Self-Motivation for Professional Practitioners

Book excerpt: For professional practitioners in the human services to successfully fulfill their important job roles they must be highly motivated. In many human service agencies, however, practitioners encounter situations that can seriously impede their motivation to work diligently as well as reduce their enjoyment on the job. For example, working with limited resources, unrealistic caseloads, problematic supervision, or interfering events beyond an agency’s control (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic) can all reduce practitioner motivation and work enjoyment. This book describes how human service practitioners can achieve and maintain self-motivation to be professionally productive and experience enjoyment on the job during both the best and worst of times. Self-motivation is presented in terms of practitioners actively using strategies developed through research and application in behavior analysis and therapy to promote their work productivity and enjoyment. Self-motivation strategies presented are likewise based on the specific advice of highly successful practitioners in the human services. Some strategies presented are robust in nature, in that they can be applied across varying situations to promote self-motivation and enhance overall quality of work life. Other strategies are more situation-specific, being tailored to overcoming particular obstacles to motivation that practitioners often face in human service agencies. The intent of this book is to provide practical information that effectively equips practitioners to be in control of their work motivation and thereby work consistently in a manner that is professionally productive and personally enjoyable.