All good managers with personnel responsibilities will at some point ask themselves a question about motivation. How to create motivation in the employees? You may have some motivated employees who are curious. While others employees are more skeptical. We must relate to everyone. This article will give you three specific tips on how to create motivation for supervision.

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Tip 1: Make them understand why you implement supervision

The most important task when initiating a learning initiative as supervision is to tell why it is important. The employees may experience that the department is on fire, they are tired and overloaded. In such situations, it can be difficult to take a step out, to think why it is important to develop further. Therefore, it is your job to remind them why you still need time for development and learning. Trust is an important aspect.

This approach can trigger the inner motivation and drive of the employees. It is different from, for example, an external reward in the form of payment or gift (Deci and Ryan, 2000). There may be various reasons why you carry out supervision, be it to raise competence, reduce sick leave and stress, or to raise the quality of the services.

Whatever the reason, you may want to spend some time explaining why it matters. For example: Why should we develop competence in this particular area? You may have it clear to you, but someone else needs a little more explanation first.

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Tip 2: Ownership and participation to create motivation

If you allow the employees to take part in the decision, they can experience greater ownership of what is happening. However, it costs a bit to involve everyone. Therefore, many choose to involve some employees who represent the employee group. It must ensure that the supervision is in line with the needs and wishes of the employees.

You should involve some employees to plan the supervision. Both in determining the content of supervision, procedures, and supervision relationships. This is done to ensure that the employees can experience to decide for themselves. When they get to decide, they can experience supervision as more interesting and relevant. Autonomy is important to ensure motivation (Gagne and Deci, 2005).

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Tip 3: Address counter-perceptions and myths

Supervision is widespread and widely used. Therefore, some of the employees may already have a relationship with the supervisor. This relationship can involve positive or negative perceptions. You have to address this.

Tveiten (2019) refers to various counter-perceptions that are because one does not understand what supervision is. For example, she points out someone is afraid that someone from outside will come and tell her how to do her job. This is not supervision, nor is it therapy or without professional grounding. By creating a space to address counter-perceptions, you can correct them by providing training in supervision.

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Discipline and motivation – can we get something from the sport?

Discipline is not a term I hear often in pure pedagogical theory. On the other hand, it is a concept that often is in combination with motivation in sports. Take, for example, training as a starting point. Some days you have a lot of motivation to go to the gym, and other days you do not. Some days it is difficult to make time, it may be cold outside and you are tired. Still, some choose to go to training on those days. You can connect this to discipline. Those who have discipline in sports do not wait for the motivation to come. They go regardless of weather and day form.

Maybe we have something to gain from the sport? I am not saying that one should not focus on inner motivation, voluntariness, and self-determination. But, maybe we should not be so afraid to expect discipline? It does not have to be a concept linked to power or coercion.

Learning and development is not something that should be used as a final effort for which one should be super motivated. It is a continuous process that requires small drips over a long period of time. In order to achieve this continuous form, a certain form of discipline is required. Both with the employees and managers. If discipline is to be expected, then there should be motivation and an understanding of why learning is important.