(by Susan Fowler)
Autonomy Autonomy is our human need to perceive we have choices. It is our need to feel that what we are doing is of our own volition. It is our perception that we are the source of our actions. Children demonstrate a core need for autonomy; adults never lose their psychological need for autonomy. Employees experience autonomy when they feel some control and choice about the work they do. Autonomy doesn't mean that managers are permissive or hands-off but rather that employees feel they have influence in the workplace. Whether they are formally empowered or not, people can choose their own level of autonomy. "If You Want to Motivate Someone, Shut Up Already" (by Brandon Irwin) when a sports/training coach is verbally encouraging a trainee, performance is significantly lower than the results achieved with a quiet but attentive coach; hypothesis is that verbacl encouragement externalizes the exercisers' attention and energy, which blocks the exercisers' sense of autonomy.
Relatedness Relatedness is our need to care about and be cared about by others. It is our need to feel connected to others without concerns about ulterior motives. It is our need to feel that we are contributing to something greater than ourselves. It is personal, interpersonal, and social; we thrive on connection. If your need for relatedness is not met at work, and over 75% of your time is connected to work, then where is it being met? There is no such thing as "compensatory need satisfaction"--need satisfaction is important for everyone, all the time, and everywhere. One of the great opportunities you have as a leader is to help your people find meaning, contribute to a social purpose, and experience healthy interpersonal relationships at work. The role you play as a leader is helping people experience relatedness at work: caring about and feeling cared about, feeling connected without ulterior motives, and contributing to something greater than oneself. Your people will feel the opposite of relatedness if they think they're being used by you or the organization, sense that your attention is not genuine, or suspect they are simply a means to someone else's ends.
Competence Competence is our need to feel effective at meeting everyday challenges and opportunities. It is demonstrating skill over time. It is a feeling a sense of growth and flourishing. Children have a psychological need to learn and grow; bribing children with carrots or driving them with sticks diverts them from their natural love of learning. Children who succumbed to ineffective motivational techniques for learning and growing are now in the workplace hooked on motivational junk food in the form of pay-for-performance plans and elaborate reward and incentive programs. You can't impose growth and learning on a person, but you can promote a learning environment that doesn't undermine your people's sense of competence.
Mindfulness. Mindfulness is noticing--being aware and attuned to what is happening in the present moment without judgment or an automatic reaction. It is a state of being but is also a skill that requires development through practice and patience. Mindfulness and ARC are directly linked. The high-quality self-regulation that comes from mindfulness is highly relevant to a person's motivational outlook. The more mindful you are, the more likely you are to satisfy your psychological needs. When a person is mindful, she experiences a heightened sense of autonomy because she is not controlled by her own potentially misconstrued and misaligned self-concept based on irrelevant past experiences. In this mindful state, a person is better able to experience relatedness because she can be genuinely concerned about another person without self-serving interpretations or prejudice. Mindfulness also enhances her competence because without the knee-jerk response, she has options for making more appropriate choices--she is better able to navigate and master whatever situation she finds herself in.
Values. Values are premeditated, cognitive standards of what a person considers good or bad, worse, better, or best. Values are enduring beliefs a person has chosen to accept as guidelines for how he works--and lives his life. Individuals need to identify, develop, clarify, declare, and operationalize their own work-related values and purpose--and then determine how they align with the organization's values. Employees with clarified values are more likely to experience high-quality self-regulation despite inevitable workplace demands and challenges. But therein lies the problem: First people need to have developed values! People are always acting from their values, what matters is the quality of their values. Developing workplace values for yourself and with your people is worth the investment of time--linking developed values to a challenging task, goal, or situation activates a shift between a suboptimal motivational outlook and optimal motivational outlook. A developed value is freely chosen from alternatives, with an understanding of the consequences of the alternatives; it is acted upon over time.
Purpose. Purpose is a deep and meaningful reason for doing something. Purpose is acting with a noble intention--when your actions are infused with social significance. Peak performers are not goal driven. Peak performers are values based and inspired by a noble purpose. The danger of drive is that it distracts people from what really makes them dance. People are more likely to meet or exceed expectations when they pursue goals within a context of meaningful purpose. Employees who have clarified their personal values and vision and integrated them with their organization's stated values and vision are likely to be living, working, and even dancing purposefully. Most organizations have a vision, mission, or purpose statement, but few employees have one for their work-related role. Collaborate with your employees to find alignment between their perception of their role-related values and purpose and your perception. Come to conclusions together that meet both their needs and those of the organization.
"Are you motivated to read this book? ... This is simply the wrong question. What if I asked instead, Why are you motivated to read this book? ... An important truth emerges when we explore the nature of motivation. People are always motivated. The question is not if, but why they are motivated.
Motivation that comes from choosing to do smoething is different from motivation that comes from having to do it.
Motivation generated from values, purpose, love, joy, or compassion is different from motivation generated from ego, power, status, or a desire for external rewards.
Motivation to compete because of a desire to excel (where the score serves as feedback for how successfully you are growing, learning, and executing) is different from competing for the sake of besting someone else, to impress, or to gain favors.
"When it comes to motivation, assuming that more is better, is too simplistic and even unwise. As with friends, it isn't how many friends you have, it is the quality and types of friendships that matter."
Why aren't more leaders making use of the better way to approach motivation?
You are not aware of the evidence. [Behaviorist theory, a la B.F. Skinner, was how we understood motivation.] People are not pigeons.
You don't believe the evidence. [Embedded beliefs about management--"The purpose of business is to ____", "It's not personal, it's just ___", and so on.]
You don't know what to do with the evidence. Fear and trepidation: What are alternatives to abandoning the stick and weaning people off the carrot? How do I get and keep people intrinsically motivated? But... Misunderstanding what motivation means leads to a misapplication of techniques to make it happen.
[Billy Beane, the Moneyball GM for the A's; the Boston Red Sox tried to lure him away with massive paycheck and perks, and he turned them down. He was motivated, just motivated differently than one might expect.]
The motivation dilemma is that leaders are being held accountable to do something they cannot do: motivate others.
Why do we say that people are already motivated? Assuming that people lack motivation at any time is a mistake! They have appraised the situation, come to their own conclusions, and gone in their own motivational direction. They (and you) have cognitive and emotional responses to the meeting: Is the meeting a safe or threatening event? Am I feeling supported or threatened? Is it a good use or waste of my time? Am I excited or fearful? Am I attending because I want to, or because I feel I have to? Ultimately, how you feel about the meeting has the greatest influence on your sense of well-being, which determines your intentions, which ultimately lead to your behavior.
The heart of employee engagement. The appraisal process is the heart of employee engagement/disengagement; but how do people come to be engaged? (How could you improve engagement scores if you don't understand the internal process individuals go through to become engaged?) Researchers have discovered a higher level of engagement behind disengaged, actively disengaged, and engaged employees: employee work passion, which demonstrates these five positive intentions:
Performs above standard expectations.
Uses discretionary effort on behalf of the organization.
Endorses the organization and its leadership to others outside the organization.
Uses altruistic citizenship behaviors toward all stakeholders.
Stays with the organization.
Researchers identified twelve organizational/job factors that influence a person's positive appraisal process.
Motivating people may not work, but you can help facilitate people's appraisal process so they are more likely to experience day-to-day optimal motivation. Motivation is a skill. People can learn to choose and create optimal motivational experiences anytime and anywhere. But before you can help your people navigate their appraisal process or teach them the skill of motivation, you need to master it yourself.
A spectrum of motivation. [Spectrum of Motivation model--six motivational outlooks]
Disinterested motivational outlook. (Suboptimal) You simply could not find any value in the meeting; it felt like a waste of time, adding to your sense of feeling overwhelmed.
External motivational outlook. (Suboptimal) The meeting provded an opportunity for you to exert your position or power; it enabled you to take advantage of a primse for more money or an enhanced status or image in the eyes of others.
Imposed motivational outlook. (Suboptimal) You felt pressured because everyone else was attending and expected the same from you; you were avoiding feelings of guilt, shame, or fear from not participating.
Aligned motivational outlook. (Optimal) You were able to link the meeting to a significant value, such as learning--hat you might learn or what others might learn from you.
Integrated motivational outlook. (Optimal) You were able to link the meeting to a life or work purpose, such as giving voice to an important issue in the meeting.
Inherent motivational outlook. (Optimal) You simply enjoy meetings and thought it would be fun.
The Problem with Feeding People Motivational Junk Food. [Steady diet of junk food simply isn't good for us.] A study: You receive an invitation from your health insurance provider: Lose weight, win an iPad. Many did, lost weight, won the iPad. But researchers followed the participants past the prize, and noticed that within 12 weeks, people resumed old behaviors, regained the weight they had lost, and then added even more weight. Financial incentives do not sustain changes in personal health behaviors--in fact they undermine those behaviors over time. They may help initiate new and healthy behaviors, but they fail miserably in helping people maintain their progress or sustain results.
Try Serving Motivational Health Food. People with high-quality motivation may accept external rewards when offered, but this is clearly not the reason for their efforts. The reasons these people do what they do are more profound and provide more satisfaction than external rewards can deliver.
Human beings have an innate tendency and desire to thrive, but thriving doesn't happen automatically. Human thriving in the workplace is a dynamic potential that requires nurturing.
Illuminating the True Nature of Human Motivation. The essence of the answer lies in three psychological needs: autonomy, relatedness, and competence (ARC).
Autonomy Autonomy is our human need to perceive we have choices. It is our need to feel that what we are doing is of our own volition. It is our perception that we are the source of our actions. Children demonstrate a core need for autonomy; adults never lose their psychological need for autonomy. Employees experience autonomy when they feel some control and choice about the work they do. Autonomy doesn't mean that managers are permissive or hands-off but rather that employees feel they have influence in the workplace. Whether they are formally empowered or not, people can choose their own level of autonomy. "If You Want to Motivate Someone, Shut Up Already" (by Brandon Irwin) when a sports/training coach is verbally encouraging a trainee, performance is significantly lower than the results achieved with a quiet but attentive coach; hypothesis is that verbacl encouragement externalizes the exercisers' attention and energy, which blocks the exercisers' sense of autonomy.
Relatedness Relatedness is our need to care about and be cared about by others. It is our need to feel connected to others without concerns about ulterior motives. It is our need to feel that we are contributing to something greater than ourselves. It is personal, interpersonal, and social; we thrive on connection. If your need for relatedness is not met at work, and over 75% of your time is connected to work, then where is it being met? There is no such thing as "compensatory need satisfaction"--need satisfaction is important for everyone, all the time, and everywhere. One of the great opportunities you have as a leader is to help your people find meaning, contribute to a social purpose, and experience healthy interpersonal relationships at work. The role you play as a leader is helping people experience relatedness at work: caring about and feeling cared about, feeling connected without ulterior motives, and contributing to something greater than oneself. Your people will feel the opposite of relatedness if they think they're being used by you or the organization, sense that your attention is not genuine, or suspect they are simply a means to someone else's ends.
Competence Competence is our need to feel effective at meeting everyday challenges and opportunities. It is demonstrating skill over time. It is a feeling a sense of growth and flourishing. Children have a psychological need to learn and grow; bribing children with carrots or driving them with sticks diverts them from their natural love of learning. Children who succumbed to ineffective motivational techniques for learning and growing are now in the workplace hooked on motivational junk food in the form of pay-for-performance plans and elaborate reward and incentive programs. You can't impose growth and learning on a person, but you can promote a learning environment that doesn't undermine your people's sense of competence.
Be careful of being driven; if you are driven, who is doing the driving?
Drive Theory (popular motivational theory) is based on the idea that we are motivated to get what we don't have: if you are thirsty you are driven to drink, if you are hungry you are driven to eat. The problem is that after you drink or eat, your need is satiated and you are no longer to drink or eat until your body is deficient again.
Anti-Drive Theory. Your psychological needs are not drives; they are just the opposite, in that drives dissipate when they are satiated. When psychological needs are satisfied, you experience such positive energy, vitality, and a sense of well-being that you want more. People who experience ARC are thriving. They do not need something or someone else doing the driving. Dysfunction exists because our psychological needs for ARC are not being satisfied.
Self-Regulation: The Means to a Satisfying End. Psychological needs are fragile; their power is in the combined potency of ARC--but if one is out of balance, the others are diminished. How do we protect our psychological needs from all these distractions? Self-regulation: mindfully managing feelings, thoughts, values, and purpose for immediate and sustained positive effort.
The Nature of Self-Regulation: Eating the Marshmallow. [The Stanford Marshmallow experiment.] Study: "teachers" set up an art project to explore why some children demonstrate higher-quality self-regulation than others. Children were told they had a choice to either start their art project immediately with a few materials on hand, or wait until a teacher came back with a big bag of art supplies, which then put them into one of two scenarios--a reliable situation (the teacher always came back with the big bag of supplies) and an unreliable situation (the teacher returned with no supplies at all). The letdown of not getting bigger and better supplies as promised made them less likely to engage enthusiastically in their art. Then, the teacher announced that it was time for a snack, and the children were given the "one marshmallow now, or wait for the teacher to come back with two marshmallows" decision. Children in the reliable group (who had received their art supplies as promised) had four times longer delayed gratification than the children who experienced the unreliable situation. The quality of the children's self-regulation significantly correlated to their environment and experience.
The MVPs of Self-Regulation.
Mindfulness. Mindfulness is noticing--being aware and attuned to what is happening in the present moment without judgment or an automatic reaction. It is a state of being but is also a skill that requires development through practice and patience. Mindfulness and ARC are directly linked. The high-quality self-regulation that comes from mindfulness is highly relevant to a person's motivational outlook. The more mindful you are, the more likely you are to satisfy your psychological needs. When a person is mindful, she experiences a heightened sense of autonomy because she is not controlled by her own potentially misconstrued and misaligned self-concept based on irrelevant past experiences. In this mindful state, a person is better able to experience relatedness because she can be genuinely concerned about another person without self-serving interpretations or prejudice. Mindfulness also enhances her competence because without the knee-jerk response, she has options for making more appropriate choices--she is better able to navigate and master whatever situation she finds herself in.
Values. Values are premeditated, cognitive standards of what a person considers good or bad, worse, better, or best. Values are enduring beliefs a person has chosen to accept as guidelines for how he works--and lives his life. Individuals need to identify, develop, clarify, declare, and operationalize their own work-related values and purpose--and then determine how they align with the organization's values. Employees with clarified values are more likely to experience high-quality self-regulation despite inevitable workplace demands and challenges. But therein lies the problem: First people need to have developed values! People are always acting from their values, what matters is the quality of their values. Developing workplace values for yourself and with your people is worth the investment of time--linking developed values to a challenging task, goal, or situation activates a shift between a suboptimal motivational outlook and optimal motivational outlook. A developed value is freely chosen from alternatives, with an understanding of the consequences of the alternatives; it is acted upon over time.
Purpose. Purpose is a deep and meaningful reason for doing something. Purpose is acting with a noble intention--when your actions are infused with social significance. Peak performers are not goal driven. Peak performers are values based and inspired by a noble purpose. The danger of drive is that it distracts people from what really makes them dance. People are more likely to meet or exceed expectations when they pursue goals within a context of meaningful purpose. Employees who have clarified their personal values and vision and integrated them with their organization's stated values and vision are likely to be living, working, and even dancing purposefully. Most organizations have a vision, mission, or purpose statement, but few employees have one for their work-related role. Collaborate with your employees to find alignment between their perception of their role-related values and purpose and your perception. Come to conclusions together that meet both their needs and those of the organization.
The Danger of Drive. It promotes external motivators that undermine people's psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence--diminishing the quality and sustainability of their motivation. When employees focus on an external motivator, they are controlled by it, or whoever is doing the driving, and without realizing it, they lose autonomy. People ultimately resent leaders who create a pressurized workplace that undermines autonomy. People regard managers who drive for results as self-serving; they consider support by those managers as conditional (if you do as I say, then I will reward you in some way) and that undermines people's relatedness. Driving for results by adding pressure and tension blocks people's creativity and ability to focus, leaving them feeling inadequate or ineffective at coping with circumstances--which undermines competence.
When employees thrive, leaders don't need to drive.
Three skills are needed for activating your own positive energy, vitality, and sense of well-being:
Leaders must understand how to do it for themselves before they can hope to guide others. Teaching leaders about motivation is difficult because they believe their job is to motivate others--not themselves.
Select a Challenging Task, Goal, or Situation. Try testing the three skills by applying them.
Skill 1: Identify your current motivational outlook. You are only interested in identifying your current motivational outlook (no judging).
For example: As I reflect on losing twenty-five poudsn over the next six months, my motivational outlook options might be:
Disinterested: I see no value in losing twenty-five pounds. I may not be pleased with my weight or diet, but I have no intentions of acting on this goal--it is too overwhelming right now.
External: I really want to win the prize our health insurance company is offering me if I achieve my weight-loss goal.
Imposed: I'm feeling a lot of pressure tolose the weight. My family members are worried about my health; I feel guilty about disappointing them.
Aligned: I value my health, and losing weight is one way to be healthier. I look forward to losing twenty-five pounds. It is a healthy choice for me.
Integrated: Part of my life purpose is to be a role model for my children and to have the energy I need to be involved in their lives. Losing twenty-five pounds is a way of gaining the energy and vitality I need to fulfill my purpose.
Inherent: I am enthusiastic about losing the weight. This new diet sounds fund and exciting. I enjoy trying new things.
Now look behind the motivational outlook you identified for confirmation. Referring to the Spectrum of Motivation model, answer these questions:
Would you describe your satisfaction of psychological needs (ARC) as high-quality or low-quality?
Is the quality of your self-regulation (use of MVPs) related to your goal high or low?
Are your needs for ARC being satisfied or not?
Are you employing the MVPs to self-regulate?
I might answer with these insights into my psychological needs:
As soon as I told myself I was going on a diet and couldn't eat anything I liked, my autonomy was eroded. Now I have the urge to eat everything I told myself not to eat! I find myself compensating for my low-quality autonomy by eating all the stuff I'm not supposed to eat. Then I feel guilty and mad at myself.
I am going on this diet to appease my doctor and family. I am afraid of disappointing them. Sometimes I find myself resenting their interference. My fear of not living up to their expectations, potential shame, and guilt from eating what I'm not supposed to eat leave me with low-quality relatedness with my doctor, my family, and myself!
My competence is shot. The pressure from my doctor and family members makes it clear they don't trust my ability to take care of myself. Maybe they are right; maybe I have failed to do what is right for me. I am not confident I will be successful on this diet. When I've lost weight in the past, I always seemed to gain it--and more--back again.
Now consider the quality of your self-regulation.
I have not practiced mindfulness. When I eat food I am not supposed to eat, I try not to think about it. I tell myself that I'll start the diet for real next week after I finish the report that is due on Friday.
I never thought about aligning my values to my eating habits. I haven't considered why this goal is meaningful or important--other than skinny is better than fat, I guess. I apply my values for integrity, loyalty, and honesty to the reports I create at work, but I don't understand how they relate to what I eat.
I have not connected to a life- or work-related purpose statement because I don't have one. Who has time to write a purpose statement? I'm too busy living my life and supporting a family!
Skill 2: Shift to (or maintain) an optimal motivational outlook. Choose where you want to be--which motivational outlook is preferable--and implement a strategy for getting there. To make a good choice, consider the distinctions among the six motivational outlooks.
Shifting to the disinterested motivational outlook: Why? Good news, you can avoid spending any energy you don't have and you don't have to change anything. Bad news: you don't have any energy and nothing will change. Given the choice, why would you ever want to be, or stay, in the disinterested motivational outlook? Why choose to be where there is nothing to gain and opportunities to lose?
Shifting to the external motivational outlook: Promises, promises; this is all about doing something in return for a promise of a tangible (money, bonus, raise, incentive, corner office, first place, etc) or intangible (attention, political clout, power, status, acceptance, public recognition, etc) reward. You hear yourself making statements like I am choosing to get involved because it affords me a certain lifestyle. If I do this work now, it could really look good on my resume. I will win the respect and recognition of my coworkers. I will do it, but I will need a monetary reward, public recognition, or a promotion for it. The hidden costs and opportunity losses of banking on the external motivational outlook are rarely worth the potential short-term gains.
Shifting to the imposed motivational outlook: This is one of the unhealthiest outlooks! You hear yourself saying I have to do it. I am obligated to participate. I'll feel guilty if I don't do it. I would be ashamed of not doing it. There is a lot of pressure to get this done and I am afraid I might not be able to do it. I need to prove myself. I am afraid of disappointing others. I am afraid of disappointing myself! You can rationalize that caving into pressures to "do it their way" is more likely to help you keep your job, or that the reason you are fearful of disappointing another is that you care about that person. However, relatedness is mutually caring relationships without ulterior motives; it is pure and free of pressure, stress, or obligation to prove you care. Relatedness is not about appeasing someone, keeping the peace, or worrying that she might retreat if you don't live up to expectations. The irony of the imposed motivational outlook is that the one who does the most imposing is probably you.
Shifting to the aligned motivational outlook: You go beyond achieving your goal to making meaning. You are in the aligned motivational outlook when what you're doing is linked to your values. You hear yourself saying statements such as I volunteered for this; I am not being coerced into it. I have thought it through, and participating and working hard at it are important to me. I might not have chosen it for myself, but I still agree with it and own it. I agree with your rationale on why this is important. For all its positives, "aligned" has a couple of challenges to consider: first, to align with values, you have to have developed values; second, your current actions could appear selfish to others if you have not declared your values and clarified your intentions. Benefits: Acting from your developed values reflects high-quality self-regulation and results in high-quality psychological needs. You satisfy your need for autonomy as you make choices based on your values--you feel in control of your actions. You satisfy your need for relatedness as your goal is in harmony with important values and your actions create a sense of meaning. You satisfy your need for competence as you focus your energy creatively and productively.
Shifting to the integrated motivational outlook: Your developed values are less conscious and more second-nature. You identify with what is being asked of you, and are acting with noble purpose. You hear yourself saying statements such as Working on this is extremely meaningful to me. I want to stay engaged in this because it taps into my sense of purpose. I understand what is being asked of me and it is integrated with who I am. It lets me be authentic. Working on this is part of how I have decided to live my life. I notice that obstacles do not derail me. I am committed to doing the work and moving forward. The only downside to this outlook? You need to have a sense of purpose! When you are in the integrated outlook, you feel a sense of peace; this is the outlook where your longings are most deeply satisfied.
Shifting to the inherent motivational outlook: You have a natural, often-unexplainable interest in and enjoyment for what you are doing. You often lose track of time because you are enjoying yourself so much. You hear yourself making statements such as I don't know why I do it. I don't think about it--I just like it. It's fun. I find it interesting. It is easy to get lost in this work--that is how much pleasure I get from it. I do not think in terms of needing tangible or intangible rewards. Doing the activity itself is reward enough. Even though I know this is part of my job and money is involved, I don't do it for that reason. Doing this work is about digging in and having fun. I enjoy this work and get satisfaction from accomplishing difficult challenges related to it.
** Getting in the flow.** [Concept of Flow] A potential downside of flow in the inherent motivational outlook: If you love an activity for the sake of the activity itself, you have an inherent motivational outlook, you might feel guilty about the time you spend on it. If you love an activity and are able to link it to developed values and a noble purpose, you have an integrated motivational outlook.
Making the shift. The means for shifting is self-regluation:
Skill 3: Reflect. Reflecting may prove to be a difficult challenge if you are a leader who believes there is no room for feelings in the workplace. Well-being is at the heart of your motivational outlook. Positive well-being has the specific characteristics listed below:
The presence of positive energy.
A sense of physical and emotional harmony.
Calm from being in supportive and secure relationships.
Little to no negative energy, stress, or anxiety.
A sense of continued learning, personal growth, and accomplishment.
A feeling that one's work is contributing to something socially meaningful.
When you consider your goal, do you have a sense of positive well-being?
Outlook conversations: A motivational outlook conversation is an informal or formal opportunity to facilitate a person's shift to an optimal motivational outlook.
When Should You Conduct an Outlook Conversation? An outlook conversation may be appropriate when a situation is negatively affecting the individual--or the person's outlook is negatively affecting the team or the organization.
Outlook Conversations--What Doesn't Work. Avoid the three common mistakes:
* Do not problem solve. Bite your tongue, take off your "I've been where you are and know how to solve your problem" hat. When people have a suboptimal motivational outlook, it is almost impossible for them to engage in problem solving, let alone follow through on potential solutions. Facilitate a person's shift to an optimal motivational outlook before proceeding to problem solving and action planning.
Do not impose your values. Despite your good intentions, imposing your values on others tends to provoke an imposed motivational outlook.
Do not expect a shift. Refrain from "leading the witness." Relax, practice mindfulness, and let the conversation take its course. The outlook conversation is not about you or your ego. Realize that a person may not shift during your conversation. The shift may be a "time bomb" that goes off when the person is ready. You will gain understanding, but remember, the purpose of an outlook conversation is to guide individuals to their own understanding of their motivational options and then shift, if they choose to do so.
Outlook Conversations--What Does Work. Practice practice practice. Follow the process. Be sensitive to what's happening in the moment. You are less likely to jump into problem solving, impose your values, or lead with expectations when you do three things:
Prepare. Shift your own motivational outlook (in addition to all the other preparatory activities). Before entering any outlook conversation, check your own motivational outlook. You need to be conscious and conscientious about the values you demonstrate as a leader.
Trust the process. Follow the three skills for activating optimal motivation as guidelines. If you cannot practice the skills for yourself, it is unlikely you will succeed in activating them with others.
Facilitate skill 1: Identify the person's current motivational outlook. Get permission to explore the individual's feelings regarding her task, goal, or situation.
Does she have a positive sense of well-being or not? Listen to clues in her language; watch her nonverbal body language.
Is the individual experiencing a low quality or high quality of psychological needs? Does she feel in control and recognize she has choices, feel supported and have a sense of purpose regarding the situation, and feel she has the ability to navigate the challenges posed by the situation?
Is the individual demonstrating low- or high-quality self-regulation? Is this person practicing mindfulness, making a values-based decision, or connecting the situation to a higher purpose?
Is the individual's motivational outlook suboptimal (disinterested, external, or imposed) or optimal (aligned, integrated, inherent)?
Facilitate skill 2: Shift to (or maintain) an optimal motivational outlook. You can facilitate this process through the MVPs:
Promote the individual's practice of mindfulness.
Help the individual align the situation with his workplace values.
Help the individual connect the situation to a noble purpose.
Facilitate skill 3: Reflect. Guide the individual through a reflection on the outlook conversation experience. Listen without judgment. Practice mindfulness with their response.
Reflect and close. If you are practicing mindfulness, you will notice when the individual is running low on the emotional energy required to continue exmaining, exploring, or shifting. You need to know when enough is enough--for both the individual and yourself. When you close, seek commitment from the individual to maintain his chosen motivational outlook or continue his examination, identification, and choice of a motivational outlook. Discuss how the individual might practice high-quality self-regulation and satisfy his psychological needs. Schedule maintenance conversations. Recognize that when the individual chooses to engage in future outlook conversations with you, he experiences autonomy; your demonstration of support elevates his experience of relatedness; and using the three skills to facilitate an outlook conversation builds the individual's own skill for shifting his motivational outlook any time he chooses, building his sense of competence. After closing the outlook conversation, you need to reflect.
"It's not personal, it's just business." Every day you deliver information, feedback, or news to those you lead that affects their work, livelihood, opportunities, status, income, mood, health, or well-being. How is this not personal? If it is business, it is personal.
| What Doesn't Work | What Does Work |
|---|---|
| Think to yourself or tell a person directly, "You shouldn't feel that way" | Acknowledge and validate people's feelings and emotions |
| Be judgmental and make approval conditional | Offer pure or descriptive feedback rather than evaluative feedback or personalized praising |
| Tolerate sabotaging actions or unacceptable patterns of behavior | Facilitate the genetation of options and ask open-ended questions to promote mindfulness |
"The purpose of business is to make money." When you hold this belief, you are likely to focus on the dashboard metrics instead of focusing on the people responsible for providing quality service to your customers/clients. The purpose of business is to serve. Yes, a business must make a profit to sustain itself. But it is an illogical step to conclude that profit is therefore the purpose of business. You need air to live, water to drink, food to eat. But the purpose of your life is not just breathe, drink, and eat. Your purpose is richer and more profound than basic survival. The nature of human motivation is not about making money. The nature of human motivation is in making meaning. "Profit is the applause you get from creating an optimally motivating environment for your people so they want to take care of your customers." The purpose of business is to serve--both your people and your customers. Profit is a by-product of doing both of these well.
| What Doesn't Work | What Does Work |
|---|---|
| Drive profit at the expense of people | Help individuals align to work-related values and a sense of purpose. Frame actions in terms of the welfare of the whole |
| Delay skill-related feedback or punish lack of competence | Provide an honest assessment of skills and training needs |
| See people as tireless machines | Clear time for inherently motivating projects |
"Leaders are in a position of power." "Managers need to be incredibly mindful and clear about the types of power they have and use. Most leaders will be surprised by the potentially negative emotional impact that results from having and using their power, in almost all its forms." (Dr Drea Zigarmi) Even when you don't have intentions to use your power, just having it creates a dynamic that requires your awareness and sensitivity. Consider the most commonly used types of power and the potential effect each one has on your people's emotional well-being, intentions, and motivational outlooks:
Impersonal reward power is the power to grant special benefits, promotions, or favorable considerations
Personal reward power is the power you have when your employees' feelings depend on being accepted, valued, and liked by you
Employees report that when they perceive either form of reward power at work, they experience a suboptimal motivational outlook.
Coercive power is your power to use threats and punishment if people fail to conform to desired outcomes. Coercive power creates a workplace where people need to consciously exercise high-quality self-regulation to avoid a suboptimal motivational outlook.
Referent power is based on how your employees identify with you. You may enjoy certain work relationships becaue your employees' self-identity is enhanced through interaction with you, their actions are based on their desire to be similar to and associated with you, or they think so highly of you that they are afraid to disagree with you. Their dependence on you for their internal state of well-being tends to undermine their autonomy, relatedness, and competence.
Legitimate power is bestowed through a position or title that gives a leader the justifiable right to request compliance from another individual. Often referred to as position power, legitimate power is manifest in a variety of forms.
Reciprocity is the power stemming from your employees feeling obligated to comply with your requests because you have done something positive for them.
Equity power, thought of as quid pro quo, is the power you have when an employee senses that you expect some type of compensation for the work or effort you have put into the relationship.
Dependence power is the power you have when your employees feel obliged to assist you because you're in need--not out of a sense of relatedness but from an imposed sense of social responsibility.
Expert power is power that comes through your depth and breadth of knowledge. Expert power relies on the perceptions your employees hold regarding your superior knowledge.
Information power relies on your employees' perception on how you present persuasive material or logic.
Power undermines people's psychological needs. It's not just your use of the power; it's people's perception that you have it and could use it.
Leaders are in a position of creating a workplace where people are more likely to satisfy their psychological needs for ARC.
| What Doesn't Work | What Does Work |
|---|---|
| Apply pressure and demand accountability | Invite choice. Explore options within boundaries. |
| Rely on your position or coercive power | Explore individuals' natural interest in and enthusiasm for the goal. |
| Withhold or hide your reasoning behind decisions | Provide a rationale and share information. Discuss your intentions openly. |
"The only thing that really matters is results." Consider the effect this "tyranny of results" has on the workplace. Consider three alternatives to the traditional results focus.
Option 1: Redefine and reframe results. Clarify the underlying values behind your dashboard metrics. People may even shift to an integrated outlook when metrics are authentically positioned as a means to fulfilling a noble purpose.
Option 2: Set high-quality goals. Leaders need to help their people avoid potentially external goals such as:
Instead, set goals that promote more optimal motivational outlooks, such as:
Personal growth, such as improving listening skills or practicing mindfulness
Option 3: Do not imply that the ends justify the means. A focus on results may yield short-term gains. However, those gains are at risk and compromised when people feel pressure instead of autonomy, disconnection instead of relatedness, and a sense of being used without a sense of the competence they have gained. In the end, what really matters is not just the results people achieve but why and how people achieve them.
| What Doesn't Work | What Does Work |
|---|---|
| Impose goals and deadlines | Present goals and timelines as valuable information necessary for accomplishing agreed-upon outcomes. Help individuals reframe goals so they are meaningful to them while still achieving the outcomes required. |
| Focus on the needs of the organization without equal attention to the needs of the individuals you lead | Provide individuals the appropriate direction and support needed for their level of development |
| Evaluate output while ignoring effort | Explore alternatives for stimulating implementation strategies |
"If you cannot measure it, it doesn't matter." A specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goal simply is not SMART enough; change M to Motivating and move "measurable" to S (specific). As in life, the most rewarding aspects of work are those most difficult to measure. If you believe the statement "If you cannot measure it, it does not matter", ask yourself why. If you cannot measure it, it is probably really, really important. A true growth step for leaders is to become more mindful of promoting dreams, ideals, and experiences that cannot be easily measured. That includes becoming more comfortable with feelings.
| What Doesn't Work | What Does Work |
|---|---|
| Overemphasize metrics and competition | Explore individuals' natural interest in and enthusiasm for the goal |
| Underestimate learning. Continually delay or cancel learning or development opportunities and training programs | Emphasize learning goals, not just performance goals |
| Make mistakes a mistake | Encourage self-reflection and growth. Legitimize mistakes as part of the learning process |
Most executives can answer the question, "What do you want from your people?" Most cannot answer (at first) "What do you want for your people?" When you focus on what you want for people, you are more likely to get the results you want from people.
People can flourish as they succeed. This is the promise of optimal motivation.
Last modified 06 April 2022