Choice is a Challenge

I gave a presentation on Friday morning to a large group of middle school teachers working in the Alvarado part of Los Angeles. Like many of my clients, motivation (and a lackthereof) is the primary topic to address. We spent 2 hours together. We defined motivation, broke it down, talked about "how to talk to kids about failure" but the one activity I was primarily interested in was the "choice activity" mentioned in the prior blog. Choice, and consciously selecting to engage in an activity, is the entry point of motivated behavior. Having people understand they control their situation and have ownership is critical to the later discussion about the activity itself. If people don't own the task, they can't control subsequent behaviors related to it. It would be like the band member that continually blames someone else for missing a beat rather than take some amount of ownership. "I choose to continue being in a band with this knucklehead" might be one way to look at this.

Anyway, the group was directed to generate a list of things at the school site that brought them aggravation and/or frustration. At the conclusion of this exercise, I asked them to convert 3 of the statements to "I choose" activities. Most of the group felt engaged. Most of the group did, however, feel challenged. I worked with two particular groups that were struggling to understand the concepts and it highlighted the notion that many people do struggle to internalize challenges because they don't, or can't, see themselves as a responsible party to an organizational challenge.

One of my quests in working with educators in challenging environments is to help coach them into a mental shift towards responsibility, ownership, proactivity and collaboration. I notice, overwhelmingly, that newer teachers tend to possess these attributes far more often than veteran teachers.

Bottom line, I was reminded that choice is a challenge. Motivation is hard. But, educators take a silent vow to not lose hope and quit. I hope they do because the children take their cues from them. Many educators recently received their "pink slips" and were notified that they might be out of work in a few weeks. Their choice on response will be directly internalized by many young people out there on how to respond to adversity. As I have a tendency to point out...be careful, the children are always watching...