The eternal quest for motivation

When I work with my coachees, we often have long conversations around what motivates them at work. When I work with managers, we have the same conversations, in particular around how they can motivate their staff. 

My general view is that one cannot motivate people; you can only bring people to motivate themselves.

Motivation is a strong emotion inside that makes us do stuff because we want to do it: so the only effective way of motivation is self-motivation. Hence the limited effectiveness of rewards in the work environment: they will work well for some tasks and contexts (repetitive, left brain environments, but much less for others (right brain, creative contexts).

Sam Glucksberg did some extensive research around intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The following video with Daniel Pink explains the differences beautifully, and, crucially, with a good sense of humour.

Comments

[Jean Marc Rommes]

1.

Alan,
Don't you on the contrary think your boss and everyone else in the company needs to see this, and see it again?
;-)
JM

[Alan Gemmell]

2.

Please remove this before my boss sees it, doesn't understand it, and lowers my salary hoping for a better productivity!

:-) Just kidding!

Great video. I liked his point about the different styles that different companies use, such as Google, Wikipidia etc. It reminded me of Semco, from the bok Maverick. It shows how going against the (what is believed to be) mnagerial grain, you come out with better results, and much more importantly, a happy, motivated workforce.