Success Coaching and Visualization – Part 2

Personal Empowerment, Personal Success No Responses »

Sep 142011

Welcome back!

Last week we took a slightly different look at visualization. In Success Coaching and Visualization – Part 1 we looked at why visualization works, hope and how words create images.

Today I’m going to finish up with application for success coaching

Application

Visualization has a powerful role success coaching and in helping a person maintain their hope of achieving their goals. By using visualization, we aim to make the end point of our goals seem as normal and natural as arriving home at the end of the day.

We do this by creating a persuasive picture…by “seeing” the end point in complete detail using all our senses. We want to see, hear, feel smell and even taste our personal goal. Through visualization the impossible can seem possible and utterly compelling.

The Visualization Process

When I take a client through the visualization process, I normally begin by making sure my client is comfortable and will not be distracted. I then guide them to focus on the sounds, sights and feelings of their imagined future. By focusing only of their future goal they eliminate any present sounds, sights and feelings that might distract them.

I ask them to close their eyes and to take a few deep breaths. As they breathe out I ask them to release any tension that is in their body. If they have difficulty doing this, I might ask them to work their way up their body tensing each body part and then releasing it.

This reminds the body what it feels like to be tense and what it feels like to be relaxed and usually helps them to let go of any tension they are holding through habit or lack of awareness.

When the client is feeling relaxed, I begin by asking them to move their focus into a time and place in the future; a future in which their goal has been achieved. I take them through some questions, which complete the whole picture or the experience. Some of the questions I ask them are:

Where are you?

What do you see yourself doing?

Where are you?

What do you see yourself doing?

Who are you with?

If you are somewhere that engages your senses of smell and taste, what are you aware of?

What can you hear around you?

What do you see?

How do you feel?

Any questions that assist them to have a full experience of their future are helpful.

Success Coaching, Visualization and The Wheel of Life

Some of my clients come to me with a specific set of personal goals. Others need more support and success coaching to focus on what they want from the future.

These individuals tend to have a general idea that they want their life, i.e. be more successful, more balanced, more meaningful or more exciting, but they don’t really have a greater sense of their end goal.

Visualization can be a useful tool for helping them to clarify their personal goals.

You may be familiar with the Wheel of Life. The wheel is a visual representation of each of the important aspects of a person’s life. It is designed to be a tool for focusing on development in a balanced way.

For individuals who are unsure about their goals, a good strategy is to look at each of the aspects of the Wheel of Life and to give themselves a rating out of 10 for each one.

Then, with either through success coaching or self-reflection a personal can then be lead through the visualization process for each of the sections focusing on the question: “What would a ?10? look like in this area of your life?”

You would be unlikely to focus on every section of the Wheel of Life in one or two hours. In fact, I would suggest that you only focus on one section in an hour or in a given success coaching session, unless of course you are have practiced and are skilled at visualization.

A good question to get started is what area of your life will have the biggest impact? You may or may not choose the section where you have the lowest score or the section where their goals are less clear or a section that they value the most.

Using Words and Pictures

Once you have visualized your ideal life, you might want to work on strategies and tactics to keep the image fresh in your mind. A great tactic is to draw a picture or produce a collage…a vision board.

Once again the Wheel of Life, can be a useful framework. Images engage a different part of the brain to words and can create a pathway into the subconscious mind. Be playful with this, choose images from magazines, draw pictures yourself, use the Internet, use any resource that will help to remind you of your personal goals, personal success and your future life.

Steps Along the Way

The next step after visualizing the end point is to determine steps along the way, the strategies and tactic to make your vision a reality.

The beautiful thing about visualization is that the clearer the image of the end goal and the more natural and normal you have managed to make it; the easier it is to see the pathways to it. The helicopter view that comes with visualization helps to clearly see multiple pathways to the same goal.

If at some point you find yourself struggling to find ways to move forward, or if your feeling despairing because you have hit a barrier on their way, returning to the visualization of your personal goals can be an incredibly powerful way to move forward again.

Visualizing Small Goals

Visualization is a powerful strategy for looking at life purpose, values and life vision. However it can also be useful for smaller goals and strategies.

If you are working on particular challenge, for example, giving a presentation at a meeting, it can be extremely powerful to visualize what it will look and feel like when the presentation has been successfully completed.

This can give you something to “hang on to” to counteract any apprehension they might be feeling beforehand.

Visualization can also be used in conjunction with role-play. For example, if you’re having a difficult conversation with your manager, it might be useful to combine visualizing the situation and then role-playing the conversation with a friend or coach acting as the manager.

You can visualize sitting in the manager’s office, reflect on what you see, the sounds, the smells, how you feel, then begin the role-play conversation. This helps fully prepare you so that the different environment of the manager’s office don’t through you off and possible forget everything that you have practiced in the role-play.

Safe Journey

I’ve notice that visualization can be confronting for someone who has never experience success coaching at this deep of a level before. It is also unlikely to work for a person that is not completely relaxed, as the individual will be too distracted to focus.

In a success coaching situation, visualization requires high levels of trust on behalf of the client. For these reasons it’s important for me to check with my client first to see if this is a strategy that they feel comfortable with. Some questions I ask are:

Have you ever practiced visualization before?

Are you familiar with visualization?

Would you like to give it a try as a strategy to really focus on this challenge?

I normally begin with small visualizations so that my client can feel the power of the strategy before challenging them with visualizing big goals or aims. If you’re new to visualization, you might have a go at a “smaller” goal before moving on to the full-blown successful life.

Visualization is a skill, and, like any skill, it improves through practice. People who become practiced at visualization find that it is a resource they can draw on regularly in their lives. If they meet a challenge, they can visualize the end point.

When they reach a barrier, they are able to draw on their vision of their end goal to put the barrier in context and not focus on it to the exclusion of all other possible pathways.

As my clients and I become more comfortable working together visualization greatly enhance the success coaching relationship.

Contemplation

What are some other ways that visualization can be used in your life?

What area of your life can you write a visualization script for?

References

Kauffman, Carol, (2006) Positive Psychology: The Science at the Heart of Coaching in Stober, Dianne and Grant, Anthony, (Eds), Evidence Based Coaching, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons

Snyder, C.R, (2000) Handbook of Hope: Theory Measures and Applications, New York: Guildford Press

If you’d like to find out more about personal success coaching and how it can help you achieve your personal goals request an Introductory Consultation today.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Warrior Mind Coach Recommends

Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen: The secret to your success (PamSlim)
Anger and Dragging the Corpse (CoachBrian)
Why "Manhood" (part 2) | The Wild Man Project (CoachBrian)

Keep Learning...

The Habits of Habits for Athletic Performance

Athletic Performance, Personal Performance No Responses »

Sep 082011

I think it’s safe to say the all of us have a few areas of our lives that we’d like to improve or enhance, right?

Especially when it comes to health and fitness!

One of the simplest ways in going about this is by creating good habits that make these positive changes…but often it feels tough to develop consistency.

For a competitive athlete, efforts to eat healthy, lift regularly, do speed work and bring more balance to your life can seem like an effort unto itself.

It takes work and it is not always easy to develop a good habit, especially if you’re trying to break a bad one at the same time. However, establishing a plan of attack can help you as you set out to develop new habits that will help you with your training and improve your athletic performance.

First, it is important to know what you are getting in to. Most people need months of engaging in a purposeful, specific behavior before it becomes a habit.

Before the habit becomes second nature many individuals are at risk of “back sliding” into the old patterns of behavior.

Think about this, have you ever tried to change a technique you use in your sport to improve your athletic performance, like change your golf swing, how you throw your pitch, or how you serve the tennis ball? It’s not as easy as it seems right?

Or maybe it is your running form or your swimming mechanics. At slow paces it is pretty easy to maintain your new technique. But turn up the intensity and what happens to your technique?

If you are still within the habit-forming window, there’s a good chance that you’ll fall back into your old technique under pressure. This is important to understand because when you commit to changing any behavior, you will need to be vigilant and purposeful in your training efforts.

What behaviors am I referring to?

For athletes it can run the gamut from:

Diet – eating fewer sweets or consuming more protein

Fitness – incorporating speed training into your weekly workouts or adding aerobic workouts on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) to

Sleep – getting 8 hours a night

Other lifestyle behaviors – better managing stress, drinking less alcohol, not working on Sundays

What are you working on or should be working on?

What behaviors are you trying to change that will lead to improved athletic performance?

Regardless of the habit you are trying to develop, there are some tactics you can use that can help you in your efforts,

Below are a few things you can do to increase the changes that the new habits will stick and then become second nature.

Strategically Place Cues to Support Your Efforts

Let’s say you swim at 5 AM a few mornings a week, and you find it tough time to drag yourself out of bed. Knowing this, you can hang your swimsuit on the bathroom door, have your bag packed and place the alarm clock (or clocks) out of reach of the bed. This way when the alarm goes off you must get up and turn it off. These cues will support your commitment to swimming regularly. Once out of bed, there is no excuse—swimsuit and bag are ready.

What makes sense for you?

There are a limitless number of cues or prompts you can use. For example, you could put pictures of healthy food on the refrigerator, tape notes with motivational sayings in spots you often pass or keep your running shoes in your car.

Based on the behavior you are working on, identify the cues or prompts that would be most meaningful and beneficial to you.

Enlist the Support of Others

Recently in working with an athlete, we were having a discussion regarding their up coming winter workouts. They recognized the importance of staying fit but noted that it was going to be quite a challenge to do it on their own. You know the winter season …cold, dark and raining, or snowy…just a ton of excuses for not working out.

We talked about this challenge and ways they could manage it. The strategy they settled on was to enlist an accountability and workout partner. They will provide support for each other on a structured, regular basis. With all the social media available it’s no surprise that social support can work wonders.

Support from others cane be the form of encouragement from friends, a spouse, or family member, all you have to do it ask for it.

Social support can also be about finding an accountability partner. Seek out someone who is trying to make a similar change. Having a partner can enhance your motivation and give you additional accountability or responsibility and making it less likely for you to skip a workout or miss a class.

Set Goals for Yourself

Yes…back to goals. In past posts in this blog I have talked about the importance of mental strength skill of goal setting and how it can be of value in achieving peak performance.

Goals, when appropriately set, can enhance motivation, tell you what you need to do, and provide feedback to help you recognize your success or identify areas of improvement.

Goals can be equally effective in helping you in your efforts to change unwanted behaviors. By setting small and even micro-term goals associated to the new behavior you’ll be able monitor your progress along the way and experience success that will increase your confidence, thus your athletic performance.

Provide Incentive

Rewards are powerful. To be effective, however, you must identify a meaningful reward for yourself. For example, you may be highly motivated by indulgencing in your sweet tooth. Or it could be getting an In-n-Out Burger. The reward or incentive can be a variety of things as long as it serves to keep you on task.

The next step is to determine what you need to do to receive the reward, i.e. swim three mornings’ sessions for 45 minutes, eat fruits and vegetables at every meal for seven days, or incorporate two speed training sessions each week. Reward yourself along the way to facilitate continued progress in your athletic performance.

Change is easy; it’s the resistance to change that’s hard. So by making the change as easy as possible you’ll have better success at including the new habit into your way of training and then improve your athletic performance.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Warrior Mind Coach Recommends

Anger and Dragging the Corpse (CoachBrian)
Fearful Of The Brown Recluse (Web Chit-Chat)
The Peripherals of Public Speaking – a handy checklist (Web Chit-Chat)

Keep Learning...

Success Coaching And Visualization – Part 1

Personal Performance, Personal Success No Responses »

Sep 072011

I’ve discussed the use of visualization many times before. In my performance coaching I call mental imagery, mental rehearsal or mental practice.

In success coaching I call it visualization or imagination. Regardless of what I or anyone else calls it, it is a powerful tool to achieve your personal goals and personal success.

For me, success coaching is about getting my clients to deeply experience their goals. I want them to experience so deeply that they create an unstoppable desire, back by action, to achieve their personal goal.

So today in this success coaching session I’m going to take a different perspective on visualization in hopes that you’ll get just how powerful it is!

Imagine you are walking to your home across a field. When you are almost there, you notice that a tree has fallen across your path blocking your way. Your thoughts immediately turn to how you are going to solve the momentary problem and get home.

You begin looking for ways to climb over it, perhaps push through the branches, or maybe walk around it. You would be highly unlikely to simply give up on getting home and camp out for the night.

In this circumstance, you are exercising activity. Your end point (getting home) is so real and compelling that you don’t give up, not even for a minute. The barrier in your way appears to be a temporary distraction and you immediately move into problem solving mode, secure in the knowledge that you will achieve your goal.

Imagine if achieving all of your personal goals were as simple as walking home across a field.

How much easier would life be if, when confronted with an obstacle, you remained so completely secure in your end goal that you didn’t pause for a moment to consider an alternative to your success?

Imagine if the achievement of your ideal life felt as natural as walking through your front door at the end of the day. There is a way that you can create this same surety, determination and purpose with your personal goals. It is through the use of visualization.

Why Visualization Works

If I asked you to visualize arriving home at the end of the day, I’m sure you would have no trouble doing so. Arriving in our home is a very familiar activity. It seems natural and normal to us because we do it most days. It is easy to visualize.

In fact as you’re reading this, I suspect images of your own home are bubbling up easily in your mind’s eye with no pressure at all. I bet you can see your home; you know what it sounds like and smells like and you know what it feels like to walk through the door, don’t you?

With success coaching, the challenge is with bigger goals and aspirations as they are part of the ‘unknown.’ We have never lived them so they don’t seem naturally with us.

The image of our end point is not so strong in our mind that we view barriers as temporary blockages. In fact the end point is so unfamiliar to us that we see barriers and blockages as bigger than they are.

We start to think: maybe this goal is impossible? Maybe it was just never meant to be.

Success Coaching and Hope Training

In success coaching maintaining your hope for the future is difficult to do when your vision of that future is shaky. Yet hope plays a crucial role in a person’s life.

Research has indicated that people with high levels of hope are much more likely to face and overcome obstacles and are likely to rate higher on a range of success indicators such as academic performance, athletic achievement, interpersonal effectiveness and physical health and well-being. (Snyder, 2000) People who are able to clearly “see” a brighter future, are much more likely to achieve it.

Language vs. Images

Another important aspect of visualization is that it is using a different part of the brain. The right side of the brain is the side that we use to be able to visualize things.

Visualizing images, pictures or stories using the right brain supports another way of learning. A great deal of our previous learning has been done through the use of language which is a left brain activity.

Visualizing a situation opens up the creative elements of our brain and permits us to see things in a new or different way. In addition to this, the space that we create to visualize is a meditative space. The stillness of a meditative space ensures there are no distractions and it allows us to use another part of the brain.

Looking at your life in many different ways supports you in being able to really “see” where you want to go, i.e. your personal goals and personal success.

Your self-vision connects your subconscious and conscious minds and this informs your path forward. The beauty of visualizing your vision is that it takes a purpose and starts to turn it into specific images and ideas and possibilities.

You may have a similar purpose to someone else but when you visualize your purpose it will be completely different to another person’s. This is what makes you unique and your journey unique. Visualizing brings creative thoughts to life and helps us to see them.

Success Coaching Application

Helicopter View

By focusing on the end point of a journey, you develop helicopter view. From a helicopter you can easily see that there are many pathways to any destination. One of the differences between high-hope individuals and those with low-hope is that high-hope individuals recognize this simple fact.

If they hit an obstacle, they don’t think; “Oh no this is impossible!” they think; “This pathway hasn’t worked, I’ll find another one.” Like the person encountering the tree in our beginning story, instead of shifting into despair, they shift into problem solving mode. They look at all the possibilities; going around the barrier, going over it, pushing through it, climbing under it and so on.

Your Own Visualization Exercise

Below is a link to an audio of a visualization track from my Mental Training for Personal Success. It takes you through a visualization process.

Please sit back and relax, get yourself into a comfortable position and when you are ready listen to the audio and take yourself through your very own visualization exercise.

Celebrate what you see once you are complete, take notes of your visualization and refer to them.

Tell a friend or your coach about what you visualized. Speaking out loud your visualization – your vision, will bring it into your conscious mind and into a new space for you to hear and see. Some believe that speaking out loud what you want to create in life, brings it about. Go ahead and give it a go…what you do have to gain?

It’s putting out to the universe your intent and creating it.

http://warriormindcoach.com/audio/Future-Success.mp3

Personal Success Contemplation

Have you ever had a goal or desire that felt absolutely natural and normal?

What were the factors that made if feel this way?

Have you ever had an area of your life that you wanted to improve but you couldn’t clarify exactly what you wanted from it?

What is the relationship between visualization and achieving your goals?

How have you used visualization in your own life?

Listen to the audio and do your own visualization. What did you see?

If you’d like to find out more about personal success coaching and how it can help you achieve your personal goals request an Introductory Consultation today.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Warrior Mind Coach Recommends

Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen: The secret to your success (PamSlim)
Temperance (part 1) (CoachBrian)
Integrity (part 1) (CoachBrian)

Keep Learning...

7-11 For Peak Athletic Performance

Athletic Performance, Mental Strength No Responses »

Sep 012011

Here we are on the verge of Labor Day…the summers over and it’s only a matter of time before 2012 will be here….sorry to jump to gun a bit,

Normally we look at the details of one specific mental strength tip for athletic performance, such as; building sports confidence, using visualization, strategies to maximize your athletic practice performance, and strategies to set yourself up for competitive and personal success

Instead of this and to help with finishing 2011 strong I’m going suggest 7 mental strength tips to finish 2011, kind of a ‘7-11’ article.

This post is going to a more broad brush approach identifying the mental strength skills and concepts to think about and carry with you thorough out the rest of 2011.

As you know there are numerous of mental strength skills, strategies, approaches that play a role in your athletic performance. But what are the mental strength skills that seem to be more critical in achieving peak athletic performance?

Following are 7 Mental Strength skills that will help you in achieving your athletic goals.

1. Enhance Your Self-Awareness

As discussed several times in utilizing mental strength skills to enhance your sport performance, the critical first step is to become aware…to improve your self-awareness. This concept is necessary regardless of the mental strength skill being discussed.

You must understand yourself and how you have a tendency to think, act, respond and feel in order to improve yourself and your athletic performance. Make every effort to become more aware of yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally.

2. Figure Out Where You Are Going

If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up someplace else. Set goals, goals, and more goals. I’ve covered this subject MANY times so this mental strength skill should be no surprise to you.

In order to have success in your personal athletic performance you have to know what you want to achieve. Determine here and now where you want to go and what you want to accomplish by the end of 2011.

Then, work backwards and determine what you need to do this month, this week, even today to achieve your long-term goal. Use daily goals as stepping-stones towards your long-term goal.

3. Be Your Own Best Friend

Did you know that individuals have roughly 66,000 thoughts a day and, of these and that 70 – 80% are negative?

This means you need to be vigilant about managing your thoughts and self-talk because it seems that when left “unattended”, the tendency is towards negativity.

So, for the rest of the year commit to monitoring what you say to others and what you say to yourself. Talk to yourself as if you were your best friend instead of your worst enemy.

4. Be Here Now

Practice and perform in the here and now. It is so easy to get caught up in the past performances and to hold on to past mistakes and the all “should of”, “would of” and “could of.”

There is no changing the past, but there techniques to ‘adjust’ the past and release the negative emotions associated with them…but they are too involved for this article…how’s that for a tease? So for now, learn from you past, regardless of the outcome and move on.

Also stay away from being caught up in the “might been” and “what if’s.” There is no way of predicting the outcomes from those events with the “what it’s”, you’ll drive yourself crazy!

What you can do right now is take control your thoughts. Direct your physical, mental and emotional energy to what you can control and influence, which is your thoughts and behavior and actions right now. Be here now!

5. Practice Like You Compete

If you are going to expect yourself to compete with focus and intensity, you must practice with focus and intensity. If you are going to expect yourself to perform under pressure, practice under pressure. If you are going to expect yourself to deal with mistakes in competition, use your sports practice to figure out how to physically and mentally deal with mistakes. You get the point…train your mind and body as a single unit and they will respond in competition for you to reach peak performance.

6. Learn lessons

On a regular basis, whether after practice, at the end of each week, or after competitions, evaluate and learn from your athletic experiences. Identify what you are doing well and commit to continuing to do it. Identify what you are not doing well and commit to working on it. Learn from good practice and poor practice, from good competitive performances and not so good performances and apply these lessons to your future athletic performance

7. Have fun

Need I say more?

Have thoughts about these tips? Please let me know in the comments below.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Warrior Mind Coach Recommends

Who are you writing for? (PamSlim)
Create your media plan for 2007! (PamSlim)
How to network: for introverts (PamSlim)

Keep Learning...

The Faces of Motivation For Personal Success – Part V

Personal Empowerment, Personal Performance No Responses »

Jun 282011

Welcome back to this series on motivation. Over the past few weeks we’ve been taking a look at the many aspects, or faces, of motivation and how you can use it to reach your personal goals and personal success.

We left off with Part IV Attribution and Achievement Goal Perspective’s. Today we’ll discuss:

How to Motivate Others To Help Them Achieve Their Personal Goals

Last week, we saw that how we explain past events affects our motivation for the future: internal-stable attributions for success and external-unstable attributions for failure give the greatest emotional benefits and subsequent motivation.

This week, we will turn to the very important topic of motivating others. I’ve semi-addresses this issue here and there within the earlier posts and today we’ll pull it all together.

Motivating others is vital for all of us!

As we age, we assume more and more roles that require being in charge of or mentoring others, including perhaps the roles of parent, manager, personal trainer, coach, and teacher.

I’m sure at one time you’ve asked these or similar questions:

What is an effective and proper way to motivate others so that they, and I can reach our personal goals?
How can we get others to want to do what we ask them to?
What really works?

Today, we’ll find out.

If you think about it, motivating others is contradictory. You have motivation, and you are trying to transmit it to another. You want your own motivation to be “contagious,” so that it infects another.

But this may be impossible!

Your motivation cannot be somebody else’s motivation, only they (and their brains) can have motivation. So the question becomes, how do we create a process in other people in which they develop their own motivation that continues…even when we’re not around?

We’ve already touched upon one answer to this question when we discussed Self Determination Theory. Again, SDT addresses the “why” of motivation using the externalization range. People generally internalize motivation ranging from amotivation (helpless) to external (reward) to introjected (guilt) to identified (belief) to intrinsic (enjoyable) motivation.

When motivation has been internalized it has been fully taken into the self, so that the person wants to do the behavior for their own reasons, not because they feel forced to.

According to SDT, the key to internalization is “autonomy support” from motivating authorities.

Autonomy-supportive establishes two basic things.

First, they take the perspective of those they are trying to motivate. For example, a math teacher might say “I know you may not want to learn these trigonometric functions, I remember how boring they seemed when I first encountered them.” The goal is to show that you acknowledge and respect the other person view of the situation and the way they think and want to establish a connection between the two of you.

Second, they try to provide as much choice as possible in the situation. For example, the teacher might say “You can work on the problems alone, or in groups – it is up to you.” Also, you can choose when to work on them “it’s OK if you do the work at home, instead of here.” In NLP we would call these ‘double-binds.” The goal here is to help students feel that they are the cause of their behavior, when they are behaving. Feeling that “I’m doing this because teacher is making me” is not as conducive to learning as feeling that “I’m doing this because this is when and how I want to be doing it.”

Of course, choice-provision (double bind) is not always possible. First, it may not be possible to offer choice about the basic activity – math’s students need to learn these trigonometric functions, and that’s all there is to it. Office workers need to hand in expense reports, even if they aren’t particularly fun to complete.

Second, it may not even be possible to offer choice about the “when” and “how” of the activity. Consider an upcoming standardized mathematics achievement test that the students must take, at a certain time, and in a certain way – there is no latitude for choice-provision here.

This could be just as true of the office that has a specific protocol and deadline for workers to complete standardized forms. In these cases, it is crucial for autonomy-supportive authorities to give a meaningful rationale for the lack of choice.

Why must the test be run this way?

To give the same conditions for all which will allow the scores to be fairly compared.

Why is trigonometry important in the first place? Because it is essential for all higher forms of math, and you will be much better off with these skills. This process essentially differentiates between the “I told you so” approach and the more mature school of “I owe you an explanation.”

Some of you may be thinking “This is obvious. He’s just saying to be ‘nice’ to those I am trying to motivate.”

You’re right – it is obvious.

However, it is far from easy.

Those in ‘authority positions’ are tasked with the job of motivating others face their own demons…er…difficulties.

First, they have the power in the situation – they are in charge. It is simple human nature to enjoy and make use of such a “one-up” position and, as we know, “power corrupts.”

Second, those “in charge” of motivating authorities have not only power, but also, responsibility. If the teacher, manager, or coach fails to produce the desired result, it is their job and reputation that is on the line. This creates a tendency to force the issue, to wield one’s power to try to make happen what one wants to happen, i.e. “You’re going to have fun whether you like it or not!”

Unfortunately this can and often backfire as you can most likely see why, can’t you?

Third, the person who is “in charge” of motivating others must have patience. By providing some degree to of choice to the individual things may not happen as quickly as the motivator would like, or in the way that they would like.

This does not mean that they have to settle for less than they want; instead, they have to keep providing feedback, and be willing to take the time required. Autonomy-supportive mentoring is about negotiation. The key is promoting internalization – the sense that “I am doing it,” and not “My situation is making me do it.”

Again, this can be quite difficult! Autonomy-support is a skill, which takes a lot of practice to develop.

Let’s address real quick what autonomy-support is not.

First, autonomy-support is not permissiveness. One doesn’t let a person do anything they want, or get away with anything counterproductive or dangerous.

Autonomy-supportive does not mean to have no rules, expectations, and standards, and no consequences for misbehavior.

Instead, it means to communicate rules, expectations, and consequences in a way that the individual understands and accepts them, instead of resisting and rejecting them.

Being in control (i.e., “I don’t care whether you like it or not, you have to do what I say”) is not the same thing as having rules and standards; instead, it only breeds resistance to the rules and standards.

Second, autonomy-support is not the absence of structure. There can be plenty of structure in the situation; the key issue is how that structure is communicated and carried out.

For example, an autonomy-supportive personal trainer might have a wide variety of training programs that the client can choose, each of which prescribes a very precise set of steps and rules. People don’t mind this, and in fact, sometimes prefer to have a step-by-step plan to follow, one that is known to work. This may be why self-help books describing some specific program or diet are so popular! The main thing is that the trainee personally identifies with following this plan or program.

In terms of the SDT and goal systems perspectives, the Self must own the program, rather than vice versa. You can think of it as the “menu approach” to motivation. There are several structures to choose from, and the individual has a choice, but the choice is limited by what gets on the “menu” in the first place.

So, the way to positively motivate others, according to SDT, is to support their autonomy and sense of self in the situation.

What about the achievement goal perspective? The answer is fairly simple, have the person focus on learning and mastery goals.

More specifically, when guiding our clients, students, employees, or children through achievement situations, don’t overemphasize the prizes, admiration, or approval; instead, emphasize the process — what will be learned from the experience.

When “failures” occur (as they will), emphasize what is to be learned from them, instead of being critical or blaming. Talk about doing better next time.

Let’s Review.

This recap can serve as a “quick guide” of empirically-supported motivational techniques.

Support autonomy, by seeking ways to engage the person’s sense of self in the task. Take their perspective, provide choices, and provide meaningful explanations for the requests you are making.
Avoid being controlling, or using one’s power to “force” the desired outcome. Have patience: it is a negotiation, not a command.
Emphasize learning and mastery goals; give performance goals a back-seat.
Avoid providing feedback about the person’s seemingly fixed ability, even if the feedback is positive — instead, give feedback on the person’s effort, learning, and perseverance. Support incremental, not entity, theories of achievement.
If you want to focus attention on an individual’s characteristic, acknowledge their specific strengths, not their general ability. Let them know how their talents contribute to the overall goals of the team or organization.
When failure occurs, focus on what can be learned from the failure, and what can be improved in the future. Make internal-unstable attributions for failure.

Easy Reference: Key Factors in Motivating Others

Below are some further recommendations from earlier posts and I have put together in a “cheat-sheet” for you:

Frame assigned tasks in intrinsic rather than extrinsic terms (“This will help the company” instead of “This will make you money”). This concerns the “what” of motivation.
Promote internalized (intrinsic or identified) motivation, rather than external (reward-focused) or introjected (guilt-focused) motivation. This concerns the “why” of motivation.
Be aware of self-regulatory deficits and planning gaps in the goal systems. Help them to be sensitive to what is needed, and help them to develop the concrete skills and plans they need to succeed. This concerns the “how” of motivation.
Do not assign conflicting goals, and be on the lookout for pre-existing conflicts that might interfere with the person’s performance. This also concerns the “how” of motivation.
Always display confidence in the individuals abilities to do what needs to be done, and do not be too quick to dismiss their loftier ambitions. This breeds confidence and self-efficacy.
Create an environment that automatically primes goal-relevant action; including helping people to create implementation intentions that cue action automatically when the right circumstances emerge. This lets motivated behavior occur without conscious thought.
Use approach rather than avoidance framing, whenever possible. It is better for people to know where they are trying to go, rather than what they are trying to prevent.
Help the person select self-concordant goals – ones that express their natural dispositions, talents, and interests.

References:

Deci, E. L. & Ryan, R. M. (1987). The support of autonomy and the control of behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 1024-1037.
Dweck, C. S. (1999) Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development. New York: Psychology Press.
Mueller, C. M., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children’s motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 33-52.
Rath, T., & Clifton, D. O. (2004). How full is your bucket? Positive strategies for work and life. New York: Gallup Press.

So, what do you think? Have these posts helped you? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below

Setting Yourself Up For Athletic Success (warriormindcoach.com)
The Faces of Motivation For Personal Success – Part IV (warriormindcoach.com)
The Faces of Motivation And Your Personal Success – Part III (warriormindcoach.com)
The Faces of Motivation And Your Personal Success – Part I (warriormindcoach.com)
The Faces of Motivation And Your Personal Success – Part II (warriormindcoach.com)

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Warrior Mind Coach Recommends

The upside of adversity (PamSlim)
Anger and Dragging the Corpse (CoachBrian)
Devasish.com (sonucares4u)

Keep Learning...

The Faces of Motivation For Personal Success – Part IV

Personal Performance No Responses »

Jun 212011

We left off with Part III with goal system approach. Today we’ll discuss:

Attribution and Achievement Goal Perspective’s

WTF!?

Yea I know, it seem like I’ve gone off the deep end…hang in there I promise it will make sense.

We’re going to look at goals and motivation in a somewhat different way this week, by checking out two additional goal/motivation philosophies; ‘attribution’ and ‘achievement’. These theories supply yet a third way of considering the “why” question of motivation that is “why am I pursuing this particular target?”

Causal Attribution: How We Explain the Past Affects the Future

We’re all naturally inclined to want to explain events that happen to us, especially unusual success or failure events. This explanation helps with the desire that we can gain better control over those events in the future.

The ‘Causal attribution’ perspective categorizes the various types of explanations we use. For example, do you think your failure was caused by something internal in you, such as a lack of effort or preparation, or by something about the external situation that you couldn’t control, such as poor team effort, bad weather, or faulty equipment?

Was it caused by an unstable and likely temporary factor, i.e. bad weather, or by something more stable and likely to persist over time, i.e. a character flaw in a teammate?

Combining these concepts leads to four basic types of attribution:

Internal-stable, i.e. attributing the outcome to our traits or abilities.
Internal-unstable, i.e. attributing the outcome to our effort or our temporary sickness.
External-stable, i.e. attributing the outcome to societal prejudice against our
Ethnicity.
External-unstable, i.e. attributing the outcome to luck or chance.

These are four basic types of reason people use to explain why things happen.

Why Does it Matter?

Because, explanations for our past successes or failures influence our motivations and expectations for the future.

Suppose you thought your failure was due to a stable internal factor, i.e. I’m dumb; I’m uncoordinated; I’m boring. This means it’s you who is at fault, so it really hurts on a personal level; and it is stable, so you believe you can’t do anything about it. Imagine the devastating impact this could have on your future motivation!

Suppose instead you thought your failure was due to an unstable external factor, i.e. the test covered unexpected material; the wet turf made you slip; the audience was burnt out from the long day prior. This failing really wasn’t due to anything related to you, it was a fluke, and next time could be better. Not so bad — you can bounce back from that!

So, explaining failures via an external-unstable attribution seems more motivational and emotionally beneficial than explaining failure via an internal-stable attribution doesn’t it?

On the other hand, explaining successes via an internal-stable attribution, i.e. I’m smart!…coordinated!…interesting! also seems more beneficial than explaining them via an external-unstable attribution such as I made lucky guesses! My opponent fell! I looked good compared to the terrible speaker before me! Internal-stable attributions for success in a personal achievement can help us to feel good about that personal achievement, and to want to take on more of the same because of the high level of expectations for personal success.

If you’re like me you are probably a bit suspicious about this aren’t you?

You may be asking yourself: so, all I have to do is make some blame-deflecting excuse after failure, and always take the credit after success? As the saying goes “That was easy.”

Both of these perspectives reflect “self-serving biases,” that let us feel good, or at least, not too bad about ourselves, but they also hide the true causes of the outcome.

When we “fail”, (and remember, there is no “failure” only feedback), maybe it was in part something about us, which we should take a look at and perhaps try to change! And when we succeed, maybe there was a “luck” factor involved, that we should recognize so we don’t rely on it next time.

In other words, before making any self-serving attributions, we should be sure not to distance ourselves from reality.

On the other hand, we saw last week post that “positive illusions” can be beneficial, sometimes acting as self-fulfilling prophecies. So, what determines when illusions are too “pie in the sky”, so that they turn into a negative? This is a very difficult question to answer and basically comes down to you…do these perspectives support in moving closer to your personal goal?

Entity vs. Incremental and Self Ability

An “entity” type person is someone who thinks a person’s is stable – you either have it or you don’t. ‘Entity’ type people hope they have it, and try to demonstrate to themselves and others that they have it.

For example, an ‘entity-oriented’ salesman might think that the ability to win others over is just something you are born with, some have it, and others don’t. This is an important point because, to some degree, all of us make these types of absolute character judgments.

An “incremental” person, by contrast, is somebody who thinks that ability is dynamic and can be developed, bit by bit, with effort. Incremental individuals hope to develop their ability, and are not so concerned with showing themselves and others that they already have it. For example, an incremental salesperson might think that sales ability can always be improved and sharpened.

Entity Theory

“You have a certain amount of intelligence, and you can’t really do much to change it.”
“Your intelligence is something about you that stays the same.”

Incremental Theory

“Intelligence is something that we develop over time, through effort.”
“People can learn to be more intelligent in their lives.”

Take a moment and think about which of these statements sounds like you.

Performance vs. Mastery Goals

Looking at various physiology studies on goals there emerges a distinction between “performance” goals and “mastery” (or learning) goals.

I’ve talked about outcome goals and performance goals in other posts and this very much the same with a different name, but more importantly how the different goal effects motivation.

In physiology terms, when we have a performance goal, we are trying to do well relative to others, or relative to some external standard or norm of success. We are trying to win the competition or make the grade.

When we have a mastery goal, we are trying to do well relative to our own past performance, or relative to some internal standard of success. We are trying to learn and improve.

Lots of research shows that mastery goals do in fact lead to more improvement, as well as deeper learning and knowledge. Mastery goals though do not necessarily lead to better performance, because mastery-oriented people are often more concerned with learning what is interesting, rather than “winning.” However, this new learning usually pays off later.

Performance goals tend to be associated with more anxiety and less enjoyment, although they can also be associated with great concentration and persistence, since the ego is on the line. Take a minute to reflect, which better describes your approach to achievement situations, performance or mastery?

Approach vs. Avoidance

If you’ve been reading my posts for a while you know that I (and NLP) talk about “moving towards” or “moving away from” motivation, this is the same thing.

Four Basic Types of Achievement Goals

So in looking at Mastery and Performance goals it would seem that are performance goals always “bad” right?

Well performance goals aren’t necessarily a “bad”, what research has found is that it depends on whether they involve approach or avoidance motivation.

In his “2 x 2 Achievement Goal matrix,” there are four basic types of achievement motivation:

Mastery approach.
Performance approach.
Non-performance avoidance.
Non-mastery avoidance.

These are the four basic “whys” of achievement behavior.

For example, in business, performance-approach goals orient people towards the bottom line or objective production targets; performance-avoidance goals orient people towards not screwing up in the eyes of others; mastery-approach goals orient people towards skill-development workshops and improving on past performance; and mastery avoidance goals orient people towards maintaining their skills, a concern sometimes seen in older workers who are compensating for cognitive declines.

Research shows that performance approach goals actually do produce greater performance, and it is only when fear of failure enters the picture that difficulties come up.

This makes sense, and is actually reassuring — it would be awkward to have to conclude that competing against others, or trying to reach objective performance standards, is “bad” by definition!

So, what does all this mean for those who want to positively motivate themselves and others?

First, even in the most objective performance condition, try to focus yourself and others on what can be learned and developed in the situation, rather than focusing on the final outcome (success/failure) and its implications.
It is OK, and sometimes even necessary, to also have objective performance goals. However, don’t over-emphasize such goals, if at all possible!
When failures and set-backs occur, be sure not to interpret them as failures of the self or others’ selves (remember only feedback). Instead, keep on thinking of achievement as a process, which takes continued effort and skill-development.

By following this point you will produce the most benefit for yourself and others in the long run.

Let’s Review

In this post, we looked at how we explain past events affects our motivation for the future: internal-stable attributions for success and external-unstable attributions for failure provide the greatest emotional benefits and perhaps subsequent motivation. However, we have to be careful to avoid “self-serving biases” that keep us from learning what needs to be learned!
We also compared “entity” and “incremental” styles of personal ability. Entity type people believe ability is fixed, and are concerned with proving their ability; incremental type people believe ability is changeable, and are concerned with improving their ability.
Entity perspectives are vulnerable when failure occurs, because they tend to make internal-stable attributions for failure and withdraw effort – or, they self-handicap and set up the conditions for further failure (by not sleeping, preparing, etc., for the next achievement situation).
Incremental perspectives can better handle failure — since their true goal is to learn and develop, failure provides valuable information about where they need to focus effort.
Finally, we compared “performance” and “mastery” achievement goals, which go along with entity and incremental self-theories. We looked at performance goals and how they are generally beneficial, as long as they involving approaching success rather than avoiding failure. It is only in the latter case that failing at performance goals produces the “helpless” motivational pattern.

Key References

1. 1 Dweck, C. S. (1999) Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development. New York: Psychology Press.
2. 2 Dweck, C. S. (2002). Beliefs that make smart people dumb. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed), Why smart people can be so stupid (pp. 24-41). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
3. 3 Dweck, C. S., & Leggett, E. L. (1988). A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychological Review, 95(2), 256-273.
4. 4 Dweck, C. S. (1999) Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development. New York: Psychology Press.
5. 5 Elliott, A. J. Shell, M. M., Henry, K. B., & Maier, M. A. (2005). Achievement goals, performance contingencies, and performance attainment: An experimental test Journal of Educational Psychology, 97(4), 630-640.
6. 6 Elliot, A. J. (2006). The hierarchical model of approach-avoidance motivation. Motivation and Emotion, 30(2), 111-116.
7. 7 Elliot, A. J. (2006). The hierarchical model of approach-avoidance motivation. Motivation and Emotion, 30(2), 111-116.