Week 3 Post 1: Reflection on First Group Presentation

Yesterday in class we had our first group of students teach their first of three total classes for the semester. The group chose to teach about the topic of motivation and how it relates to the workforce and management. Before the class the group had us take a quick online quiz, which gauged our level of self-motivation. I got a score of 41, which the interpretation at the end of the quiz said, "You're doing OK on self-motivation. You're certainly not failing – however, you could achieve much more. To achieve what you want, try to increase the motivation factors in all areas of your life". I agree with this interpretation and believe that there are definitely times when I need to be more motivated. However there are also other times where I am extremely motivated and accomplish a lot of important things. I guess it just depends on the day and how I am feeling. Before the class the group also asked us to write down the five things that motivate us the most and the five things that are our biggest distractions. Some of my motivators were family and friends, success, and being financially stable. On the other hand some of my distractions were social media, hanging out with friends, and laziness/tiredness. Then at the beginning of the class the group went around and asked everybody what they wrote down and they wrote them all on the board. Not to my surprise a lot of people wrote the same things as I did. I thought this was a good exercise, as well as interesting to see that a lot of us wrote the same things. It was also interesting to see what types of different things people wrote down. The group then went on to discuss a few theories related to motivation, which I also thought was interesting but also informative. One other thing I liked about the presentation was that they showed us a Ted Talks video. The speaker talked about motivation and how the best ways to motivate employees as a manager. He said that money is not the only or best motivator. He also went on to talk about how some companies, such as Google give their employees a period of work time where they get to work on whatever they want to. I found it interesting that during this free time, some of google's best ideas and products were produced.