these subjects that have run and run for years, and are essentially about belief systems. De-bunking is a belief system too, that can be powerful in the training room! Whilst we can't often replace a system (of for example invented personality typing) with something better, after de-bunking it, we are at least left with common sense, which I believe is a good starting point for exploring simpler ideas that have some authentic basis in science.
The reason motivation as a movement never worked in the first place is that it requires an optimum level of emotional arousal I the individual to be effective. Motivational speakers simply shifted the audiences' arousal level from a place where they were either unmotivated or thinking critically. It's a pretty easy stunt to pull and actors do this all the time. In this area of optimal arousal that we call motivated we feel creative and in the 'flow'. Unfortunately as many a researcher in teaching and learning will testify this arousal level can only be sustained for about twenty minutes after which there needs to be shift in activity. This knowledge has informed teaching strategies but we are still waiting for it to be put into widespread practice. Ask anyone twenty minutes after a motivational speech if they are still going to go back to the workplace and change the world and they will probably say "Well I was, then!" For more information on how emotional arousal affects our motivation see my article on The Training Zone: 'Why Brainstorming doesn't work - and how it might!': https://www.trainingzone.co.uk/develop/talent/why-brainstorming-doesnt-w...