Motivating people to work harder or be more productive seems to be an ever growing trend. Many companies are hiring motivational speakers to teach their employees how to be more productive and enjoy working harder. Employees listen intensely to the inspirational words of the speakers hoping to apply that wisdom. Bad attitudes and laziness is blamed for less than optimum performance, and the audience becomes overwhelmed with guilt. The better the speaker the guiltier the audience becomes. It all seems like a church meeting is occurring, and the subject is sin. Bad attitudes and laziness is claimed to be the sin responsible for less than optimum performance, and the audience is ready to accept the message of deliverance from the speaker.
These new motivational methods are a big advance over the primitive methods used on slave ships where the only motivation to work harder or be more productive was the whip. The more the whip was used the harder you worked; it was as simple as that. Getting fired and starving to death was a fear that workers in most jobs had, and that alone kept them motivated to work harder. Latter on it was discovered that married men with lots of children to support made the best employees. They needed no motivation to work harder and be more productive; the voices in their heads of their needy children kept them working at the fastest clip possible. The employees of today have no whips over their heads, or any chance of starving to death if fired. There are lots of jobs available and losing this one is no tragedy. The motivation to work harder and be more productive is now disappearing in the workforce. This is the reason that the motivational speaker has become the new preacher. The lack of ambition is taught to be equated with laziness which is has now become the biggest sin. This new method works and companies that hire motivational speakers have updated the quality of their employees.
As a vending machine salesman that had to go from business to business trying hard to sell at least one machine a day, I realized the importance of maintaining a positive attitude, without it I couldn't go on. The job required me to make at least 15 calls a day; one of those calls usually produced a sale. My working day was spent going up-hill motivated by the positive attitude that I was taught to have. The fear of becoming a lazy loser kept me going. I quit that job to become a mail room clerk in a large retail store, because I no longer could take the stress. The new job just required the completion of some simple tasks. The pay was much less, but I now had peace of mind, less either a positive or negative attitude. Where is it written that it is important to get the most out of yourself? Those that settle for less don't necessarily have to have a bad or good attitude.
Article Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Work-And-Motivation&id=575419
