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What did you learn from the experience? What opportunities could have emerged from not achieving
what you set out to do?

8. Afraid to get others involved? Polish your sales pitch. Taking action requires that you get others
on board. You need their input, their support, their ideas. Work on your influencing and selling skills.
Lay out the business reason for the action. Think about how you can help everybody win by taking
action. Get others to buy in before you have to take action. Involved people are easier to influence.
Learn better negotiation skills. Learn to bargain and trade.

Want to learn more? Take a deep dive…

Ancowitz, N. (2009, September 18). Introverts: Manage your perfectionism and reduce your agita!
Psychology Today.

Editor in Chief, Pick the Brain. (2007, October 3). 7 Ways to overcome the fear of failure. Pick the
Brain.

Litt, M. (2012). Why you have to fail to have a great career: Michael Litt at TEDxUW [YouTube].
TED.

9. Don’t see the importance? Get the bigger picture. Sometimes a task or a project seems pointless.
You just don’t see why you have to expend time and energy on it. You’d much rather focus on
something else. Well, you were given this assignment for a reason. The goal you set to get the job
done defines what you need to do and how you’ll get there. What’s sometimes missing is the why.
What does your task contribute to? What difference does it make to the organization? Where does
your piece of the puzzle fit in? If you don’t know, chances are you’ll be lacking the motivation to get it
done. Find out what’s going on in the organization. Understand where your function fits in. Read the
latest financial report. Familiarize yourself with the organizational goals. Learn how important the
work of your team is to achieving these. Read marketing literature. Talk to colleagues in different
functions. Track the path from your goal to the overall objectives of the organization. See it as part of
the full picture. Describe the consequences if you don’t move forward with a sense of urgency.

10. Lost your passion? Focus on your interests. Have you run out of gas? Is your heart not in it
anymore? Not 100% committed? Been doing the same sort of work a long time and bored with it?
Made the same decisions time and time again? Worked with the same people? You may not be able
to change all of this, but you can make the best of it. List what you like and don’t like to do.
Concentrate on doing at least a couple of your preferred activities each day. Work to delegate or task
trade the things that are no longer motivating to you. Do your least favorite activities first; focus not on
the activity, but your sense of accomplishment. Change your work activity to mirror your interests as
much as you can. Volunteer for new projects that will stretch your skills and make you flex different
muscles.

11. Can’t get motivated? Find a compelling purpose to pull you along. Some assignments have you
leaping out of bed in the morning to get going. Others make you want to reset the alarm. Throwing
yourself into something you’re not inspired to do is hard going. A status update report you loathe
writing. Sales activity number-crunching that is so tedious to pull together. The Pacific Institute’s Lou
Tice emphasized the importance of turning “have tos” into “want tos.” An update report is just a report
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