We’ve been in the 21st Century for over a decade now, and yes, it’s true, slowly but surely old-fashioned ideas of management and employee motivation are being updated with a new awareness of what truly motivates human beings.
The “carrot & stick” concept of motivation is still in play of course. Create incentives and rewards for the behavior you want, and create demerits and some form of punishment for the behavior you don’t want. We may never get rid of that basic accepted aspect of motivating people. But the field of behavioral science is no longer in it’s infancy, and it is presenting us with evidence we cannot ignore that tells us much of what be believe about the effectiveness of the “carrot & stick” method of motivation just isn’t true.
A New Motivational Awareness is Developing based on updated Scientific Evidence
Make no mistake about it, a new awareness has been developing and it is already taking hold in dramatically productive ways all across America… indeed, all across the world.
Much of what managers do is actually based on outdated assumptions and even what we might call “business folklore.” It’s time for us, as managers, to align what we do with what is actually true. In the very wise words of that great American philosopher, Will Rogers … “Always ride the horse in the direction that it’s going.”
Economically everything has changed worldwide. We are going through the debt-liquidation phase of a 75-year economic cycle that is changing everything. The behavior and assumptions we developed during the other phases of this re-occuring cycle are no long appropriate or effective. It’s a new world, and it is vitally important that we open ourselves to re-thinking the way we think about work, the way we organize our work, and the way we do our work.
As is always the case, there are early adopters, managers who are willing to break free of their old assumptions and freshly examine their thinking… and try new methods based on new evidence.
I hope you will become one of them. The future is not happening sometime in the future. The future is happening right now.
People are Strongly Motivated by an Intrinsic Desire for “Autonomy”
One of the most important elements of what is being called “Motivation 3.0” is the increasing desire people have for autonomy. What we are finally discovering scientifically is that human beings have an innate need to direct their own lives. And this need seems to be stronger now than ever before. We have only to witness the outbreak of the many “freedom” movements in the middle-east to understand this to be so.
It is equally strong in the work environment, especially so with the younger generations of workers now working side-by-side with the older generations.
The important shift in thinking is towards an awareness of “intrinsic motivation,” as opposed to extrinsic motivation. The “carrot & the stick” approach is based entirely on extrinsic factors of motivation. But the urge to have more control over our lives is a powerful motivating factor that comes from within. When we pay attention to that, and we learn to effectively – and productively – organize our work around respecting and satisfying that urge, people become motivated in ways that cannot be duplicated with the “carrot & stick” methods.
Here’s something you can do right away, to start implementing productive intrinsic employee motivation:
Intrinsic Motivation Exercise #1:
- Begin conducting “idea gathering” sessions at your regular meetings, where you ask for and gather ideas from your employees about what they think can be done to improve the way they work and the way the company serves your customers.
- Take 20 minutes to do something like the brain-writing technique with your employees.
- Allow them to offer their ideas, and allow them to evaluate the best ones for implementing. And allow them to implement the best of their ideas.
- Do this sort of thing at least once a month.
We’ll be offering you more of these “intrinsic motivation exercises” to assist you in shifting your thinking and your approach to employee motivation. You’ll be surprised how effective this will be with your employees, and how much more fulfilling your management work will become. You’ll find the two go hand in hand.
It’s a challenging time to be alive. And it’s an exciting time to be alive.
Change is happening all around us. And much of that change will do us good.
Give this some thought. And give this motivational exercise a try.
And have yourself a really good week.
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