Encouragement That Works: How to Give a Real Pep Talk

A good pep talk isn’t just about saying “you got this.” 

When done right, it can reignite purpose, build trust, and help others find strength when things get tough.

Everyone needs encouragement - but great encouragement does more than make people feel good. It helps them believe in their ability to meet challenges, connect to purpose, and keep going when things get difficult.

In this episode of Practicing Connection, Jessica and Erin dig into the science behind effective pep talks, inspired by research from Harvard Business Review and Motivating Language Theory. 

Erin walks listeners through how to write a meaningful pep talk using three key ingredients: direction, empathy, and purpose. 

You’ll also learn how to bring these ideas into everyday encouragement, whether you’re leading a team or supporting a friend through something hard.

Listen in to learn how the right words - offered with care - can make all the difference.

LinkedIn Practice:

Think of someone who’s facing a big challenge right now - a colleague, a friend, or even yourself.

• What would you say to encourage them today?
• Do they need more direction, empathy, or meaning?

Post your short pep talk or reflection in the comments, or join the discussion in our Practicing Connection LinkedIn Group. 

Let’s practice encouragement that truly inspires action.

Links and resources from this episode:

• The Science of Pep Talks by Daniel McGinn
• Season 7, Episode 11: Humble on Purpose: A Practice for Better Decisions 
• Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/ 
• Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org 

Transcript

JESSICA BECKENDORF: [00:00:00] Hello. Thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection podcast. I'm Jessica. Today we're gonna be talking about the power of encouragement, and Erin's gonna be sharing a practice with us on how to write a pep talk. 

Hi Erin. How are you?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Hi Jessica. I'm having a wonderful day. I just got the best message:

So I recently thanked someone for inspiring me with their bravery in a meeting. I've been trying to call out bravery when I see it. And their response to me was so sweet, they just said that they did it because they were trying to be more like me. I don't know if you just saw this, but my jaw just dropped.

I was like, “Oh, that's so nice!” It was like, honestly, one of the nicest things somebody's told me and it just made my day. It was really magical. To have somebody notice something that I've been trying to grow in and then be inspired, and then tell me that I inspired [00:01:00] them. Like, what is this?!

I was trying to figure out, what is the word that describes this feeling? I don't know. Opposite of loneliness. And then I got stuck.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, I think the word that you might be looking for here is encouraging. It's encouraging.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. That's it. It is embarrassing to be the person teaching a practice in the encouragement episode and not realizing you're talking about encouragement, but hey, yeah, we're here.

We don't need to be perfect. And it was kind of funny.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, let's talk about this. Why did you think about bringing up encouragement today?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Sure. Well, honestly, I wanted to talk about something fun. You know, we've been writing a lot of really great practicasts about trying new things, new skills and being brave, and this is exciting and this is [00:02:00] transformative.

But it can also be really hard. Right? And it can be stretching and uncomfortable, and I wanted to kind of equip people with a practice to help them, a) keep going when things get hard, b), encourage other people to keep going when things get hard. But also it really feels good. I don't know how many pep talks you've given, but as someone who has given many, it feels really good to give a pep talk and then just see people like to be refilled with joy and be like, “Oh yeah, we are capable of hard things. We can do this.”

And like when you're stuck, it feels so good when someone helps unlock extra energy or capacity or like a lens you hadn't viewed it through before. I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit and I'm sorry, but I think pep talks are misunderstood and underrated. People think about like sports movies and not about really meaningful human interaction, which is what I think pep talks actually are.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I am gonna take it [00:03:00] one more step and say, “I don't do pep talks, I do pep rallies.”

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Ooh. Okay.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: No, I'm totally, I'm totally kidding. But I actually have never thought about what I do when I'm encouraging others as “pep talking” them. I've been told by others that I've inspired them or that I've helped to unlock those things that you're talking about.

But I never really thought about it as me incorporating elements of what a pep talk might be. I just, I think I don't like to see people be stuck, and I like to try to help where I can. And so with that, I mean really good encouragement is nice to receive, but it can be a lot more.

I feel like I've always thought that I was encouraging them, but I think in what you're saying with really good encouragement done right in sort of, I love the language of pep talk, but in this kind of pep talk kind of way, it can be a lot more. It can give people what they need to keep going, and [00:04:00] help people unite around a shared goal, which is really important for the work that we do. A shared goal, maybe even some shared value or defining some shared truths. 

And it can acknowledge the cost of the work and still give people the hope that it matters. So it's really powerful stuff if you know what you're doing, or apparently, even if you don't, sometimes.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes, it has powerful potential, and I would like you to cash in on the powerful potential that you have to encourage yourself and others.

I know that we sound a little bit like this is a magical fix all, that's not what we're saying.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Oh, no, no, no.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: But I do think it is more powerful than we let it be. We let it be for sports and sales, and we forget about it for the rest of us. But the rest of us deserve good encouraging pep talks too.

So, let's get into it.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. So encouragement can come in so many forms, and let's get into talking a little bit about [00:05:00] why pep talks. Why are we talking about pep talks today?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, we're talking about pep talks, I mean, selfishly, because I am the like unofficial pep talker in my workplace. And that has had the side outcome of me not receiving a lot of pep talks. 

And so I somewhat selfishly want to teach more people how to give a good pep talk, because I want people to give me good pep talks. This is perhaps very selfish of me. But also, to tell you the truth, I really thought I knew everything you needed to know about how to give a big good pep talk. I was like, “I've got this down.”

You know, I've like jokingly included it on my unofficial duties list when I'm onboarding and offboarding places. Like it has regularly been a major component of my work to be the person giving pep talks. So I really thought I had it down. 

And then I did the practice that you taught us about intellectual humility, and realized [00:06:00] that I assumed that I knew everything there was to know about pep talks, and I was like, “Oh, dear, I don't think that's actually true.” And so then I did research because of that practice, and that's why we're talking about pep talks today.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I am beaming right now, since this is audio-only, I have to describe what my face looks like right now. Because did you just say that you did a practice from our own podcast about intellectual humility, and that it helped you, you learned something from it?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes.

It's like, you know, when you take your own advice, when you take your partner, your coworker's advice, and then you're like, “Oh, they were right.”

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Most of the time the practices we bring to this podcast are things that we either have tried, or we bring into our work periodically, or we bring into our practices periodically.

And so that one was one that I had brought forward. [00:07:00] I've practiced it in the past, not in maybe exactly the same way that I put it forward in the podcast, but I've practiced versions of it. And so you were in the room with me while we were talking about it, and it does like, tickle me a little bit that, you know, that practice was helpful to somebody that I know.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, it was great. Okay. So I'm actually really excited because as much as it was like uncomfortable to admit that I didn't know everything I thought I knew, I found out a bunch of really cool stuff. 

So, I think the most useful thing was, I found a Harvard Business Review article called The Science of Pep Talks, by Daniel McGinn.

And in it, McGinn talked about motivating language theory. I had never heard of this. So this is a theory based on research done by Jacqueline and Milton Mayfield at Texas A&M International University. And they have been studying what they call ‘motivating language’ for years in [00:08:00] sports, business, research, science, and the military.

And they found that effective pep talks can have huge impacts on individuals and groups and their ability to do challenging things. For all of those groups.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, so I mean, this is interesting because sports, business, research, science and the military, those are very different kinds of groups. I'm very interested to hear about how this kind of research can work across all these disciplines.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. And this is actually what I love about their theory is they don't say that the same thing works for every single person.

In motivating language theory, pep talks are made of three different parts: direction giving, empathetic language and meaning making language. We'll define those in a minute, and what they found is that different groups need different combinations of these parts in order for it to be effective.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

[00:09:00] Let's talk a little bit more about the three parts.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Sure. So direction giving is explaining how to do the task at hand. This can include instructions. It also includes what they describe as uncertainty-reducing language, which I think is just such a fun phrase. A lot of what that is is like, “Do people know what they're doing? Are we all on the same page? Is it clear? Is it explicitly clear?’

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: You know, sometimes everybody thinks they're on the same page and they're not. So that's what they mean by direction giving. And they have said that if you're in a new group or a newly forming group, direction comes up more often.

But if you're in a group with experts or teams that are doing things they've done before, they might not need as much of this component as a brand new team might. So that's something to keep in mind for how much of this component do I need to include.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: So the [00:10:00] direction giving element of this is just really practical, focused on making sure everyone knows what their role is, what the job is, what they're there to do.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes, that's it. Exactly. 

The second element is empathetic language. This is where you engage in the humanity of the people involved. You bring in praise, you bring in encouragement. You acknowledge how hard a task actually is. And acknowledging the challenge piece is often the part that people leave out of a pep talk.

A lot of people think that if you acknowledge something is hard, people will be discouraged or give up. Often the opposite. If you don't acknowledge the challenges, pep talks can come off as more like gaslighting than encouragement.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, I've seen this over and over again. I've seen a lot of leaders learn the hard way that not naming the challenges, like kind of skipping over them like you're describing, even if they do it [00:11:00] unintentionally - I need to add that, because I don't think everyone's out there doing this on purpose. Like, “I'm going to just skip over the challenges and maybe they won't notice.” I don't think very many people are actually doing that. 

But that is a really good way to destroy trust, skipping over the challenges and not naming them, not acknowledging that something's challenging.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: There's something really, really discouraging, at least to me, and I've heard this from a bunch of other people too, that when you get a talk and your leaders don't even acknowledge the cost, there's almost part of you that thinks, “Do they even know? Do they even know this is hard? When they say we can do it, do they actually know what we need to do to do this?” 

Or are they just imagining that we can do it and they don't actually know what it takes, so they're lying.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Or is it like hard for me, but not for them, and they're just not in reality right now?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so it can be really empowering for someone to say, “Hey, I know that this is [00:12:00] so hard. It's hard because of this. It's hard because of this. It's hard because of this. And I am confident that we can still accomplish it. And I believe we can still accomplish it so much more if you start by talking about all of the reasons why it is almost harder than it needs to be.”

You know, that's a much more powerful statement. 

Okay, so the third element is meaning-making language. This is where you talk about why the work you're doing is important. You can link it with your purpose or your missions.

And often it's a place where people will share stories, either about the impact that previous work has done, or why we all care about the thing that we're doing. Meaning making is useful in almost every situation. And you may need it less if the end goal of the work is super obvious.

The example in the paper, I think is they were talking about a team that was doing medical [00:13:00] research on how to cure MLS. It's a pretty significantly debilitating disease, and a lot of the people who were doing the research had family members who had died of it.

So that's one where like you don't need to encourage the end goal.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: goal. It's kind of obvious, right?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. The end goal's really obvious. And you know, sometimes it's like the opposite. They had this other example where they were talking about, okay, if you work in a fast food restaurant and you need to give somebody a pep talk, the end goal is going to be really, really different than someone who's working on medical research, right? 

And so this is why they talk about meaning-making being the hardest part of the pep talk. Because you have to answer the question, “Is this worth it?” And you have to give an answer that you actually believe.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: So if you don't, you can't give the pep talk. If you don't believe that it's worth it, right. I mean, that's kind of a, it's a deal breaker.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. I mean you [00:14:00] can, but they can tell. And that's the thing, like if you wanna give an effective pep talk, you’ve got to believe the things coming out of your mouth.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yes. authenticity is something we talk about a lot. 

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: And I genuinely think this is why so many people think that pep talks aren't effective, because they haven't had good ones.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: So I think the thing that comes up for me in this, the questions that I have is just like, “Well, what if I'm a leader, and I don't know if it's possible?” 

That's a hard question. You can say that it's scary, it's vulnerable.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I mean, one thing I like to ask a lot, and I just wonder if maybe sometimes the situation calls for you acknowledging that you don't know.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Mm-hmm.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: If it's possible, or maybe sometimes the situation, and I would say probably a good chunk of the time, the situation might be where instead of saying, “I don't know if it's possible,” it might be saying what is possible.

I think acknowledging [00:15:00] what's hard about making it possible is really important, but maybe turning around and saying, “And what is possible…”

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I think that's great. That is a good segue into really building people up. Like, you don't necessarily have to go through these three phases in order and then never go back.

So if you're talking about the meaning-making and saying, “This is worth it, this is what we can achieve, if we achieve it. I don't entirely know if we'll get all the way there, but here's what we have.” And then you can go back to the subtle direction-giving and you say, “We have this person and they're working on this. We have this person, they hit this out of the park every single time. We have this person and they're the best at communication and this per -” you know? 

You can really build people up and compliment people and say, “Okay, considering all of what we have, we can get somewhere, right?” Like what can we achieve with [00:16:00] what we have?

And you can positively reframe it in a way that doesn't feel like gaslighting, if you are thoughtful.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Right. Right. Well let's get started with the practice itself. Please walk us through, kick it off.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay. The start of this practice is, think about a group or an individual that's struggling with a challenge. This could be a team you work on. This could be a coworker, this could be yourself. Think of that person, and then before you are responding to an email or saying something, here are some questions you can ask yourself to help you figure out what do they need to hear, what's going to help them with what they're struggling with. 

So the first area is direction giving. And that's just, do they know what needs to happen next? So some questions that you are asking yourself: “Do they know what they're trying to achieve? Who is [00:17:00] doing what? Do they have what they need to do it?”

And I want to be clear here, you are not asking the other person these questions. 

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yes. I know this is confusing. That would not sound like a pep talk at all. 

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: That would sound like accusations, right?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Right. But you're using the answers to determine what they need to hear, right?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Mm-hmm.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Or you might be answering these questions based on what you know about the situation,

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Sure, yes.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: “What's my assessment of whether they know what they're trying to achieve? What's my assessment of do they seem to understand who is doing what, what the roles are, and what's my assessment of do they have what they need to do it?”

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. I will fully tell you, I often find myself giving pep talks to people who are, after a meeting, coming to me and being like, “Erin, I'm panicking. What are we doing?”

Or they'll tell me a situation of like, “I was in this meeting, we had this conversation…” And [00:18:00] so there's often context that I get from another person before I'm giving them a pep talk, and so I can kind of discern a lot just from listening.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Right.

It sounds like you might ask these questions, right? You don't have to like pre-prepare your entire pep talk before you go in, you can actually go into a meeting of a group for whom your experience of that group has been that they might need a pep talk.

And you can ask these questions if you don't know the answers to them. And in the moment you could say something like, “Are we all in agreement on what we're trying to achieve? Do you all feel clear on that?” And they're all like, “Yeah, yeah, we feel clear.”

“Do you all understand what the roles are? Who's going to do what? Do you all get that?” And they might be like, “Yeah, we totally get that.” And then you might say, “Okay, do you have what you need to do it?” And then one person's like, “Well, we've really been struggling with needing this tool,” or, “We've really been struggling with the process for X. 

And so then you could start your pep talk by saying, “It sounds like you're really clear on your objectives and roles. Good job. Because that's [00:19:00] a huge hurdle. But you need some tools to help.” 

So let's move on then to the next set of questions. The empathetic language. You can literally do this in a meeting, or you can make these assessments ahead of time, and kind of preplan your talk.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. And I think you bring up a really good point there, which is, often the picture we have in our head of a pep talk is from a movie.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Right.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: You know, it's like a coach at a sports movie, at the championship, and they give this big -

JESSICA BECKENDORF: It’s Ted Lasso.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: It's Ted lasso, or it's like you're watching a movie about salespeople.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yes. 

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: They use an example of, like Glen, Gary Glen, something. I can't remember. This is not a thing that I have seen. 

Or you watch someone like, “Yeah, we can make all our sales,” and it feels very culty occasionally, and you're like, “I don't know about that.” So I think part of my hope of giving you these questions and equipping you, and what you brought up is that a pep talk doesn't have to be just a talk.

It's more about bringing focused [00:20:00] energy. Bringing this sense of like, “Okay, what do people need and how can I help them get there? And how can I see things that they can't see right now and how can I communicate it to them?”

And so it isn't necessarily like, ‘I talk for five minutes, that's the pep talk.’ It might be a pep talk conversation where we have a little back and forth, and that's what you brought in and I love that you did that.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I'm glad that we established that. So the direction-giving questions: Do they know what they're trying to achieve? Who is doing what? Do they have what they need to do it?

Let's go into the empathetic language questions.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Mm-hmm. So some questions that might be helpful to ask are, What's going well? Is there someone you can compliment or thank for the work that they've already done? What is making it difficult? Does this team believe that they can do it? Why or why not?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: And, Do you believe they can do it? I would imagine is also helpful.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. Mm-hmm. And, Why or [00:21:00] why not?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Right.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Right. You know, these are uncomfortable questions to like full-on face, and this is where you get to practice your bravery skills. Full-on asking, “Do we think they can do it?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: It's scary and it's hard, and if they're in the weeds, this is how you can support them by asking that question they can't ask themselves.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I think this is where some of your answers, or the way you communicate this to the group might need to be a little bit delicate, right? 

So if part of what's making it difficult is that they're down to one third the amount of staff, and they've had not only tons of work put on them that the other people were doing, but also a new big project just came up and they're saying that we don't have the capacity to do this - then coming back in and saying, “But I believe you can do it” can feel very disingenuous. 

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, not great.[00:22:00] And so, you know, I think there's something to be said too about, you're not trying to lie here.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: You are not trying to tell them it's impossible. Maybe the pep talk they need to hear is, “Wow, you have been given so much to do and so few resources to do it. The fact you have been able to do as much as you have been able to do is really impressive and I'm so proud of you.”

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: “And I'm sorry that I can't give you any more to make this happen.”

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

Then maybe this is where it's like, “Let's talk about what is possible right now.”

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. And unfortunately, this is also the part that comes with practice, right?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: You're not going to perfectly hit it out of the park every time.

You're not going to say the perfect thing every time. But the good news is, you don't have to be perfect. Sometimes all people need to hear is just like, “Wow, that is so much, that is so hard.” Like, they just need acknowledgement that they're not making it up, they're not crazy, that it is [00:23:00] unreasonable or it is overwhelming.

And sometimes that's enough to just kind of like keep them floating until we can get them more resources. Pep talks aren't about magically fixing it for people. It's about being present with them and helping them figure stuff out.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: So the empathetic language questions are, What is going well? Is there someone you can compliment, or think, what is making it difficult? Do you believe they can do it? And, Why or why not? And do they believe they can do it? And, Why or why not?

Let's go on to the meaning-making questions.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. This is where we're answering the question, “Why is it important to keep going?”

So good questions to ask are, “What is made possible by doing this hard thing?”

This takes some imagination.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm. What is made possible toward that kind of end goal that the group has been working toward. To begin with, a lot of times, by the time you've made [00:24:00] it here, you kind of have a sense for what that overarching goal is.

And so then toward the big goal that this group has been assembled or this team has been assembled to affect, “What's made possible by doing this hard thing?”

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Mm-hmm. And then another good question to ask is, “What hard things have you done successfully in the past?”

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: “When has it been this hard before, and you've still managed to do it?”

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Everyone has a story about that.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Right. And sometimes it's like, “It was this hard before and we didn't get all the way there, but something good still happened.”

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: “And we were able to build off it and get to somewhere better.”

It's hard to give more specific advice about the meaning-making language because it's really context specific. It's like, what is meaningful to this team? What is meaningful to these people? And this is going to require you spending time getting to know people, [00:25:00] knowing a little bit about what are the shared values, what do we all care about here? What are we trying to build together?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: You can ask them these questions also, and then develop what you say based on what those answers are.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes, exactly.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, thank you so much for guiding us through this, Erin, these are really good questions. But a whole pep talk, it's not a ton of questions, but there's enough questions where it could feel like a lot. I'm just going to leave that in there. What is the smallest thing that someone can do to practice encouragement or pep talk?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, that's a great point. Okay. I hadn't realized how hard pep talks are until I tried to, like, outline how to write a good one. So I'll say this. I think the most important thing you can ask yourself if you only have a little bit of capacity is, “What does this person or team really need right now? Is it direction, empathy, or purpose?” 

And then keep it [00:26:00] really simple and really short. If they need direction, make sure everybody knows what they're doing. If they need empathy, say something like, “I know this is hard, I believe in you. You can do it.” Or, “If you've done hard things before, I believe you can do this too.”

if it's purpose, that one's a little bit harder for me to just like, whip out one sentence, but, “This is worth the effort we're putting in.”

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Or even thinking about the direction-giving questions, “You guys are so on track with everything. Let's see what we can do about getting you the tools you need, or how we can put our heads together and make sure that you've got everything you need.”

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. One final thought. You don't have to be perfect in order for it to make an impact.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

Well, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us. If you enjoy the episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend [00:27:00] or a colleague. We'll be back next week with a new episode. Until then, keep practicing. 

CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.