What's in it for me? What do I get if I do this? Why work hard? Why should I care?
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| Photo by Jorbasa, from Flickr Creative Commons |
Oh, I have heard things like this all the time or at least I've felt it from people. I'm finding if people have a personal interest (positive reason) or something at stake (negative reason) motivation increases. Take bees for example! They work so hard to just to get nectur from a flower and store it in their "honeystomachs." They have to visit anywhere from 100 to 1500 flowers to fill their tummys only to then have the worker bees get involved to turn it into honey. Thats a lot of work! But they have a goal, a personal interest and guess what - it produces results!
So let's take a look at a few more examples of positive and negative things that drive motivation:
- Money- commission for sales goals, allowances for children
- Grades- the harder you work, the better your grade
- Charity - a personal cause that has affected you or your family member
- Non-tenured teachers- fight for keep enrollment numbers so they don't loose their jobs
- Loss of privilege- Bad report from school leads to parents taking away rewards
- Rewards - you behave, you get XYZ (My nephews got to sleep at Papa's house)
REFLECTION
- If you have a personal interest or something at stake - it motivates!
- Then - How do you motivate a group of people with different motivators?
As I struggle to become ever more motivated, these are very pertinent questions. Nice blog!
ReplyDeleteMotivating a group of people with different motivators is probably one of the most difficult things a leader has to deal with.. if not THE most difficult thing. From what I've learned, it is virtually impossible to motivate a group of people with the same personal goals toward a team goal... this sounds counterintuitive right? Well, let me give you an example, if you were coaching a basketball team and each of your players all wanted to be the highest scorer on the team... you get the picture... individual egos will only impeded the team mission. However, if you have a group of players with different skill-sets, then the mission becomes more achievable as long as the coach knows how to align those individual skill-sets toward each players personal goals which will ultimately facilitate the team goal.
ReplyDeleteThis same situation applies to all types of organizations. In the corporate world, if your employees are not assigned the right roles and challenges, it will only cause low motivation and ultimately resignations. If you have multiple employees who are all vying for a promotion with limited promotions to give out... this can also cause a multitude of issues... in my opinion, a management myth is that competition among employees will only improve the organization by producing people who will work harder. Unfortunately, when dealing with human beings, it is not that quite simple. I won't get into the psychology of human behavior, but you get the idea.
When building an organization, my philosophy is finding the right skill-set and personal goals that align with the role. This is very difficult to do because the nature of many human beings in society today is to be better than the next guy without truly understanding their individual limitations and strengths. People today seek to be in roles that sometimes they are a good fit for, but they convince themselves that they are and they blame everyone else but themselves when things don't go well. The point I am getting at here is that very few people actually understand or want to fully understand what they are good at, rather they let their egos dictate their actions and only seek bigger, higher and more. You have the greedy.. who are motivated by ego.... the lazy who are motivated by nothing and the few who are truly motivated by their real passions regardless of money, title and status.
Oops.. sorry for some of the typos.. 3rd sentence in last paragraph should have said "sometimes they are NOT a good... "
ReplyDeleteSecond paragraph, second to last sentence should have said "not quite that simple..."
Sorry, I type faster than I can think.