The Confident Leader by Larina Kase

Author:Larina Kase
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2008-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

Are You Motivating People the Best Way?

We often do things that we think will motivate others and then can’t seem to figure out why those people aren’t changing. Let’s figure out why that happens.

External Rewards Can Drain Internal Motivation

Whether your goal is to motivate yourself, your employees, or your family members, you need to be careful about engaging extrinsic motivation, which results from external criteria or rewards (whereas intrinsic motivation capitalizes on our natural desire for growth). Your goal as a leader or manager is to have people feel inspired rather than pressured. You think you’re doing a great thing by dangling carrots in front of your employees, but their focus on the carrots deprives them of the biggest reward of all: an internal sense of growth, creativity, and accomplishment. Recall that the questions from the Gallup research that were closely linked with results (presented in Chapter 3) focus on capitalizing on internal strengths and motivation. Another interesting point: we think that we are most motivated by self-esteem needs, whereas others are motivated by money and materialistic items. Don’t fall prey to this bias.

In another study, Susan Harter explored intrinsic and extrinsic motivation with sixth graders completing challenging tasks. She assigned the children to two conditions: in the first, the students were told that they were playing a word puzzle game; in the second, the students were told that it was a school type of task and that they would be assigned grades. The students in the game condition chose challenging difficulty levels, and they enjoyed it, as evidenced by their smiling and their verbal reports. In the grades group, something different happened. Students were fearful about making a mistake, and they chose much easier tasks.

This shows us a couple of things. When we don’t feel that we are being judged, we push ourselves further. And when we tap into extrinsic motivation (such as receiving grades), we don’t challenge ourselves. To go from effective to exceptional, we need to engage our intrinsic motivation and our natural proclivity for challenge. When growth is the goal, extrinsic rewards can undermine the goal. However, certain types of extrinsic rewards, such as social reinforcement or recognition, have been shown not to have this demotivating effect in the way that grades, money, and externally imposed deadlines do. Extrinsic rewards, therefore, are not all created equal. When possible, ask yourself or others to create the deadline by saying, “When can you get that finished?” This subtle difference in framing the task can engage intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation.

BONUS ONLINE MATERIAL

How intrinsically motivated are you? Take the free assessment at www.pascoaching.com/motivation to find out.

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