One of the things I do is teach Industrial – Organizational Psychology at Xavier University.  As I was preparing a lecture on employee training I was reminded of just how important it is to have motivated employees go through the training.  No matter how brilliantly you’ve designed a training program, no matter how engaging your speaker is, no matter how relevant your training program is to their jobs it won’t matter if the employee doesn’t want to learn.

Nothing can overcome someone who is feeling lazy or apathetic towards learning.

Isn’t this true in all areas of our lives?

If we aren’t motivated to learn we’ll never excel.  Because there isn’t anything you do that doesn’t require some level of learning.  To play a new game you need to learn.   To get a new job you need to learn.  To read a book you need to learn. Everything requires learning on some level.

Yet we only end up doing those things that truly motivate us to learn.

We can help people be motivated to learn.  We can help them understand how to bring personal meaning to their work.  We can even present information that is easy to digest and interesting to hear.  But at the end of the day, motivation is often an individual choice.

photo provided by flickr