Personal Experiences: Motivation, Leadership, and Effective Work Teams

This assignment delves into the intertwined concepts of motivation, leadership, and teamwork, drawing upon the author's personal experiences to illustrate their practical application. The first narrative explores the impact of meaningful work and external validation on individual motivation, highlighting the demotivating effects of schedule changes and the revitalizing power of positive feedback. The second story focuses on leadership, demonstrating how effective leaders identify and leverage individual strengths to foster success, even when initial skill sets seem mismatched. The final section emphasizes the benefits of work teams, showcasing how collaborative environments provide diverse perspectives, mutual support, and resilience in the face of personal challenges. The author's experiences underscore the significance of these elements in professional development and overall well-being.

Motivation
When I was working as a content writer for a non-profit organisation, I felt like my work was
making a significant difference. The team that I was a part of focused directly on a
curriculum for children in underprivileged schools. With the NGO's aid, teachers would be
given the proper skill sets to ensure that the overall teaching and atmosphere of the classroom
would improve. While my job was confined to a desk, from 9 am to 5 pm every day, we
would have routine visits to the rural parts of Lahore and would be able to interact with these
children. That was the highlight of my working experience and would notice me immensely.
However, when my university started again for the new term, my schedule no longer
permitted me to be part of the visits that I had come to love so much. Spending the whole day
taking classes and then directly going to my work often led me to become tired. These factors
played a large part in decreasing my motivation, and soon I became less ambitious for the
work I was doing. I was falling behind in the assigned tasks, which had to go through
multiple co-workers to be approved and finalised. Due to my lack of motivation, I was
causing a setback to all of my team members, which led to a few close calls with the
deadline. This overall affected my mood as well, making me upset and frustrated with
myself. I was too bitter when my team members could go one of the routine visits, whereas I
had to stay in the office to complete my work hours for that week. All of these ill feelings and
low moods went away, though, when a colleague of mine brought back the cards the children
had made for me. Seeing the words 'We miss you' written by brightly coloured pencils made
my heart soar and reminded me why I was here in the first place. Around this time, we got
our first pay cheques as well. As this was my very first paying job, seeing the cheque in my
hands, rewarding me for my hard work and long hours, made me feel proud of myself.
Whenever I felt myself becoming demotivated, all it would require was taking a look at those

cards and knowing that I had both the children and my co-workers relying on me to get me to
remember that I was part of something bigger than myself.
Leadership
The second story I would like to quote about is leadership; from my personal experiences, I
believe that under good leadership, even the most average of the workers can outperform
their capabilities and succeed if given the right positions. During the past summers, I was
interning at a company running schools all over the country. The company had a great culture
and work ethic. They were well known in society for hiring the top talent and managing it so
that the company's productivity exceeds its expectations and potential. I was hired as a
marketing intern in the corporate communications department. My job description included
managing all the company's social media pages, creating engaging posts, and then budgeting
where and how to allocate money for sponsored posts. I was performing well in my
department and had formed an excellent relationship with my boss. However, due to a lack of
creativity, I sometimes suffered in creating engaging posts. After a month, my boss realized
that too, but he did see that I was good with numbers and calculations. I can appropriately set
budgets for different types of advertising tools. Good leadership is about finding the right
talent for the right job. Instead of scolding me or discouraging me, my boss invited me to his
office, talked about my interests and my hobbies, and decided to transfer me to the finance
department from the marketing department. This decision was taken considering what I did
the best. My boss did not want to lose me; instead, he placed me somewhere; I knew I would
excel. It took me hardly two days to adjust to my new department, and I started working there
managing the company's financials. This was the work I enjoyed, which I wanted to do from
day one. I excelled in this department quickly and got recognition from the department
manager at the end of my tenure. I was able to complete my deadlines very timely and

thoroughly enjoyed what I did. For me, it was outstanding leadership that saw the real
potential and hunger in me to achieve something and executed it in the right manner.
Work Teams
Work teams are a group of people that work together on a project or in a department. They
have similar goals to work on it. There are multiple benefits of working in work teams. First
and foremost, you get to experience the diversity of ideas, and different people have different
thinking processes, so even for a single problem that is faced by the company, multiple
solutions will come up from the same work team, and you can then select anyone which is
voted as the most suitable. Other than this, you never feel out of motivation because of this.
Even if you are not willing to work on a particular day, your teammates might encourage you
enough to work together. I have a similar experience to this, and when I realized that how
work teams are so crucial in any organization and for building up the personality. Recently, I
was working with a team, and a project manager hired us. We had to plan different strategies
to start the campaign on social media. While working for them, I lost one of my close family
members. It was a massive loss for me. This deeply saddened me, and in no condition to
work at all. However, we had a deadline coming up, which had to be taken care of. It was
doubtful that I would have gotten leave from my company. One of my colleagues called me
for condolences, I explained to him the situation, and he agreed to fill in for me and complete
my part that was pending. He realized that I was in no position to work and offered help. It
was one of the most effective work teams' features; people in it are your family and always
stand behind you.