Our home frustrations can definitely spill over into our workplace. The opposite is also true. In this episode, my guest and I take a look at her research on motivation and how it translates to home life and parenting specifically.
Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson is a social psychologist who researches, writes and speaks about the science of motivation. She is the Associate Director of the Motivation Center at the Columbia Business School and author of the best-selling books: Succeed and the co-author of Focus: Use Different Ways of Seeing the World to Power Success and Influence.
In another episode, Heidi and I discussed motivation and influence in ourselves and our careers. In this episode, which originally aired in 2014, Heidi has returned to talk specifically about applying her research for parenting – motivating and influencing our children.
In order to be able to motivate our children and have a positive influence (not control!) we need to understand how they think. One way to do this is to understand promotion focus and prevention focus. Promotion focused motivation means thinking about your goals as a way to advance areas of your life. People who use this type of focus are often creative, good at thinking outside of the box, and great at seizing opportunities.
Prevention focused motivation means thinking about your goals in terms of what you can lose if you don’t succeed. These people are good at being thorough, careful, and accurate. They don’t take things for granted and are sometimes more reliable than their promotion focused counterparts. Listen to this episode to get a deeper dive into those types of focus, learn which one children use more, and learn communication strategies for motivating our children.
Your voice matters! Make sure you subscribe to the show and leave a review in Apple Podcasts. Tell me what you love and why you’re here and maybe you’ll hear a shoutout to YOU in a future episode!
LISTEN HERE
WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER
- How children are more promotion focused
- How parents are more prevention focused
- How do we communicate with our kids if we have different focus?
- How do we end up promotion or prevention focused?
- Influence vs. control
- The difference between motivation and influence
- A key question to ask as a parent
RESOURCES FOR YOU
- Interview with Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson – Motivating Others
- Books: Succeed, Focus
- The Atlantic Article: How Happiness Changes with Age
- Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson’s website.
- Focus Workbook
- Sign up here to receive Friday Podcast updates, Sunday Love letters, and Wisdom Wednesdays.