motivating

1. 1
   adjective

   Serving to provide a real incentive or reason for someone to act.

   Like a carrot held in front of someone that keeps them moving forward.

   The teacher's warm, motivating tone helped students stay focused.

   Clear goals and quick feedback can be highly motivating for a new team.

   Similarinspiring, encouraging, stimulating, energizing

   Oppositediscouraging, disheartening, dispiriting

   Note

   A participle that has settled into a true adjective, and grading is the test: a talk can be more motivating, the most motivating, or very motivating, which no verb form allows. When an object follows, as in motivating her team, it is the verb form at work. Before a noun, or after be or seem with nothing following, it names the quality itself.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of motivate.

   She is motivating her team to finish the project on time.

   By motivating his employees with recognition, the manager raised morale.

   Note

   Here the word is still a verb and behaves like one. It takes a direct object, often followed by a to-infinitive for the action being encouraged: motivating staff to train, motivating a team to finish. As a gerund it names the activity itself and can stand as a subject, as in motivating volunteers takes patience. Both meanings of motivate, encouraging and propelling, are transitive, so an object is almost always present.

Showing meanings only. Show all 2