Having trouble motivating your students? Start with why.

As an educator you’ve probably been there.

A well-planned lesson inspired by your best intentions, met by drowsy eyelids and sullen shoulders.

You feel that you have done everything right and you can’t understand why you’re being met with so much resistance. Your approach is sound, but it’s no match for the lack of motivation that’s spreading like an unwanted weed throughout your classroom.

All that you’re trying to do is help your students to learn – and you can’t understand why on earth they are responding so half-heartedly. You would give anything to see your students as dedicated to the lesson as you are, but what can be done to cast some sunlight on this cloud of despair?

Hopefully this idea from a recent TEDtalk can help breathe some life into even the most wearisome of your learners.

In this talk, Simon Sinek claims that across the board, all great leaders motivate others by communicating in the same way.

They start with why.

According to Sinek, while most speakers sell themselves with what they do, only an inspirational few do this by communicating why they do it. This is illustrated by what Sinek calls the golden circle:

Sinek claims that messages which focus on “how” and “what” (the two outer circles) are processed by the neocortex of the brain, but often don’t get the results that we are looking for.

Involved in higher thought, the neocortex makes up the outer layer of the human brain, and is entrusted with the task of sensory perception, rational and conscious thought, and language.  It’s able to analyze a great deal of facts and figures, and process a vast amount of information with ease. When messages focus on ‘what’ and ‘how’, it is the extremely competent neocortex that deals with this information.

Unfortunately, the rational analysis of information doesn’t inspire change in behavior. To motivate change, messages must be targeted beyond the neocortex to the limbic  brains.

Unlike the neocortex, the limbic brains are responsible for feelings of trust and loyalty. They dictate all human behavior and decisions, and have no capacity for language. They aren’t concerned with the ‘what‘ or the ‘how‘, but are very concerned with the ‘why‘ in messages.

When we communicate from the outside in (what to why), people can understand vast amounts of complicated information, facts and figures – but this doesn’t drive behavior. On the other hand, when we communicate from the inside out (why to what), we’re talking directly to the part of the brain that controls behavior, and we allow people to rationalize it with the things we say and do. This is where gut feelings come into play.

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it” – Simon Sinek

To start with why, we need to communicate our purpose for doing what we do first. We need to start with what we believe. We need to start with the reason why we get out of bed in the morning and why our audience should care. Once we have taken care of the why, we can follow up with our process and what it is we’re doing.

As an example, let’s consider two ways in which we could sell multivitamins:

Beginning with what:

Our multivitamins contain all of the nutrients which the human body requires. These vitamins are derived from all natural sources and are the purest form of multivitamin available on the market.

Beginning with why:

We believe that you have the right to live a long and illness-free life, to be full of energy from morning until night, and to always operate at your maximum potential. We have developed a multivitamin with this belief in mind, which is derived from all natural sources. Our tablets provide you with the purest form of multivitamin on the market, and meet all of your dietary needs. 

In the field of ELT, this same very simple idea can be used to motivate and inspire our learners:

At any ESL school:

Our school’s mission is to help people from all over the world to upgrade their careers and to receive the education they desire, by helping them to communicate more effectively in English. We believe that the best way to accomplish this is to foreground meaningful communication in all of the courses that we offer, and to put our students’ language needs at the heart of our curriculum. All of these courses are taught by qualified instructors and are available in several different formats.

In an EAP classroom:

The purpose of this course is to ensure that you are able to find employment in your chosen field of expertise, by helping you to prepare for the challenge of not being able to study in your first language. This course accomplishes this by taking a ‘content-based’ approach, giving you the opportunity to practice engaging in English academic discourse in a safe environment, and allowing you to perfect areas of difficulty before meeting them in your content courses.

 In a speaking class:

The purpose of this course is to help you to speak English more confidently and fluently, so that you can communicate better outside the classroom. This course will help you to accomplish this by (insert approach here).

As teachers on a day to day basis, we can influence an increase in learner motivation just by changing the way that we communicate what we do and what are courses are designed for. By focusing on outcomes rather than process, students will at least on a subconscious level feel more motivated to participate in lessons.

So tomorrow, when you communicate what the day’s lesson will be about, instead of saying “today we’re talking about …” or “today we’re listening to”, start with why.