When you're motivated to work, it can help create a positive emotional response to your work. It can also make you more committed to your work and your overall performance. Motivational skills refer to the actions you take to elicit a desired outcome, response or behavior. These skills encourage you or others to achieve your workplace goals.

In the context of work, an understanding of motivation can be applied to improve employee productivity and satisfaction, to help set individual and organizational goals, to put stress in perspective, and to structure jobs so that they offer optimal levels of challenge, control, variety, and collaboration.