Help! I've lost my mojo!

So, we are officially in springtime – hurrah!, although I’m not sure it’s feeling very spring like here, as I’m looking out across snowy fields.

We often come to the end of winter with a sense of tiredness, lack of energy and enthusiasm. It seems like such a long time since the light evenings and the warm sun.

This reminded me of how I have felt at the worst of times at work.

· A project that seems to have gone on forever.

· A job that has not changed or challenged me for a long time.

· A problem that doesn’t seem to have a solution.

· A boss that gives no good news, just points out the failures.

They all give us a sense of tiredness and it becomes really tough to find our “get up and go” again.

What does it matter? Enormously if you care about your business and your people. This is the point at which our productivity typically drops to an all-time low, our ability to solve problems declines, our energy to innovate disappears & absence and timekeeping issues are often on the rise.

So, I guess the next question is “what can I do about it?”.

We work a lot with organisations to understand how they can engage their people, but engagement is also the responsibility of the individual - which may be you. You can’t sit back and wait for someone else to engage you, you have to take ownership.

The first step is to talk about it, find out what is driving the lack of enthusiasm, just to make sure that it really is a work issue, and not something outside.

Work out what it is that the person finds most interesting and challenging in their role and try to find opportunities to focus on that.

Ask yourself if there are any opportunities for you to delegate, add further responsibility or the chance to learn new skills.

If these opportunities don’t exist, then you could look at a long-term career plan, some stretching goals.

So, what if it’s you that’s lost your spark? Apply the same steps – think back to why you wanted to do the job that you do? Take on a new challenge, a more stretching goal, or look at where you would like to go in your organisation, then try to find ways of acquiring those skills in your current role.

The worst thing to do at this point is just to accept that you’ve lost your love of the job, continue plodding onwards with little energy or joy. See the Spring as a chance to reinvigorate, re-energise and re-challenge, but most of all do something!

Welcome to Spring!