A short YouTube talk by Blair Singer aimed at teachers and leaders about how to motivate people. Singer argues you cannot directly "motivate" others; instead leaders should create environments that ignite each person's "basic human genius"—the innate ability to learn—so they recognise they can learn and then pursue lifelong growth. The segment frames motivation as environment-driven and tied to revealing learning capability.
Part two of motivation is specifically for teachers and leaders. Okay, teachers and leaders. As I travel around the world teaching leaders how to be teachers and teaching teachers how to be leaders, the one thing that I know is you can't motivate people, okay? You can create an environment that will allow them to become motivated by igniting the genius inside, which I call the basic human genius. What is that? Basically, basic human genius that every human being has in any country I've ever been to is the ability to learn. Why does that light people up? Because we walk away from school typically not knowing if we can learn, thinking maybe we're not smart, thinking that we're stupid. But if you create an environment that allows people to see that they actually can learn, all of a sudden all the possibilities of who they could be light up, and then they begin to want to move to the second level of genius, which is light. Lifelong genius. What specifically do I love learning?