Leading Light | Post-Vacation Blues: How To Improve Productivity At The Workplace

Every leader wants to increase motivation in the workplace and inculcate drive and ambition in people to push toward the company’s vision. But motivation has its limitations. It is not enough to motivate

your employees; you have to inspire them.

Inspiration and motivation are different. Inspiration is something you instil in their hearts, while motivation appeals to the head. And what comes out of the head has a limited shelf life. When you give someone a hike in salary or position, they might be motivated. But that motivation can only stay for a certain number of months or years, at most.

Inspiration, however, runs deeper. When employees feel a sense of connection and belonging toward the company and see themselves as part of it, that motivation transforms into inspiration. And when people are inspired, they put their heart and soul into their work.

How to Inspire People

So how can you inspire people? It requires a personal connection — a human touch. For example, instead of dictating, “I want productivity to increase, I want the turnover to multiply — you all have to work for it,” try a different approach. Involve them in achieving goals: “You know, we need to make this company stronger. What do you think? How can we achieve this? I want to plant this seed in you. Why don’t we sit and discuss? Give me your ideas.”

Ask for their suggestions — but ultimately, do what aligns with your vision, because you can’t implement everyone’s ideas. Still, it’s good to involve them. When people feel part of something, they are far more likely to come up with good and brilliant ideas.

The Power of Teamwork and Skill

In any company, if people are not working as a team, they achieve very little. And if team members compete among themselves, there is nothing left to compete with outside — because internal competition and conflict prevent innovation and progress.

For such issues, teamwork skills are essential. Even in corporate culture, you need skill. Many times, we find things that are not right, but you cannot just jump in directly. It’s like a fabric caught on a thorny bush—you want to remove it, but if you hurry, you’ll tear the fabric. You need the skill to remove it so that neither the thorns are broken nor the cloth torn.

Finding Balance and Energy

Today, among the youth, we see two extremes. On one side, they are slipping into depression and lethargy and don’t want to do anything. On the other, they become so aggressive and angry at the drop of a hat — they lose their sense. Don’t you see these two extremes? Either aggression or depression.

To help them find the middle path and become more productive and dynamic, you need to increase their energy levels. People who’ve been watching reels all night feel exhausted. They wake up thinking, “Oh, I have to go to the office.”

We say HR — human resources — but we have not paid enough attention to developing, cleansing, and energizing this human instrument. It’s like crude oil — you have to refine it before use. In HR, you get crude potential, but through training, you refine it so it can be truly effective. That is where the Art of Living meditation courses have been playing a role for so many years.

The author is a humanitarian leader, spiritual teacher and an ambassador of peace. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.