I’ve been reading loads of different books recently about different ways to motivate or inspire. In part because as I move along the coaching ladder I wanted to open my mind for new ways to inspire not just my RunPals and TriPals but work pals as well. I was just reading another chapter from “The surprising truth about what motivates us” by Daniel Pink, when notifications started coming from my RunPals group on Facebook.
The RunPals group has been busy getting their kilometres in for our “Run to Paris” challenge and they keep piling on the KM’s. With less than 24 hours to go, I feel the need to get out for one more run this month, and it’s because of this amazing group of people.
This awesome group of pals have been sharing the love, sharing their achievements and inspiring each other to add extra kilometres to the “standard” 5km run distances. We’ve got one team of ladies (Vin Rouge) in particular who have been actually amazing. They said they’re not runners, but as I write, their team is in second place and 3 of the ladies have just broken 100km monthly distance, with some having never gotten over 20km before! How fricken cool is that?!
Their enthusiasm is infectious. You can tell when they log another run, that there’s almost a ripple of cursing as we realise that we too need to get out there and put another run in! I say we are cursing, but secretly, we’re glad they pushed us. After that first kilometre getting out the door, 9 times out of 10, we enjoy it. And this month, 9 out of my runs have been due to their amazingness.
How does it link back to motivation and some of the text I’ve been digesting?
I guess I can summarise that you don’t need a carrot and stick situation to motivate someone to achieve something. Yes, this months challenge would offer bragging rights to the team that reached Paris first, but that’s about it. What happened next is purely down to teams working together and inspiring each other to achieve greatness. There is no financial reward. There is no medal. There is nothing more than the ability to take pride in accomplishing some amazing personal goals.
So how do you motivate? You share a common goal. A shared objective. You bring people together to work towards something amazing. You let people get on with it and amazing things will happen.
Thank you RunPals, you continue to inspire me to love doing what I do and I wouldn’t be able to keep this going if you lot didn’t motivate me to do so!
Cheers
Matt
If you want to join in the fun, join our groups off the page facebook.com/TheRunPals and get inspired.