Are You Fully Charged?: The 3 Keys to Energizing Your Work and Life by Tom Rath

Author:Tom Rath
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Missionday, LLC
Published: 2015-05-04T14:00:00+00:00

Use Pro-Social Incentives

When you think about incentives, individual rewards for achievement usually come to mind. Yet personal rewards are often ineffective, perhaps because they rely on the assumption that people are concerned primarily with their own self-interest — or at least more than they are with helping other people.

However, a great deal of research suggests that the desire to help other people is part of what makes you human. Scientists are exploring whether giving can be a much more powerful motivator than receiving. A fascinating series of three experiments led by Duke’s Lalin Anik indicates that pro-social incentives help people achieve more and be more satisfied while doing so.

In one of the experiments, good work was rewarded with money that participants were directed to spend on a bill, expense, or gift for themselves. In contrast, participants in the “pro-social group” were given an incentive but instructed to spend the money on a teammate instead. Even though the study was conducted with a group of pharmaceutical salespeople (which is a traditionally competitive profession), the team that had incentive to do good for someone else saw greater gains in performance than the team with a more selfish incentive.

A second study was conducted with sports teams, using the same design of asking players to spend money on themselves or their teammates. The teams assigned to the pro-social condition had a dramatic improvement in their winning percentage. The third experiment Anik and team conducted gave bankers a $50 bonus, which they were instructed to donate to a charity on behalf of their company. When compared with a control group, the group assigned the pro-social donation saw significant gains in happiness and job satisfaction.

When you want to motivate people to do great work, give them an incentive that will serve another person or benefit the entire team. When your friends, colleagues, spouse, or children accomplish something, try giving them a gift that keeps giving. Structure donations of time or resources. Plan an outing that includes some of their closest friends. If it is a material gift, make it one they can share with a group of people, like a gift certificate to a restaurant. Try this when motivating yourself and others, and see if you can set a cycle in motion. Remember that everyone is wired to get more of a boost from giving than from receiving.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.