Leadership: How do you build Motivation?
“There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.”
There is something special happening when our energies and action are aligned and go full speed to the realization of a goal, it feels like we are finally flying free. But finding motivation or giving it to somebody can bet tricky, even when it is for their own good, even if they are the one who wants to be motivated.
We want our employees to be motivated, our colleagues, our friends, and of course ourselves. We can try to lure other people with rewards and punishment, but we feel like when we are not there to pull them directly the effects of our encouragement will not last. So is it really our best option? The old carrot and stick method can work wonders in the short term, but it doesn’t have much effect in the long run.
What to do?
If we want to motivate others to be their best we need to first understand that motivation is not all the same, it can vary in types and quality. How we build motivation can require some skills and craftsmanship.
TYPES OF MOTIVATION
We can divide motivation into 2 main categories, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION
This is the most intuitive form of conditioning: we reward good behavior and we punish the bad one. This has an immediate effect on the individual and as long as we are in charge, if we maintain a higher status, we can feel like we are in control of the situation and the outcome. But as I mentioned before, this strategy can have severe lacks in the long term. To begin with, it forces us to always be active in dispensing rewards and punishments. Since you are the only source of other people’s motivation, it constantly requires a manual effort that is hard to scale or build upon. Other than that, it can push people to avoidance behavior. Humans are naturally more incentivized to avoid pain rather than gaining pleasure. Because of this, it is natural that they’ll all always tend to seek safety from a punishment more than obtaining rewards, leading to a denial of responsibility and limiting actions rather than personal growth and flourishing of the individual.
INTRINSIC MOTIVATION
We find intrinsic motivation when the rewards of our actions reside inside the activity itself. In other words, we are motivated towards growth in the activity independently of external forces. An intrinsically motivated person finds its energy from meeting set goals and developing skills inside his craft or activity of choice.
Quality is an important factor to consider here: not all motivation is the same, the quality of motivation is higher in an intrinsically motivated person. That is because this type of motivation is more autonomous by nature and tends to feed itself. The better you get at something, the more the process is enjoyable and pushes you to improve. While, for the same reason, external motivation has lower quality because of its dependence from external inputs.
building THE right ENVIRONMENT
While we can’t directly influence the level of intrinsic motivation of a person, we can definitively have an effect on the person’s environment. We are responsible for creating an environment where a person is encouraged to develop by satisfying his/her basic psychological needs.
Self-determination theory (SDT) postulates that these three basic psychological needs, if met, contribute to the general well-being and growth of the individuals. This is whether our environment is the workplace, a sports team or personal relationships.
AUTONOMY: we need to create a sense that people have freedom of choice in what they do. This is also a feeling that they are responsible for the path they take and in creating their own way. In our work, it might be the freedom that we can choose independently the best way to reach the goal set. Micromanaging is inevitably on the top of the list of things to avoid if we want to promote autonomy.
COMPETENCE: what competence really stands for is a sense of mastery over our environment. The feeling that we have what it takes (the abilities necessary) to navigate possible obstacles and get the job done. This sense of competence can come from the feedback we receive, the difficulties of the tasks that are given us, but most importantly it is built on our level of experience and the time spent improving in our craft.
RELATEDNESS: the human being is an incessant social animal. We want to feel that we belong, that in our group or team we are connected to other people. We want to know that they understand who we are and not only care for us and our well-being but that they also encourage and support us in our journey. They have our back when we fail and fall short and we can rely upon them.
When all of these three foundations are met, we create a structured, positive environment that motivates the people inside to grow. It is a place that promotes higher levels of productivity and well being than one where external rewards are used as the main means of motivation. We enjoy who we are with, what we are doing and how we are doing it, and it’ll show in the level of energy and performance of the group.
On the other hand, feelings of loneliness, of being manipulated or forcefully guided, of being incompetent or stupid (whether it’s happening consciously or not) can lead to absenteeism, higher levels of chronic stress and a general feeling of ill-being in the individual.
We are all partially responsible for the environment we work/play/practice in, so we all have the opportunity to be the first one to create an intrinsically motivated place by the way we treat the people around us, by supporting each other’s basic psychological needs.
CAN MOTIVATION BEAT PASSION?
Even if we are able to create the perfect environment, how much can we hope to actually influence someone that is uninterested in what he does?
There is a difference to be made between being motivated to do something and to be passionate about it.
Passion is an affinity with your activity, the activity is enjoyable as you’re doing it, it is autotelic.
Motivation is what makes you take action in actually performing the activity, what pushes you to do it, or your “why” behind it. A motivated person isn’t always passionate about his work, and a passionate person isn’t always motivated either.
While having both is obviously for the better, if we look at it from a performance perspective we see that passion can sometimes contain a trap within itself. To become better at anything we need to practice beyond our comfort zone, this deliberate type of practice is usually unpleasant, and the unpleasantness can override the joy of the activity. In the worst cases, this can limit the level of skills a person can reach, or make the experience so laborious that he loses the initial love for it, never actually reaching the level of proficiency (competence) necessary to feed his intrinsic motivation. Even a passionate person still needs to develop motivation if he wants to succeed. On the other hand, an intrinsically motivated person has already the resources in place and the basic needs necessary to build up skills. No activity or craft is in itself more or less interesting, it is our relationship to it that makes it so.
With the right environment: a certain degree of autonomy, challenging but reachable goals, and strong relationships, any activity can become interesting and satisfying. With an increasing level of mastery, we raise the quality and frequency of flow states, making the experience even more stimulating. Even when starting from a disinterested state or for external reasons, an intrinsically motivated person has the potential to develop a passion for any activity.
If we are talking about acquiring skills and getting better, it seems like a motivated person might have an advantage over a passionate one. Motivation in an individual is rarely built overnight, it is slowly developed as we gain experience, autonomy and we care enough to create a community where we support and challenge each other to thrive.
“The happiest, most passionate employees are not those who followed their passion into a position, but instead those who have been around long enough to become good at what they do.”