I have recently been to Chill Factore in Manchester for a couple of days of pathetically inadequate snowboarding.  I was rubbish yet loved it!  Snowboarding requires a certain amount of drive. I’m pretty sure God didn’t design the body to compete with gravity on one board alone!  However, I digress!  Each time I got changed, I was struck by a powerful list of words beginning with e etched on the dividing glass.  Now, this is a list of energy active words I have compiled.  How similar it is I don’t know but if you have other words you think need adding please do!

Enterprising. Enthusiasm. Engage. Enhance. Endeavour. Endurance. Eager. Excitement. Exhilaration. Elation. Ecstasy. Euphoria. Exultation. Entrepreneurial. Engage. Electric. Emotion. Exertion. Effort.

They reminded me of Charles Handy’s  e-motivational calculus.  Most motivational theories tend to focus simply on effort v reward.  They don’t consider little the emotional input.  Handy, however, explores five motivational e factors – energy, effort, enthusiasm, emotion and exertion (of resources; time, money, passion).  He suggests that the amount of e-factors that people expend on a given activity depends on two things.  The extent to which they believe a given action will lead to a specific outcome and how desirable they see that outcome.

So before any decision to do something there is a conscious or unconscious calculation, which assesses the following:

• The individual’s own set of needs.
• The desired results – what the individual expects to achieve.
• The e-factor (energy, effort, enthusiasm, emotion and exertion cost in achieving the desired results,)

Despite the fact that I was using a lot of energy to produce a dubious snowboarding performance, there was a significant amount of emotional content; the excitement, emotion and enthusiasm.  I wanted to improve my J and C turn executions and that outweighed the expense to my pocket, my ego and seriously bruised knees.

The way we feel about something has a serious impact in the action we take.

What are the e-factors that work for you?

Reading Ease 7.1

Published by TheHiddenEdge

I love words - they can say so much and say so little depending on how you use them. Come and explore them with me in this learning journal. View all posts by TheHiddenEdge