John Dargie was good at his job and felt positive about his future. But in June the 37-year-old distribution manager for the construction materials provider Lafarge found he could be fired up to new heights of motivation.

Dargie, who works at Mountsorrel in Leicestershire, had been in his job for almost four years, with 22 staff and responsibility for managing the company’s relationship with haul-iers and subcontractors across the Midlands and eastern England.

Then he was identified as someone with the potential to deliver more and was invited to join the company’s “Jump” two-week development programme in Paris.

The programme, delivered in partnership with Mannaz, a management development consultancy, sought to reenergise key staff, help them to change their workplace style and enable them to consider career options they had not felt capable of before.

Many employers run such programmes to reinvigorate staff and encourage individuals who are thought to have the potential to rise higher in the organisation. It helps companies to retain talented staff and achieve their corporate goals.

Dargie was enthused by what Lafarge offered him. “It’s given me confidence in my core strengths. I want to make best use of them and develop them further,” he said. “It has given me a lift in terms of how I perform and shown me what I could achieve.”

The programme brought together highflying Lafarge employees from 22 countries for a series of exercises and one-on-one coaching, looking at interpersonal skills, communication and dealing with change.

That in itself boosted Dargie’s morale. “There is no doubt that the company is making a big investment in you as an individual,” he said.

Dargie was helped to identify his strengths and to draw up an action plan to build on them. His line manager has been supportive and the coaches have maintained contact to ensure the benefits last.

Now Dargie is looking to the future and believes he is in a strong position to move up in the company.

Ann Salmon was never short of confidence, but the 52-year-old UK service manager at Kodak felt she had gone as far as she could with her career. In January that perception changed.

With encouragement from her line manager, Salmon attended a course called “The art of being brilliant”, run by Reed Learning. Two months later, she was promoted to regional service delivery manager for Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

The course, she said, was helpful in both gaining the confidence to accept the new challenge and to plotting her way ahead.

“Before the course I would never have dreamt I could have done this,” she said. “I was holding myself back. But after the course, I thought I could go higher. It gave me a real step up.”

The course involved case studies and exercises and helped Salmon plot a path towards achieving her career goals. She now feels motivated and is confident about dealing with the challenge of working with call centres around the world.

“It has given me tools and ideas that have helped me to be much more direct and clear in what the company wants,” she said.

A whole industry has been built around motivation. Books and pod-casts seek to emulate the success of top motivational speakers who fire the imagination of their audiences. The most eye-catching have executives walking on coals or stroking snakes as they are led out of their comfort zones and convinced of their potential.

But the effects of these bursts of encouragement usually fade quickly, said John McGurk, adviser for learning, training and development at the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development. He likened motivation to a muscle that can be trained but needed constant exercise. “If you want to motivate yourself and keep yourself on a path of achievement,

“ then coaching and mentoring are probably the best methods because they get you thinking about your objectives,” he said.

Wendy Brooks, a director of the training company Hemsley Fraser, agreed that coaching along with training could make a real difference. She said personal motivation was influenced by day-to-day work, colleagues and bosses and the values of the organisation. Certainly the first two factors could be improved through personal development.

“You can ensure through training that you are well equipped to do your job and prepare for the next level of challenge as well as work effectively with others,” said Brooks. Furthermore, training and coaching that looked to future aspirations could be particularly inspirational.

Organisations prize highly motivated staff, not least because they spread optimism to the people around them. When the economy is turning down and there is a rising sense of insecurity, that could make a great difference to morale.

At Sutton council in south London, motivation is a key element of the local authority’s Future Leaders programme. Dean Showsmith, executive head of human resources at Sutton, said that it was a value viewed as crucial for leadership.

“The programme contains elements of people management and how to motivate both yourself – through self-awareness – and your team,” he said.

He said that in evaluation, managers found motivation the most interesting and often the most challenging aspect of the development scheme.

Liz Broughton had worked for Sutton for more than 20 years when she was promoted to manager of the fostering team, responsible for recruiting and assessing foster carers. She was confident in social work but admitted she was not so certain of the issues raised by management.

She joined the Future Leaders programme, run by the Croft Management Centre, during 2006. Over the year she had various kinds of management training.

“It was hugely inspirational for me to work with managers from across the whole of the council and understand where the fostering team sat within that,” said Broughton. “It was also inspiring for me to think about my own personal development.”

With her newfound management confidence, she was able to exert more influence over her team without being dictatorial. Furthermore, she can now look to future challenges, which could include seeking a more senior position.

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