Neuro-Sculpting! Training Studio

Mental Focus - External Pressure is inferior to Strategic Internal Pressure 

          Motivation is pressure, whether externally driven by other people, situations, and events, or internally created by our own thoughts and emotions about what it will mean to achieve a certain thing. When a person feels motivated, what they are feeling is physiological pressure in their central nervous system. As a manager of a Team (and manager of YOURSELF), you can take advantage of this phenomenon to bring greater success to your organization, its Team Members, and your own life.

          When working to inspire better Mental Focus from the people on your Team, one of the best tools of influence you as the Team Leader can master is the ability to spark beneficial internal pressure that moves a Team Player to excel past their current level of performance so that they become a better, more secure person in the process. Consider the following approach for integration into your own method for getting the most out of your Team.

          The right motivational strategy uplifts everyone involved with the Team, stimulating creativity, productivity, and rapport, while preventing stagnation, weak output, and friction. Here are five constants of Team Psychology that you should keep in mind when trying to influence the people on your team to stay focused, mentally.

1. Force begets an equal, opposite reaction. Force is inferior to Pressure and makes both Leader and Team Player miserable.
2. External pressure has no lasting effect on personal Mental Focus, and over time leads to an opposite result of distraction in the form of negativity and resentment.
3. Internal pressure - brought on by inspired, creative, flexible guidance from a source who has the Team Player's best interest at heart - not only lasts a long time, but can cause such a momentum of positive results that it becomes self-perpetuating until the Team Player becomes independently self-motivating.
4. When a Team Leader wants only good things for the Team Player, that selflessness naturally expresses itself by that Team Leader showing genuine interest in the Team Player - asking helpful questions about what is most important to them, becoming familiar with their beliefs and values, and finding a way to tie those things to the Team objectives so that both Team and Player enjoy a win-win scenario.
5. The wise Team Leader pays careful attention to the nature of the pressure (external vs. internal, positive vs. negative) moving his or her own self, making adjustments to maintain valuable, uplifting momentum within themselves. Few things make managing and motivating a Team as unbearable as being compelled by fear or desperation.

          When you understand the full depth of these five constants, managing internal pressure can easily be carried out by partnering with your Team Player to find out:

1. What they want most (goals and rewards),
2. What consequences they want most to avoid (failure, shame, etc.)

          You can then design a strategy that continually keeps what's most important within the scope of their daily attention. The more they focus on what they want - the more they habitually refer to the definitive plan of action related to productivity on the Team - the more natural, motivating internal pressure they'll have to compel them forward to reach the mark.

T. Lavon Lawrence
Author, NEURO-SCULPTING!© Certified Mental Fitness Trainer
The NEURO-SCULPTING!© Mental Fitness Training Studio
www.neuro-sculpting.com
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