Some days back, I happened to attend a workshop conducted by a renowned motivator at a local university in Islamabad. The motivator was a director of something at CASE, Islamabad. His credentials were immaculate and had all the ingredients which are essential to capture the awe of a typical Pakistani. A foreign degree, experience of a multi-national, speaker at blah blah blah and not to forget the thorough know-how about IT.
His topic was motivation, and he spoke for good 4 hours. His talk consisted of some funny anecdotes, some jokes, two form-filling sessions, a words writing contest, power point slides, and a harangue. He just talked about the obvious. What he told, I already knew. It was mere rhetoric and nothing practical. During his talk, he swayed from human resource to leadership to business process re-engineering to motivation.
He talked, talked and talked and I wondered. I have always wondered about such workshops, symposiums and courses which just talk common sense. I mean, its the simple thing that you must have a clear goal in your life. And its also a very common knowledge that to achieve a goal, you have to work hard and persevere. Its also a matter of very know fact that to excel in any field, you have to be on your toes and except the challenges. Its also doesn’t require that to know that your goal should be challenging but not un-realistic.
But I have seen individuals and companies paying thousands of rupees to the Motivators. Companies think that by arranging a workshop of some hours, they could achieve the elixir of motivation in their employees. Thats in itself is a very unrealistic goal. How could you produce a spark in a dull individual in just few hours with mere theory? Thats only the wastage of money and time.
A company should spend the money and time on devising ways to do simple things for employees and that is not some rocket science. Motivations is simple to convince an employee to not take work as a burden but as a pleasant task. Motivating an employee is all about making the work pleasurable for him. It doesn’t take an expensive motivator to know that what ignites the motivation employees.
To motivate the employee, provide them a comfortable working environment, give them sense of autonomy, justified wages, trustworthy promotion criteria, solid appreciation and justice in day to day matters. That’s it, and you see I didn’t ask for any motivational fee from you.
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