Motivating Others What's The Real Answer?

Motivation and Engagement

Whether you are an employer, manager, teacher or parent, we are all at some stage keen to get answers to the age-old question.

How to motivate others?

Motivational Skills

So, economics and statistics are the flavour of the month, or more specifically Freakonomics (Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Penquin Books 2006).

In a quote from Levitt's website,

Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives - how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.

Disturbing And Interesting

And Levitt & Dubner do have many interesting, amusing and sometimes disturbing (at least to me) stories to tell.

For example, take the case of the child care centre that was having difficulty with a few parents picking up their children late.

It was decided to institute a late pickup fee of $3.

As you might have guessed, this did not stop the late parents and in fact, their numbers increased from about 8 to 20!

By introducing the fee, late pickups had just been legitimised and ameliorated the parents feeling of guilt.

Incentives

Levitt and Dubner suggest that incentives, to be effective, need to have three components economic, social and moral.

在儿童看护的情况下,会增加late fee to $100, posting the names of the late parents on a public list and running discussion groups on the implications of late pickups for children and parents, have changed the parent's behaviour?

The answer is an unequivocal Yes.

Cigarettes And Smoking

Another example given is cigarettes.

Levitt and Dubner suggest that in the US, the tax of around $3 or so on cigarettes (economic), no smoking laws in restaurants (social) and publicising the profits being made by terrorist groups through black market cigarette sales (moral) have successfully combined all three incentive ingredients to stop people smoking.

And they are right.

Do Incentives Work?

But (and in this case its a big but) do incentives work?

Do they motivate people?

On the cover of their book they suggest

Assume nothing question everything,

And I'm taking them up on this challenge.

I agree that incentives work they can change peoples behaviour.

Changing Behaviours

However, what do you get when you introduce incentives (even those that include the three components)?

Incentives produce compliance, they do not produce commitment.

The second thing that happens once incentives are introduced, is that they need to be repeated!

And repeated, and repeated!

Once started they cannot be stopped.

A right given is a right expected.

Compliant Or Committed?

As an employer, manager, parent or teacher (or child care centre manager), do you want compliant people or committed people?

Wouldnt it be so much easier to be an employer, manager, teacher or parent if incentives really worked in the way that they are intended?

Incentive Changes Behaviour Not Motivation

Unfortunately, because the incentive has only changed behaviour and not motivation when we take away the incentive, it is most likely that people will revert to their old behaviour.

Whereas with committed people, even when conditions change, they are far more likely to remain motivated.

(Mind you assume nothing question everything, always be wary of equating correlation with causation.

They are often not the same thing.)

Compliance

In regards to managers and compliance, a colleague of mine Peter Nicholls wrote recently

Managing people was so much easier when you could just concern yourself with who they were from the time they walked into the workplace until the decreed knock-off time.

Staff had each taken a vow to daily serve the organisation fully and faithfully until home-time us do part.

However, today's manager needs people who are committed and therefore perform at their best.

合规通常只带来平庸的表现ance.

Committed

If you as an employer, manager, parent or teacher, want committed rather than compliant people, how do you get them?

There are three things that you need to do:

1. Select the best people and then train, coach, develop and manage them well (parents and teachers may have some challenges with the selection, but they can certainly train, coach, develop and manage appropriately).

2. Make sure that there is a values match between what they believe in and what the organisation believes in.

3. Provide them with sufficient recognition (not rewards, nor incentives) that will encourage them to maintain their motivation.

Value Match

The first item, people selection and training is the topic of a future article.

In previous articles, I have clearly laid out the case for item three, recognition. In the remainder of this article, I'd like to focus on the values match.

Why values match as one component of gaining commitment?

Our research with employees (in focus groups and interviews) across many organisations and industries over the last 20 years, suggests that:

People join an organisation because of the role (and sometimes the reputation of the organisation)

People leave organisations because of poor management and leadership (not as you might expect for a better job or more money these things generally come after they have decided to leave)

Why Good People Stay

People stay in the organisation (assuming management and leadership are o.k.) because they share the same values as those they work with and of the organisation.

How do you get (and maintain) a values match?

You can do it either informally or formally.

In discussions with a teacher recently, she mentioned that her principal was always focusing on problem students.

For example, during break periods in the staff room, the principal would continually ask teachers about the problems they were having with students.

Negative Values Match

This encouraged a values match within the teachers that suggested the best way to get noticed by the principal was to bring up problem students in discussions with him.

The values match informally being reinforced by the principal here was a negative one of problems.

Positive Values Match

This contrasts quite dramatically with the experience of my own children who each had the fortune to have as a principal someone who encouraged a positive values match.

He would regularly be seen in the grounds talking with students during breaks about what they were interested in.

When he visited a classroom or made formal presentations to students, he continually focused on positive things that particular students had done (these were not the standard awards, but rather behaviour, special interests, sport, academic and so on).

He knew the interests (and values) of the students from his informal discussions with them and made a point of asking each teacher what were the positive things that their students were doing.

Values Match Team Discussion

In a formal way, you can uncover the values match by running some team discussions with your people around the Ideal World concept.

i.e. If you had the chance to work/live/participate/attend in an ideal oorganisation/school/ family, what would it look like?

What would people in this ideal situation do?

The results of the ensuing discussion will then give you a very good lead to the values that your people have in relation to the workplace, organisation, school or family.

This article was contributed by Bob Selden