From time to time I hear instructors asking each other how to motivate students to learn.    I'm not talking about inner city junior high teachers.  I'm talking about people who train adults in the workplace.  "They just don't see the value in what I'm teaching."  "They have no desire to learn."

Hogwash!  They have desires to learn lots of things, just not what you want to teach right now.  What motivates adults in the workplace to learn something new?  Their paycheck, for one.  They want to keep getting one, or they want to get a bigger one.  Perhaps they're bored with what they are doing and they want to do something new and more exciting.  Maybe they want to be admired (or feared) by their peers or subordinates.  Sometimes they just want to get the boss off their case.

So the questions for these instructors might be:

• If they're not already motivated to learn, why are they sitting in this class of yours?
• Why should they learn this stuff just because YOU want to teach it?  Who cares?
• If your class doesn't deliver something that students want, why should they waste their time?  Or yours, for that matter?

Motivation isn't something trainers do to trainees.  It's something that propels the trainee into the learning environment in the first place.  If people are there for their own reasons, they will use you and your resources however they can to get them where they want to go.  Your' problem won't be motivating people, it will be keeping up with them.