Where Did My Motivation Go? Three Places Leaders Should Look

Most leaders go through periods when they feel less motivated at work. Sometimes the reason is fairly obvious. You’ve been working too hard, a difficult project has dragged on for months, or you simply need a break. Other times, the loss of motivation is harder to explain, particularly when there is nothing obviously wrong.

You may still like the organization and the people you work with. You may have the confidence of the people around you, and have plenty of meaningful work ahead. Yet you notice that you are procrastinating more. Things that would once have interested you feel like work. You have less patience for another meeting or organizational priority. You start wondering what has happened to your energy.

I hear versions of this fairly often in coaching conversations. Experienced leaders can be particularly puzzled by it because, by many measures, things are going well. They have worked hard to get where they are and may genuinely value the role they have. That can make it difficult to know what to do with the feeling that they simply aren't as engaged as they used to be.

One useful place to start is with the conditions that help us sustain motivation.

Three conditions that support motivation

Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan spent decades studying human motivation. Their Self-Determination Theory identifies three basic psychological needs that play an important role in motivation and well-being: autonomy, competence and relatedness.

In everyday terms, we need some sense of agency in what we do, opportunities to feel capable and continue developing, and meaningful connection with other people. How well those needs are being met can change considerably over the course of a career, even when our job title stays the same.

That makes the framework a useful check-in when your motivation has been low for more than a difficult week or two. Consider what has been happening with your own experience of autonomy, competence and relatedness, and whether something has changed.

Autonomy: How much agency do you have?

Autonomy is about having a meaningful sense of choice and agency in what you do. This can become complicated as you move into more senior leadership roles.

Executives generally have significant authority, yet they can also have surprisingly little control over their working lives. Calendars fill with standing meetings, governance requirements, urgent requests, operational issues and other people's priorities. There is always another decision that needs to be made and another person who needs some of your time.

I’ve had leaders describe the experience of looking at their calendar and realizing there is almost no time in the week that they have chosen for themselves. That can impact us, particularly when the work that originally attracted us to leadership has gradually been crowded out.

If your motivation has changed, take a look at how much of your work still feels self-directed. Are you spending enough time on work you consider important? Are there responsibilities you have continued to carry long after someone else could take them on? Have commitments accumulated without ever being reconsidered? Is there work you want to be doing that never seems to make it onto the calendar? Even in highly constrained roles, there may be opportunities to reclaim some choice over where you put your attention.

Competence: Are you still learning?

Competence is our need to feel effective and capable and to have opportunities to develop our abilities.

Earlier in a career, opportunities to experience growth are everywhere. New roles bring unfamiliar problems. You acquire skills quickly. You can often see the difference between what you were capable of a year ago and what you can handle now.

For experienced leaders, that progression can become less visible. You have seen many of the situations before. You recognize patterns quickly. You know how to prepare for the board meeting, manage the difficult stakeholder, lead the planning process or work through an organizational problem. Experience makes you more effective, and some of the work that once stretched you becomes familiar.

At some point, it’s worth asking where you are still learning. Think about the last time you had to develop a genuinely new capability, wrestle with a problem you weren't sure you could solve, or work at something long enough to notice yourself getting better at it.

Sometimes a leader who feels disengaged has simply been drawing on the same well-developed capabilities for a long time. Finding a new source of challenge may mean taking on something unfamiliar, changing the mix of work in the role, developing a new capability, or spending more time on problems that require deeper thinking.

Relatedness: What has happened to your connections?

The third need, relatedness, is about our sense of connection and belonging with other people.

This deserves particular attention in leadership because senior roles can gradually become isolating. The number of people with whom you can speak freely may become smaller. Relationships change as your responsibilities change. Your days can become a series of purposeful conversations about decisions, problems, deliverables and performance. Over time, there may simply be less of the human connection that once made work enjoyable.

I think this is easy for leaders to overlook. We tend to examine the content of the job when we’re unhappy with it: the workload, the mandate, the organizational structure, the next career move. The quality of our relationships at work can have just as much influence on how we experience our days.

Think about who you spend time with now. Which relationships give you energy? Where can you be candid? Who challenges your thinking? Who do you enjoy working with? Are there people you used to spend time with whom you rarely see anymore? A change in those relationships may help explain why the same job feels different than it did a year or two ago.

The same questions can help you understand your team

This framework is also useful when you notice a change in someone you lead. A previously engaged employee may contribute less, show less initiative or seem less interested in work that used to energize them. It is easy to focus on the change in behaviour and wonder whether their commitment has changed.

Before drawing a conclusion, consider what’s been happening around them. A reorganization may have reduced their sense of ownership. Someone who has been in the same role for several years may have fewer opportunities to learn. Changes in a team, a difficult relationship with a colleague, or a new reporting structure may have affected their sense of connection.

These are useful areas to explore in conversation. You might simply tell the person what you have noticed and ask how they are experiencing their work these days. From there, you can explore where they feel energized, where they feel stuck, what they would like more of, and what has changed.

A check-in worth doing from time to time

Before you decide you need a new job, a sabbatical or a cabin in the woods, it’s worth checking these three things.

Autonomy, competence and relatedness won't explain every fluctuation in motivation. We all have stretches when work is demanding, life outside work is taking more of our attention, or we are simply tired. When the feeling lasts, though, these three areas are worth examining.

Take a piece of paper and write down the three headings: autonomy, competence and relatedness. Give yourself a few minutes with each one. Where is this need being met in your work right now? Where is it weak? What has changed over the past year? What is within your control to influence?

You may find that there are relatively small adjustments that would make a meaningful difference: reclaiming some time, delegating work you have outgrown, taking on a challenge that interests you, reconnecting with people you value, or having a conversation that has been overdue.

You may also discover something larger about what you want from this stage of your career. Either way, you will have more useful information than you had when the question was simply, “Why am I not feeling motivated?”

At the very least, it gives you somewhere more useful to look than your inbox.