Motivation... If We Understand It Better, How Can We Lead People To Their Passion?

Since I was around ten years old I knew my passion was education, I think it began while I was helping my Dad coach my 6-year old brother's soccer team.  The same motivation I was trying to instill in the 6 year olds to play better soccer, I now strive to do with my faculty... That being said, although they may seem like 2 completely different scenarios, I believe more and more that the MOTIVATION, be it of 6 year olds or professional adults are not that dissimilar.

Being a big sports nut and ex-coach (I retired :)) many leadership books written by coaches truly resonate with me.  Being an avid Notre Dame fan, one of the first books I picked up in terms of "leadership" is a book by Lou Holtz: Wins, Losses, and Lessons...


What Coach Holtz addresses and hits upon better than most is his on-going quest to find different passions and more importantly, the idea of being part of something much bigger than yourself.  His emphasis on leading others to their passion and finding what motivates not only his players, but his assistant coaches, is something that should resonate with all educational leaders.

Holtz on Passion:

"As far as a passion is concerned, everybody needs four things in life: everybody needs something to do, someone to love, something to hope for, and something to believe in. You have to have those four things."

Holtz says "you can pay people to perform, but you can't pay them to excel".

How do you get your faculty and staff to excel? Does the need or want to excel come from themselves, or can we, as leaders, draw that out of people?

In closing....

"...You can delete people that aren't motivated, but if somebody is not motivated, it is simply because [he or she does not] have any goals or aspirations. The reason so many people do not aspire for greatness is because they do not know how good they can be, or they are afraid of failure, or afraid that they may not reach it. Your job as a coach is to show people how good they can be, and get them to think in terms of getting better in different areas of their life. The trust, the commitment, and the care certainly help. Just getting people to have something they want to accomplish with their life [is vital]. Then, show them how they can do it."-from leadernetwork.org



YOU GOTTA BELIEVE!!!