Take Flight Podcast: Life lessons from a 6 x World Champion

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I’m wondering, how many people wake up each morning and go “yes - work! I can’t wait to get to work!?” I didn’t always. On some days even the lure of a world championships gold medal wasn’t enough.

So what can you do to raise motivation? It's helpful to explore what Dean Spitzer called motivational desires so that we can draw on motivation from the inside rather than being externally motivated. The thing with external motivation such as salary, bonus and rewards is that they’re temporary motivations and if you’re doing the same thing every day, then you need more than that. You need intrinsic motivation, otherwise, you’ll just be miserable.

On some days I was motivated to turn up for training by the competitive nature of the training session ahead and the sense of achievement I’d get from it, on other days it was having a laugh with my teammates that would get me out of my warm cosy bed.

What gets you out of bed each day? Is it a sense of achievement that you crave? Or maybe it’s a desire to make a meaningful contribution?

If you’re a leader, it’s also critical that you have awareness of what drives those in your team. My clients find it illuminating when they identify what motivates them and then realise that it’s not the same as what motivates their team. 

If I was leading a team and my motivations are achievement and recognition, and I’m constantly creating recognition for my team, but they might be driven by affiliation, and they’re all about the people and the team around them, then that’s not going to work. When motivators are not aligned or addressed, you don’t get the best out of people.

It’s important to ask yourself, ‘Am I projecting my top driver onto others?’

When you can identify the motivational drivers of each individual in the team you can then tune in to it and the result is increased motivation and productivity. You’ll find a longer more sustained motivation when it comes from within.

This is just one topic that I discussed with Mark Whittle for this Take Flight podcast. Some other themes included:

• How to develop the winning mindset
• Self-doubt and how to tame your inner critic
• Lessons from adversity
• How authenticity is a huge part of your resilience and builds trust in relationships
• The power of meaning and purpose
• Tops tips on achieving high performance including visualisation, the importance of reflection & review and how to build confidence

We covered a lot and it was a LONG conversation! Stimulating and enjoyable.

Thanks, Mark for inviting me to be a guest, it was great to meet you.

Take a listen here: Take FLIGHT: Anna Hemmings MBE - Life Lessons From A 6x World Champion on Apple Podcasts

There are tons of practical takeaways that you’ll be able to apply immediately!

If you’re looking for an inspirational speaker who can share practical tips and strategies to motivate you and your team on any of the above topics please get in touch.