How can I motivate my employees to go the extra mile? How can I motivate my kids to do their homework, or clean their rooms? How can I motivate my friend to stop sabotaging her resolution to stop smoking?
Did you know that you cannot motivate people? Motivation has to come from within. You can help create the conditions that may lead to motivation but you can't make someone want to do something unless they decide they want to.
When everything else seems out of whack, having order in my home gives me a sense of control in at least one area of my life. My teenage daughter knows how much order and cleanliness is important to me and that is exactly why she has chosen to create chaos in her bedroom. There is so much stuff spread out on the floor that you cannot walk in without having to jump over piles of dirty laundry, or clean clothes that never made their way to the closet and drawers; drawings, drawing paper, pencils and erasers; posters that fell off the wall but never got stuck back on, and tons of books (she reads maybe 5 books a week). Her room has been our battle ground for months now. Granted, I need to learn to let go a little and I have made some progress on that front. I only ask her to pick up her room twice a month so that we can vacuum and toss out that the half-eaten food before it makes the whole second floor smell like the bottom of a garbage can. More importantly, to give her the privacy she so ardently desires, I am valiantly resisting the urge to clean her room myself when I can't stand it no more.
For a few days now, I have been trying every tactic in the book to get her to clean up her room. I tried to sweet talk her. I tried to give her ultimatums. I also have, I am ashamed to say, tried bribing her with treats. To no avail...of course.
This morning she gets a call from a brand new friend who wants to come and visit. Within an hour her room was picked up, vacuumed, posters hung up and she even made her bed! She was motivated to make a good impression on her new friend (much more potent motivation than to make her mom happy!)
Daniel Pink, the author of A Whole New Mind, has written a new book called Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. He demonstrates that while the carrot and stick approach, motivating through external rewards like money, has been successful in the twentieth century it will not cut it for today's challenges. The secret to high performance and satisfaction is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things and to do better by ourselves and our world.
The three elements of true motivation are autonomy, mastery and purpose.
Pink illustrates that point well through a bit of storytelling. He asks us to transport ourselves back to 1995. You are sitting down with an economist and say to her: "I've got a crystal ball that can see fifteen years into the future. I would like to see if you can forecast what I see."
"I will describe two types of encyclopedias, one that was just launched and another that will be created a few years later. I want you to tell me which one will be most successful in 2010."
"The first encyclopedia is funded by Microsoft. Professional writers and editors are paid to write thousands of articles. Well-paid managers will oversee the project to ensure on-time and on-budget completion."
"The second encyclopedia won't be funded by a company. It will be created by tens of thousands of people who write and edit articles for fun. Participants will work for free. The encyclopedia will exist online and will also be free."
Now you say to the economist "In fifteen years, one encyclopedia will be the largest and the most popular in the world and the other will be defunct. Which is which?"
Of course, you have guessed by now that the most successful encyclopedia is Wikipedia.
The people who contribute to the knowledge base in Wikipedia do it because they want to, nobody tells them that it's their job. Choosing your actions or in other words, exercising autonomy, is to the first element of true motivation according to Pink. Contributors to Wikipedia find that sharing their knowledge and expertise gives them a purpose, the second element of motivation. And as they research, write and edit their posts, contributors develop their own personal mastery in the subject area, the third element in motivation.
I am off to Montreal tomorrow to facilitate a 1200 people plenary session on employee engagement. The organizers wanted the participants to leave the conference feeling motivated and willing to volunteer their time to support their management community. Was there a workshop that I could teach on engagement? "Engagement comes from within" I replied, "you cannot teach it. What you can do perhaps, is create an experience for participants that will help them connect with their own leadership abilities and revive their desire to make a difference. The rest is up to them..."
I believe that if you work or frequent a motivated individual, their enthusiasm and sense of purpose is contagious. Maybe one of the best way to "motivate" someone is to become the best they can be is to model the way yourself...
What motivates you to try your best? Think about it in terms of autonomy, purpose and mastery.
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