Workplace
Motivation
by Ron Hopkins
The great management scholar Peter Drucker once
wrote, “We know nothing about motivation. All we can
do is write books about it”.
MIT Research
Eminent psychologists, sociologists and
economists* from Elton Mayo in the 1920s
to the researchers in the very recent MIT
studies, argue that the carrot and stick
approach to motivation doesn’t work with
managers and knowledge workers.
Neither does the money bonus scheme.
Yet currently we see substantial financial
bonuses being paid across all industries,
including Britain’s Civil Service and not just
in the banking sector. Our logic seems to tell
us – ‘pay a good bonus, get a decent job.
Pay a BIG bonus and get GREAT
performance’.
Reverse Results
The MIT study, commissioned by the US
Federal Reserve Bank, maintains that the
principle DOESN’T work if your workers need
to think on the job. In fact, other than for
simple tasks and purely manual activity,
where bonuses do work well, it actually has
the reverse effect. When the people you’re
trying to motivate use just basic creative,
cognitive, decision-making type skills, which
includes a massive range of jobs, trying to
motivate with purely financial reward does
not work.
Although it’s hard to believe, ‘well
bonused’ workers perform no better than
‘average bonused’ and the people who are
incentivised with highly paid bonuses
actually do the worst of all. Money does play
a part when people are NOT paid sufficiently
for the work they do. This has a definite demotivating effect.
What Does Motivate?
Daniel Pink’s work says it elegantly.
Provided you pay people the appropriate
money for what they do, the first step is to
get off the subject of money in relation to
performance.
He outlines the biggest factors for
motivation:
• Autonomy
• Mastery
• Purpose
Autonomy, ‘self – direction’, the ability to
have a say in what you do and how you do it
is important to us. We know this from how
we feel about our own work.. Autonomy
doesn’t mean unaccountability. The selfemployed can mostly say how, when and
where they work, but even they are
accountable to clients, to bank managers,
and sometimes to their own suppliers.
That people deliver is a given. The more
decisions and choices as to how exactly they
do what’s required of them, the more
motivated they will be. If you want to
motivate, creatively figure out ways you can
increase the self-determination of your team
members. You can start small. As a manager
or team leader, simply taking a coaching
approach that asks questions and listens,
will generally give someone a greater feeling
of self-direction.
“I am always doing things I can't do,
that's how I get to do them”.
Pablo Picasso
Mastery
When the great Spanish musician Pablo
Casals was asked at 95 years of age and
suffering from painfully arthritic hands why
he still practiced his instrument, he
reputedly said ‘Because I think I’m
improving’. Apart from a vocation, anyone
who engages in sport, plays a musical
instrument, a computer game, collects,
travels, is a parent or does almost anything
they enjoy, usually wants to get better at it.
Even with something as mundane as driving
a car, surveys show that 90% of male drivers
believe they are better at it than all the other
drivers. Mastery, without a doubt,
is
important to us. Receiving continuous
vocational training is the obvious direct
benefit to both workers and the
organisation, but if it’s not immediately
feasible, how can you creatively make it
possible for your team members to improve
themselves? What would they suggest?
Purpose
Peter Senge in his seminal book ‘The Fifth
Discipline’ talks about people who have
spent time in a high performing team with a
compelling vision. They often spend the rest
of their lives trying to replicate the
experience. A meaningful life, lived to the full
is what we all aspire to. There are plenty of
people who work for free or suffer very poor
financial rewards just to be in such an
environment.
Then there’s the classic tale of the 14th
Century European monk. He wanted to
apprentice himself to learn the craft of
stonemasonry. The first two masons he
spoke to described the work as hard,
sometimes tedious but routine. Their job was
to hone large stones into symmetrical blocks
each and every day to build a cathedral. The
third mason answered that in every new day
he saw his efforts resulting in the creation of
a magnificent structure which would endure
for centuries, where generations of people
would find sanctuary, solace and peace.
Some might say was a slightly euphoric
way of seeing his job. But he probably was a
better team player and took less time off
than the others. Which one do you think the
monk apprenticed to?
Using The Factors
Most people want a better life at work.
With a coaching approach, you’re seeking
where possible to discover the person’s own
goals and to connect them to the business
case. To find out their strengths, what they
do best and what they’d love to be better at.
And whilst you might not be able to grant
every wish, just the act of asking and
listening carefully to how they would prefer
to go about it sets them on the path to
greater autonomy.
There are other factors in the observation
of and connection to personal motivation,
which we cover elsewhere but working a
step at a time with combinations of the
above should certainly make for more
employee engagement.
It makes your job more involving too.
For those interested in further study, look up:
•
Elton Mayo, Abraham Maslow, Douglas McGregor, Frederick Herzberg, Peter Drucker, James
McClelland, Daniel Pink - Motivation Theories: Economic Man, Needs Theory, Humanist Theories,
Expectancy Theory, Reactance Theory, Goal Theory.
•
Papers on employee engagement, the psychological contract, social contract see:
** GUEST, D.E. and CONWAY, N. (2004) Employee well-being and the psychological contract. Research
report. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
ROBINSON, D., PERRYMAN, S. and HAYDAY, S. (2004) The drivers of employee engagement. Brighton:
Institute for Employment Studies.
The Institute for Business Technology,
Learning & Development Services Ltd,+44(0)208395 0539
www.ibtcoaching.com Copyright© 2011, Ron Hopkins