Mautz - Find the fire: ignite your inspiration--and make work exciting again

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Praise for

Find the Fire

This isnt just a book about how to be motivated and work hard. Its about how to get inspired or, if your inspiration is waning, how to get re-fired so that you can do work that matters.

David Burkus,
Author, Under New Management

If youve lost that spark at work or want to help someone who has, you face a problem. Most people dont think they can inspire. If you want to understand inspiration so you can do it, Scott Mautzs book will help. Hes thought about it deeply, clearly from experience, and explains it so you can understand and practice inspiration more. His key insight that we were inspired at one time points to a simple strategy most people miss: to undo losing it, which is easier and more effective than creating it from scratch. His writing is playful, too; a refreshing change from many overly serious or heavy books.

Joshua Spodek
Author, Leadership Step by Step

FIND
THE
FIRE

SCOTT MAUTZ

IGNITE YOUR INSPIRATION
AND MAKE WORK EXCITING AGAIN

by Scott Mautz

FIND
THE
FIRE

YOU KNOW THE feeling.

Your pulse quickens. You can feel the energy welling up inside, thrusting everything else to the peripheral. You can sense the power of possibility while your mind races without constraint. Youre filled with a sense of excitement and feel compelled to take action. Youre ready... to... go.

No, not gassiness.

Inspiration.

The most powerful, catalyzing programming we have on our internal hard drive. The Holy Grail of enthusiasm.

Its power extends even beyond that of motivation. Motivation is the pragmatic consequence of inspiration; its that engineer in you that proceeds in a step-by-step fashion with marching orders in hand until it achieves its goal.

Inspiration is a three-beers-in guitar solo. It yields a moment of galvanizing energy and vision that precedes motivation and shoves it into action.

With motivation, we take hold of an idea and run with it.

With inspiration, an idea takes hold of us.

Inspirations rsum is Navy SEAL impressive. Research has clearly linked it to the enhancement of well-being and the sense that one is living a full life. Inspiration produces moments that fill us and move us, stirring us to our greatest accomplishments. It has built jaw-dropping buildings and torn down oppressive walls. It has woven spellbinding pages, spit in the face of terrorism with heroic acts, pitched the winning bold idea to the conservative client, hit the shot at the buzzer, started a business on a shoestring, taught English in the jungle, burst breathtaking beauty onto a canvas, and finally taken that accounting class.

Its a force that makes things so.

So... where has yours gone?

And why isnt it at work for you?

Youre not alonefar too many of us no longer feel a sense of inspiration at work. In fact, research shows that over 70 percent of us have lost that loving feeling.

The sense of inspiration was always there when you started your career (or even your current job); it was everywhere. Everywhere, that is, before transaction replaced transcendence, and process supplanted possibility. Before your impact started to dwindle and you felt yourself shrinking. Before monotony replaced magic. Before you started working for that boss youd describe at best as milquetoast or at worst as soul-sucking.

By the way, you wont get much help on that last front, unfortunately.

Research shows that 55 percent of employees cite the ability to inspire as the single most important leadership attribute they want from their boss, and yet only 11 percent say their current manager is inspiring.

Yupyour boss thinks hes inspirational like in Good Will Hunting, while you daydream of hunting for another job.

The scarcity of inspiration is clearly having an impact on us, as another global study reported that just 12 percent of employees worldwide feel optimistic at work.

That cant be good.

Research shows that optimism is the single biggest predictor of resiliency and even has the power to undo the negative effects of a stressful experience. So, its really not something you want to try to do without.

Still another study showed that among leaders receiving the lowest percentile scores for inspirational ability, productivity was dreadful. Some 56 percent of employees working for such bosses negatively self-rated their productivity (but positively self-rated their impulsivity for taking a hammer to their temple).

And when we do manage to eke out some inspiration at work, its hard to hold onto. Almost 70 percent of us find it hard to stay inspired at work.

The message here is dont wait around for your leaders to inspire you and keep you inspired. Apparently theres a landfill worth of books on How to be an inspirational leader still gathering dust on the bedside nightstands of leaders everywhere.

Its time to take the matter into your own hands.

Now, I know that conventional logic tells you that you need to be inspired by external forcesyou cant ignite your own pilot light. I know common beliefs and classic historical accounts will tell you that you have to be patientinspiration is a mysterious, fickle force that will appear when its good and ready, a force over which you have no control, like David Hasselhoff.

I disagree.

While I will grant you that inspiration can be elusive, it can, in fact, be codified and coaxed. You dont have to helplessly wait around for it to happen to youyou can create the conditions where inspiration is much more likely to occur.

And Ill show you how.

Frankly, the prevailing wisdom isnt doing a whole lot for us. As the data clearly shows, we arent exactly prevailing in the inspired at work department.

So, lets get on with the art and science of self-inspiring. As the Russian composer Tchaikovsky advised on finding inspiration, If we wait for the mood, without endeavoring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic.