Harvard Business Review - Energy + Motivation (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series)

Energy and Motivation

HBR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE SERIES

HBR Emotional Intelligence Series

How to be human at work

The HBR Emotional Intelligence Series features smart, essential reading on the human side of professional life from the pages of Harvard Business Review.

Authentic Leadership

Confidence

Dealing with Difficult People

Empathy

Energy and Motivation

Focus

Happiness

Influence and Persuasion

Leadership Presence

Mindful Listening

Mindfulness

Power and Impact

Purpose, Meaning, and Passion

Resilience

Self-Awareness

Virtual EI

Other books on emotional intelligence from Harvard Business Review:

HBR Everyday Emotional Intelligence

HBR Guide to Emotional Intelligence

HBRs 10 Must Reads on Emotional Intelligence

Energy and Motivation

HBR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE SERIES

Harvard Business Review Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Harvard Business Review Press, issuing body.

Title: Energy and motivation / Harvard Business Review.

Other titles: HBR emotional intelligence series.

Description: Boston, Massachusetts : Harvard Business Review Press, [2022] | Series: HBR emotional intelligence series | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022005898 (print) | LCCN 2022005899 (ebook) | ISBN 9781647824365 (paperback) | ISBN 9781647824372 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Employee motivation. | Psychology, Industrial. | Engagement (Philosophy) | Vitality.

Classification: LCC HF5549.5.M63 H37 2022 (print) | LCC HF5549.5.M63 (ebook) | DDC 658.3/14--dc23/eng/20220524

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005898

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005899

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Small wins boost your energy and keep you going.

An interview with Teresa Amabile by Sarah Green Carmichael

Instead of forcing a smile, focus on what you want to do.

By Susan David

It takes more than willpower.

By Heidi Grant

Dont just start strongstay strong.

By Elizabeth Grace Saunders

Tackle even the boring, draining, time-consuming, or anxiety-producing tasks on your list.

By Elizabeth Grace Saunders

Find the energy to keep going by having empathy for othersas well as yourself.

By Annie McKee and Kandi Wiens

Energy is contagious.

By Wayne Baker

Discover what gets you charged up.

By Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg

Get real about how you feel.

By Amy Jen Su

Before you go on, you need to stop.

By Shawn Achor and Michelle Gielan

Keep yourselfand your peoplegoing by focusing on three simple needs.

By Susan Fowler

It comes down to self-expression, experimentation, and purpose.

By Dan Cable

Energy and Motivation

HBR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE SERIES

The Power of Progress

An interview with Teresa Amabile by Sarah Green Carmichael

T eresa Amabile, Harvard Business School professor and a coauthor of The Progress Principle, explains the importance of small wins at work in this edited interview with HBRs Sarah Green Carmichael.

Sarah Green Carmichael:What is the progress principle?

Teresa Amabile: Its the surprising impact of simply making forward movement on meaningful work, on the people who are doing the work. My coauthor, Steven Kramer, and I studied nearly 12,000 daily diaries of people working on creative project teams to look at their inner work life. Inner work life is our term for the perceptions, emotions, and motivations that people experience as they react to and make sense of the events in their workday.

What we found was that when peoples inner work lives were more positive, they performed better. We asked ourselves, if inner work life has such an impact on performance, what leads to good inner work life? We found that, of all the things that can drive people in their work and make them feel good about it, the single most important is simply making progress on work that they find meaningful. Thats the progress principle.

That sounds simple, but I think weve all had days when we felt like we werent making much progress. So how much progress do you really need to make to get that feeling?

Surprisingly little. We call this the power of small wins. For example, a computer programmer was trying to track down a bug in a program, and simply solving that little problem led to an extraordinarily positive inner work life that day. Tackling that bug yielded great emotions, very powerful motivation, and positive perceptions of the work environment. Fixing a bug is a seemingly small thing. But we found that 28% of really minorseemingly trivialevents had a strong impact on peoples inner work lives in the positive direction and, unfortunately, in the negative direction, too.

What happens when that negative direction takes hold?

Unfortunately, with all kinds of work events, negative is stronger than positive. The negative inner work life impact of having a setback, for example, is two to three times stronger than the positive impact of making progress. So its particularly important to avoid the minor hassles that can derail peoples work during the average workday.

If youd like to harness the power of these small wins and hopefully avoid some of the hassles, and youd like to feel like youre making more progress, what should you do?

Theres a lot that people can do for themselves to try to harness the progress principle. The most important is to focus. Many people in organizations are under a lot of time pressure, feeling high workload pressure. Its really easy to slip into being on a treadmill. Thats our term for running all the time, feeling like youre juggling a lot of balls that are thrown at you, but not making real progress on the important work thats really going to use your creative brain, and that the organization really needs to become the innovative leader in its field.