Your Boss – The Great Demotivator???

Demotivation can be defined as the “lack of interest in and enthusiasm about your work” – sound familiar.

Before I discuss the impact of “Your Boss - The Great Demotivator” – I need to provide you some context on one of the things I find amazing about humanity.

Have you ever noticed that it takes an incredible amount of time (days, weeks, years, even eons), effort and money to build something of great complexity, importance, and value to our society – while we can destroy that same thing in seconds - literally.

Don’t believe me – watch this video.

Here are some historical facts to help solidify my premise. The AfE-Turm ('AfE Tower') was a 38-story (32 office floors), 116 m (381 ft.) skyscraper in the west end district of Frankfurt, Germany. The tower started being conceived in 1961. Once it was approved and the land secured; it took 2 years to build and was finished in 1972 at a cost of 60,000,000 DM (in today’s dollars that would be about $250,000,000 CAD). It was used primarily as a library (24 floors) and was the permanent workplace for 300 people while enabling 2500 students to utilize the facilitate at any one time.

Like I said some things that man creates (like this building) can take an incredible amount of time, effort, and money; and you just watched it be completely destroyed in a matter of seconds.

Demotivation by your Boss (or other people that are important in your life) can happen as quickly as the building being demolished. And it is just as devastating to your morale and commitment to the company where you work. It’s up to you not to let everything you worked for get destroyed so easily.

We’ve all been there; you spend the vast majority of your time doing a good (if not great) job for your organization. Hopefully, your Boss acknowledges, appreciates, and rewards you for it your work; and as a result, you feel positive, productive, efficient, excited, happy, or as we say “motivated”.

Staying motivated can take a lot of time and effort and with one mistake, one missed deliverable, one embarrassing criticism in front of your colleagues by your Boss and you can slip into a level of demotivation that can potentially destroy your career.

Unfortunately, this demotivation can spiral out of control and manifests itself in people thinking that they are being victimized by their Boss. Once that happens they can become a cancer to the rest of their colleagues. You’ve seen it manifest itself – clique’s form, constant sarcasm, palpable negativity, constant excuses or finger-pointing, and eventually turnover.

You can blame your Boss because they don’t tell you that you are wonderful every day. Sure, maybe he or she really is a jerk – but my point is that – you choose how you feel, how you choose to react, you choose how you address the situation, you are always in control – no one else and no one else to blame!

Demotivation can be defined as “the lack of interest in and enthusiasm about your work” and since you are the only person that can “motivate” yourself – then you have no one else to blame when you are “demotivated".

As I said in my Motivation Blog – Motivation – it’s all on you and if you are looking to get it from your Boss – you’re looking in the wrong place – your boss can only demotivate you – if you allow that to happen.

Okay – so am I full of crap or do you agree – looking forward to hearing your opinions, comments and criticism - don't worry it won't demotivate me 😊. Please register or come back soon to read more of JT's Brain Dumps.