Staying Motivated for Others

A few months ago when I had contacted a recruitment agency to hire more sales staff, I had an interesting conversation with the woman who runs the agency. I was describing the kind of person I wanted to hire for the position of a sales manager and I said that aside from speaking English reasonably well, and having a sense of customer service, the candidate needs to be a motivated person who wants to move ahead in her career. The woman replied saying that most people are used to just taking orders rather than thinking for themselves and taking initiative. I feel that is so true of many people, at a variety of levels. Most of us settle into a comfort zone and a kind of complacency where we are just doing our everyday tasks without striving for more. I know that I too am often guilty of this. I go through my phases of high motivation levels, but I tend to burn myself out and then spend so much time recovering that I may as well have done things at a steady pace in the first place. But what is it that helps people to stay motivated?

When I quit my job in New York a few years ago to intern for two designers, I worked for free and used up all my savings. As a general rule I think unpaid internships are a bad idea- I think hard working people need to be rewarded in some way- but for me it was an opportunity to do something in fashion, a field that I knew so little about, and get some exposure before I moved back to Chennai and started my own company. That fact that I didn’t get paid for my work didn’t affect my level of motivation, but what did help was being around highly motivated and driven people (and when my managers weren’t motivated, it definitely set a more laid-back atmosphere that I would imbibe).

I think about Brass Tacks pretty much all the time, awake or asleep. Sometimes I am tired but do my work anyway because I “have to”, and at other times I am really motivated and positive, and do my work with enthusiasm. At all times however, my goal is very clear to me (that I need to put in this effort in order to reach the next step).

Lately, I’ve not been feeling very motivated. The long drives to work, the slow activity at the store, and just the relentless amounts of work have left me feeling a bit frustrated, tired and unmotivated. At times like these I really miss being in an environment where I am surrounded by highly motivated people who are passionate about what they do. If I feel this way about my own business, I can only imagine how my sales staff feel on days when few customers walk into the store. So perhaps it all boils down to how motivated I am, because the energy that I exude does affect my surroundings. I need to spend more time at the store (rather than in the comfort of my home office) to create a stimulating work environment for them. And since there is a high turnover rate with sales staff, there really is no permanent solution to this.