In my case, for most my teenage and short adult life I was always left "feeling positive and motivated" except I would always fall back into the same habits. I started to expect the gentleness and kindness. What I needed was a good ass whooping. If I look back at my life in hindsight, I learned the most when I was under the gun -- had to succeed, failure not an option -- not "motivated" and "positively influenced"

Maybe there is a "non-asshole" way to do that, but there needs to be a place for this in society as well. Some people respond to gentleness and nudges, some don't.

The person I think back early in my career when I was an associate and my first tech lead -- yes! he was the biggest asshole I met at that time -- but it would be remiss of me to not admit that I learned and stretched more on his team than I did the rest of my time at that company by a mile.

How are you defining 'motivated'? To me it seems like an oxymoron to be motivated and not do anything.