[sanjamia]

The hardest thing I’ve ever solved is finding 30 years of motivation. I co-founded a family business, or it co-founded me, because I was only 14. From inception to exit, it was an interesting intellectual and emotional challenge to keep 50-100 people motivated at any one time, including me. Coding was fun but talking to an angry customer was less so. Eventually, survival instincts kicked in and taught me that creativity and learning was the solution. Everything happened for a reason, and that reason was usually hidden under multiple layers—for staff, customers, or me. I found I became motivated by avoiding reaction, and instead seeing that there was already a motivation behind every interaction, like boredom, anger, and ambivalence. Understanding these individual motivations provided clarity as to what needed to change to maximize team motivation. This made hard problems palatable (and motivating) for an old-school techie, like me.

[phkahler]

>> Everything happened for a reason, and that reason was usually hidden under multiple layers—for staff, customers, or me. I found I became motivated by avoiding reaction, and instead seeing that there was already a motivation behind every interaction, like boredom, anger, and ambivalence. Understanding these individual motivations provided clarity as to what needed to change to maximize team motivation.

At the risk of over generalizing it sounds like you learned to empathize. Sounds like you found that to be a key to success!

[sanjamia]

That’s insightful.