The Heart of Motivation
Putting Your Thoughts Into Action (Part 8 of 10)

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(…continued from last week)

Pace & Lead the Tone, Tempo & Attitude

A few years ago I was asked to be a keynote speaker to a group of over 500 employees in a corporation going through hard times. The people attending the presentation were all highly stressed and fearful for their jobs. Many were feeling burned out from demands of their jobs. Some attendees were managers who had the responsibility of telling employees that they were getting laid off.

I discussed with the organizer of the conference what the main focus of their overall program would be. Then we brainstormed how I could set a positive tone with my address for the presenters who would follow me and for the audience who really needed a boost.

Think for a moment about giving an address (if you were me) to those people and you were going to try and motivate them to move into a more resourceful state and get them to take action. That alone is a huge task but this presentation was even harder because the entire audience was burned out.

They were grieving over friends who’d lost their jobs, some were angry because they were the ongoing the bearer of bad news, while others felt drained from working 50-60 hours a week in this hostile, often negative environment. There was ongoing pressure from the top down to keep doing their jobs faster, better, leaner, and to produce, produce, produce. And they were basically being instructed to be cheerful and maintain a positive attitude, etc.

What kind of state do you think I needed to be to assist this group? How do you think I’d better look when I walked on the stage? What kind of voice tone, speech, and so on? How energetic do you think I needed to be to get them to buy in?

First, I began by starting at their energy level, fairly quiet, semi-reserved, and straightforward about the hard times. Then I gradually changed my demeanor, my approach, building more passion into what I was saying, lightening up the mood. I was passionate inside, I looked more and more excited. I made their time with me fun by injecting humor. I gave them information they could walk away with and apply immediately to help themselves at work, at home, in a new job, or wherever. I paced the intensity of mood and then I led them up to a place where they all felt more energized and able to cope.

If I had been standing backstage thinking “I’ve got to do this even though they are not going to be receptive, gee I hope I remember what I’m going to say, I hope I don’t look nervous” how do you think the presentation would have gone?

Getting Ready For The Moment

Instead of thinking that way, I focused on “I’m ready, I know what I need to do.” Backstage I was reviewing, I would think about all those things I could do. Instead of dwelling over what I would be doing I cranked up one of my kid’s iPod I’d brought with me. I started listening to fun dance songs specifically loaded to set me on fire. These were songs that made me feel great. You ever listen to music that gives you goose bumps and makes you feel good? That’s what I was doing.

As soon as I felt I wanted to jump, dance, and sing, I was ready to go. I listened to those songs right up until I was ready to go onstage.

By the time I got the go signal and I was introduced, I felt super-charged. When I began my address, internally I was rocking. During the next five minutes I led them from being a quiet group into a group who were laughing, sitting forward, very involved, thinking about what they could do, how they could turn it around, because they could, and the corporation did turn it around.

They began to look as excited as I felt. I could see it in their faces. I had them standing up, moving, doing exercises with partners to help create a more positive emotional state. My passion, my playfulness helped empower them to become as I was.

When our time together was over, the information I gave and the techniques I taught them assisted them in better taking care of themselves. They seemed to be a different group. They looked like they could take on hard times and handle it, and they did.

A few days later, one of the organizers I initially met with called to tell me the attendees raved about what I had done. They liked what I’d shared more than anything else that had happened during the conference. She said she hadn’t found one person that wasn’t applying at least a few of the mental state management processes I taught them. One comment she sent me about from an evaluation said, “I don’t know exactly what Dr. Iverson had, but I want some of it! If I can make myself feel this good just like he does, my life will be different!” And it was.

We all can do that. It’s a choice. It’s a focus. Use your physiology and your brain together to make this happen.

(to be continued…)

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