One of my main activities at the moment is supporting clients set up and run Reverse Mentoring programmes.  As part of this one of the things I do is lead and support groups of Mentors, many of them digital natives, and part of this includes building and driving an online community for them.  Today I thought of starting a Monday Motivation stream and as such I was looking for motivational quotes.

As you can probably imagine the internet is full of motivational quotes – but I actually found quite few were far from motivational.  Many of them essentially were telling me to work hard if I want to succeed – not rocket science but I do not find being told I need to work hard that motivational either.  For me the motivation is what is driving me to work hard – hard work in itself is not the motivation for me!

I also found some of them could also have a detrimental effect, particular on the younger digital native Mentors who are just starting their careers.  Some of them imply that if you only work hard enough you will succeed and everything will be okay.  From experience I know that sometimes no matter how hard you work at something it still fails.  I also know that sometimes you simply cannot work that hard (for example due to ill health) – what do you then?  Does that make you a failure?

But what about when talent does work hard?  Where does that put you if you don’t have talent?

I think far more helpful for my young mentors is to understand that working hard and trying is important but also to understand that if your heart is not in it, or if circumstances are unfavourable, you may not succeed … and that that is not the end of the world, as long as you can pick yourself up and move on.  One of the most valuable lessons I have learnt is to accept that there are days, or bits of work, that just do not go well – and that I should not blame myself (well unless of course it really was my fault!).  I learnt that sometimes it is okay to just sit back and take a breather.  Sometimes it is okay to have a lazy day.  Sometimes shit just happens – and you will need to find your own way to deal with this, whether it be taking a sofa day or hitting the gym or working harder.  Dwelling on what went wrong to try to find the lesson to learn (because these quotes tell us to learn from the bad) sometimes is just not healthy or productive – sometimes we need to just accept, close the door and move on.

I also learnt that sometimes you just have to work through the bad – and that it will not get better no matter how hard you work at it so you have to find ways to motivate yourself through it.  Hard work does not always lead to success but is part of life.  You need to find your own personal, and ideally non-work related, thing to motivate you through the bad days, whether it be a holiday of a lifetime or that new dress you want.  You also need to balance your motivators with big things (the holiday) as well as small short-term achievable things (such as the dress).

Finally working in reverse mentoring I think it is also important to understand that what drove success 10 years ago may not be the same thing that drives success today or that will drive success in 10 years time.  The meaning of “working hard” and how we work has changed considerably, and will no doubt continue to change.   In the past working hard might have a meant a 9-5 day working in an office but today it could mean more flexible schedules and working remotely.  Today’s leaders will need to start leading differently to deal with the changing dynamics driven by technology and societal change.  Whilst we need to learn from past and existing leaders, equally today’s leaders need to learn from the younger generations because that is where future success lies.  That is what makes reverse mentoring such a valuable tool – and this is what motivates me to work hard in this space.