I’m not sure we can ever really take 100% responsibility for keeping our team engaged and motivated. They need to help too. We’ve all been in situations where we are treating all our folks the same way, and some are upbeat and energized and others are just plain miserable. We can’t force anyone to feel a certain way.

But, we CAN focus on ourselves! To stay motivated, there are 2 important things we MUST do:

1. Find the “Why” behind our careers/company. If you’re just in business for the money, then it’s just a job. Why does your firm exist? What would your customers/clients lack if you didn’t do what you do? I can honestly say that I could die tomorrow and know my life mattered because every single day I am blessed to impact my clients’ lives and businesses.

They say when you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. That’s true. It’s not the coaching that wears me out – that energizes me! It’s the networking and selling and billing and collecting and taxes, etc. etc. – – all the stuff that’s NOT coaching. But then I come back to WHY I do that stuff – to impact people’s lives and businesses – and it’s all worthwhile!

2. We all need to keep our “energy barrels” full. In business today, you could easily work 24X7 and never get done everything it is possible to do! If we don’t take care of ourselves , if we don’t put on our oxygen masks first, we won’t be any good to our business, clients, family, or anyone else that matters in our lives. I think of my clients as human thoroughbreds. Just like winning racehorses, we all need good food, good sleep, exercise, grooming, etc. Then we can run our best race.

Leaders can only get time off if they have previously put in place the structures that enable the business to run day-to-day without them. Many times we get stuck working IN the business so much that we never work ON our business. That’s risky enough, but then we risk burnout when we never take time off.

The real solution is to promote ourselves to our REAL job, which is to be a leader focused on growing a healthy, happy business, while letting our employees be the employees! Our job should be to hire smart and position our people for success and then go do the job only we can do.