2025 EEQ of the Year: Motivation & Initiative

Why It Matters, Why It’s Missing, and What We Can Do About It

In the 1988 movie Working Girl, Tess McGill (played by Melanie Griffith, in an Oscar-nominated role) shows us that initiative isn’t just a “nice-to-have” — it’s the engine of upward mobility. She advances not because someone tells her what to do, but because she takes the first step when no one invites her. In today’s workplace, that kind of initiative is rarer than ever — and employers feel the absence acutely.

Through Essential Employability Certification (EEQ CERT), QA Commons examines how well programs cultivate the employability skills students need—communication, teamwork, critical thinking, and more. And across the dozens of programs we’ve reviewed, one finding appears again and again: the quality least developed in students is Motivation & Initiative. 

The ability to start, scope, figure things out, and move forward without hand-holding. The capacity to bring a plan instead of a problem. The confidence to take a first step when information is incomplete. Most recent graduates struggle to do this — and employers describe remarkably similar experiences:

• “They wait for instructions for everything.”
• “They want 100% clarity before doing 1% of the work.”
• “They ask questions they could answer themselves.”
• “They’re afraid to be wrong, so they do nothing.”
• “I don’t need another problem. I need someone who shows up with a plan.”

Employers are not mildly annoyed by this gap — they are exhausted by it. Some are genuinely wondering whether recent graduates even want to take initiative. They do. But we have not prepared them to. Students often say, “I did everything you told me — now where’s my 401(k)?” They’re not entitled; they’re following the only model they’ve been shown. We’ve let them believe that life is an escalator: step on, follow the instructions, and you’ll rise. But real careers work more like sailing — shifting conditions, constant recalibration, and intentional movement without perfect information.

The Employer Perspective: Why This Gap Is So Painful

And that exhaustion comes with real operational consequences. This gap creates meaningful strain: Managers get pulled into the weeds, work slows down, and projects stall. Because the reality is: supervisors don’t have time to design a new graduate’s work for them. And when they have to, it defeats the purpose of hiring someone who is supposed to lighten the load. 

Employers don’t expect a 22-year-old to be a senior analyst. But they do expect:

• A first draft
• A proposed plan
• A next step
• An educated guess
• A willingness to begin without perfect information

When graduates say, “I wasn’t sure, so I waited,” employers hear, “I can’t move unless you spoon-feed me.” That is the initiative gap.

The Higher Ed Side: How Good Intentions Undercut Initiative

Students aren’t struggling with initiative because they’re unmotivated. They’re struggling because they’ve rarely been asked to build it.

A few years ago, while taking a Higher Ed Teaching Certificate course from the Harvard BOK Center, I designed a lesson on learning from failure. Three peer reviewers—all experienced instructors — responded with versions of the same warning: “No way.” “Never do this.” “Students can’t handle failure; you’ll ruin their academic careers.” It was a revealing moment.

If failure feels unthinkable in a college classroom, it makes perfect sense that new employees hesitate the moment something doesn’t go perfectly. Students aren’t fragile — they’ve simply spent years in systems where mistakes carry high stakes, not where they’re treated as essential to learning.

For the past 15–20 years, student success efforts have focused on removing barriers, smoothing pathways, and preventing students from getting “off track.” These goals are profoundly important. But easing every challenge comes with a cost: students may not develop the very skills employers expect—initiative, resilience, judgment, and the ability to move forward without hand-holding.

To be fair, higher education didn’t arrive here alone. K–12 systems, employers, parents, and accrediting bodies have all reinforced structures that reward caution more than initiative. But these forces have played out most visibly in college classrooms.

Most courses now include:

• perfectly structured assignments
• ultra-clear expectations
• detailed rubrics
• step-by-step guidelines
• strict point structures
• models for success

Ambiguity is engineered out of coursework. Students rarely encounter incomplete instructions, competing priorities, or uncertainty about what “good” looks like—precisely the conditions that define real work.

The system teaches risk aversion. Then graduates step into workplaces where no one has time to hand them a rubric.

What Colleges Can Do: Five Practical Approaches

The good news: cultivating initiative doesn’t require overhauling curriculum. Small design shifts make a big difference.

1. Inject ambiguity on purpose
   Use intentionally less-specified assignments:
   • “Propose three possible approaches.”
   • “What information do you need—and how will you get it?”
   • “Here is the problem. You design the method.”
2. Require students to think before they ask

   Adopt a simple rule: “When you ask a question, bring your best guess.” This shifts help-seeking from dependency to thoughtful first-step thinking.

3. Build project-scoping into assignments

   In the workplace, defining the task is the task. Give students structured practice in identifying  requirements, timelines, resources, roles, and contingencies. This builds judgment, clarity, and self-starting capacity.

4. Let students experience productive discomfort

   Use low-stakes challenges where students must choose a direction, justify it, and adjust. Not punitive confusion—just enough uncertainty to build resilience.

5. Teach workplace norms explicitly

   Students don’t automatically know what supervisors expect. Teach how to:

   • write a “here’s my proposed plan” email
   • take first steps with partial information
   • scope what’s needed to proceed
   • provide status updates without waiting for permission

Working Girl Illuminates the Path — Higher Ed Can Help Students Walk It

Universities keep asking, “How do we get employers to stop demanding 2–3 years of experience?” and “How do we rebuild employer trust?” This is it. Employers trust what they see—and too often, they see graduates who wait, hesitate, and stall because they were taught to. Tess McGill didn’t rise through hand-holding or detailed instruction; she rose because she brought ideas, plans, and momentum.

Motivation & Initiative isn’t about personality—it’s about practice. Students develop it when programs give them autonomy, ambiguity, risk, and ownership: the conditions of real work. As workplaces become more ambiguous and fast-changing, success depends on the ability to navigate uncertainty, experiment, adapt, and move forward without perfect information.

If we want graduates who take initiative, we must create learning environments where it is possible—and expected. It’s time to create the conditions where these muscles can grow.