Chapter 11
Motivating to Win
Motivation
Motivation is the willingness to achieve
organizational objectives.
Through the motivation process, people go
from need to motive to behavior to consequence
and finally to either satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
Role of Expectations
Remember the Pygmalion effect? Your
expectations and your treatment of people affect
their motivation and hence their performance. If
you have high expectations for your staff and
treat your workers as high achievers, you will get
their best.
Performance Equation
Performance =
Ability x Motivation x Resources
Pat Summitt
Former Tennessee women’s basketball coach
Pat Summitt constantly looked for ways to
improve her team’s performance equation. If her
team’s ability was not up to snuff, she lasered in
on specifics, adjusted training accordingly, and
recruited to fix holes in the net.
Content-Based Motivation Theories
Identify and understand people’s needs:
Hierarchy of needs: People are motivated by five levels of
needs: physiological, safety, social, esteem, and selfactualization (Maslow).
ERG: People are motivated by three needs: existence,
relatedness, and growth (Alderfer).
Two-factor theory: Motivator factors (higher-level needs) are
more important than maintenance factors (lower-level needs)
(Herzberg).
Acquired needs: People are motivated by their need for
achievement, power, and affiliation (McClelland).
Figure 11.2
Hierarchy of Needs
Self-actualization needs: Develop workers’ skills. Give them
more control over the work. Encourage creativity. Expect
achievement. Give them chances to grow.
Esteem needs: Help people excel at their work. Give more merit
raises. Recognize excellence.
Social needs: Design jobs so people have opportunities to
interact, to be accepted, and to make friends. Encourage
togetherness through parties, picnics, trips, and sport teams.
Safety needs: Provide safe working conditions, salary increases
to meet inflation, job security, and fringe benefits (medical
insurance, sick pay, pensions).
Physiological needs: Require breaks, and provide safe working
conditions.
Process-Based Theories
Focus on how people choose behaviors to fulfill their
needs:
Equity: People are motivated when their perceived
inputs equal outputs (Adams).
Goal setting: Difficult but achievable goals motivate
people (Locke).
Expectancy: People are motivated when they believe
they can accomplish the task and the rewards for doing
so are worth the effort (Vroom).
Reinforcement Theory
The focus is on consequences for behavior (Skinner):
Positive reinforcement: Attractive consequences (rewards) for
desirable performance encourage continued behavior.
Avoidance: Negative consequences for poor performance
encourage continued desirable behavior.
Extinction: Withholding reinforcement for an undesirable
behavior reduces or eliminates that behavior.
Punishment: Undesirable consequences (punishment) for
undesirable behavior prevent the behavior.
Figure 11.5
High Need for Affiliation
Effective teams typically have a good number of high
nAffs. Often the hearts of great sport teams are nonstar
players who are every bit as important as the stars. The
nonstars are easy to get along with, take good care of
fans, and are willing to play numerous positions—they
are the glue that makes the team a team. They are role
players, and they emphasize their nAff, even though
they have high need for achievement (nAch), or else
they wouldn’t be pro athletes.
Equity Theory
• Incentive-laden contracts help to achieve pay
equity between players. If an aging (Randy Moss)
or injured player (Peyton Manning) signs an
incentive-laden contract, they can achieve a pay
equal to their peers’ if they play well on the field.
• Incentives could be tied to playing time,
production, and team performance.
Positive Reinforcement
• Positive reinforcement can be as simple as saying
“good job” or smiling after a player does a good job
playing their sport.
• Positive reinforcement will motivate the player to want
further rewards and give their best effort the next time
they play their sport.
Figure 11.7
Punishment
Former LSU cornerback Tyrann Mathieu was arrested
for possession of marijuana and spent time in jail.
Although a Heisman Trophy candidate, Tyrann was
dismissed from the football team.
Overrewarded
Some pro athletes negotiate extremely lucrative
contracts that suddenly become hard to fulfill
because of injury, age, or declining skills. The
athlete may still be motivated to excel, but
physical ability no longer warrants his or her
compensation. Management has to accept the
responsibility of the large contract and find
alternative methods to make the team
competitive.
Goal-Setting Theory
Goal-setting theory proposes that achievable but
difficult goals motivate employees. The idea
behind goal setting is that behavior has
purpose—to fulfill needs. Goals help us marshal
our resources to accomplish a given task.
Motivating With Goal Setting
Lou Holtz, coach of Notre Dame’s 1988 championship
football team, described a circular key ring with three
keys to success: a winning attitude, positive selfesteem, and high goals. Winning attitudes lead to
positive self-esteem, which in turn motivates us to set
high goals, which in turn gives us an even more positive
attitude and self-esteem. Every year Holtz had players
set personal goals and the team set team goals, which
he wrote in his notebook.