I found this article written by Jim Collins in 1998 where he talks about a personal experience he had when he received a teaching award at Stanford. He said, “I started to dread teaching this course because I had taught it before and wondered if I would be able to repeat the expectations that people had.” He had obviously gone well and he wondered if this one would go any better. He said: “Sure I felt motivated, but it was the kind of motivation that took away the joy I normally felt from teaching.”
Around the same time, he was reading about John Wooden, the UCLA basketball coach who led his team to 10 NCAA championships in 12 years during the ’60s and ’70s. He realized that Wooden had never set out to repeat the performance of the previous year; not even if it had been an undefeated performance. Instead, he focused his attention entirely on how to improve on the previous year. She said that Wooden highlighted for him a supreme truth. I want to quote that. “Excellence is the residual result of continuous creation and improvement for its own sake.” We keep doing things better because we want to do better. While fear mongers focus on the demoralizing effect of failure, Wooden tapped into the inspiring reward of achievement; the sheer invigorating joy that comes from simply making something better.
When we look at ourselves and the work we are doing, what is our motivation in our workplaces? Is fear?. Is that our motivator? You know, I’ve felt in the last year, traveling and talking to different people, that fear seems to be a big motivator: fear of change, fear of staying in the same place, fear of not rocking the boat, fear of maintaining the status quo. : fear seems to be the engine that motivates many.
But as Jim Collins says, “The dark side of fear motivation is that it’s like a powerful stimulant. It can shake you up for a while, but it also inevitably leaves you more drained than before. Wanting to survive simply to avoid losing what we have It’s not a goal that can motivate in the long run. It doesn’t offer any promise of progress toward achievement. It’s not something lasting, it’s not something continuous, something that can be sustained over a long period of time.”
I found another article by Nicole Sforza in Incentive Magazine. The author says “Is fear a good motivator? Yes! Make sure the consequences make sense and you stick to them.” In other words, make sure people understand that if they don’t comply, there are consequences and punishments. which will take place.
Putting all of this together begged the question: where do we see ourselves in this scenario with regards to motivation and fear? Is fear a motivating factor for the people around us, below us, or those who report to us, to do a good job? Or are there higher motivations? And if there are, what can those higher motivations be?
Adah Maurer, in an article ‘A General Theory of Motivation’ quotes John Kenneth Galbraith in the New Industrial State and identifies 4 levels of motivation:
1. Compulsion. You do it because you have to like the former slaves who worked to avoid the whip.
2. The pecuniary reward or salary. I do a particular job, I get money.
3. Identity. The individual, when associating with the group, can reach the conclusion that his objectives are superior to his own and can identify with that company and thus motivate himself. For example, someone who is a salaryman who is paid to dig a ditch could be shown that digging a ditch would help drain and remove a malarial swamp and create a better environment for him/her. It immediately goes from the employee or pecuniary reward or who only does it for money to someone who works for identification. This goodwill cannot be purchased. Although the digger was hired and paid, giving in to further motivation or identification is not something money can buy.
4. Accommodation. Here the person goes with the group enterprise not so much because he believes in what he is doing, though he may as well, but because he hopes to be able to control and influence the direction of the effort according to his/her own plans.
That’s sometimes the way we get into a company. It is not like this? We say, “This is what I bring to the table. I know this is something I can do. I can market well; I can visualize well; I can lead well; I also have a vision of where I can take this particular thing.” company.” And that’s the fourth motivation. That’s adaptation. Identification and adaptation are the highest forms of motivation. They’re intrinsically driven; they come from within. There’s more joy that comes from identification and adaptation than there is from compulsion and pecuniary reward.
This begs the question: where are you and where are others with respect to what you expect of them? Do you do things out of obligation or as a reward for work? Or have you been able to move to a higher level of motivation, have you been able to identify or adapt? When you look at what I have said, the 2 lower levels of motivation may be sapping. They can take away your joy. You can just go through the grind, the world; your zest for life may be lost. But if there is identification, you know that what you are doing is generating changes. If you can move into that area of adaptation, knowing that the skills you have can take this particular company into a newer area, then there is joy that comes from within you. There is an intrinsic motivation that helps you get out of bed every day and take on your work and get excited about everything.
So where do you stand? Are you intrinsically motivated? Are the people around you intrinsically motivated? Can you take them beyond pecuniary reward as a leader/manager or even as a friend? I think that should be the place of entry for people who work, it is first to be able to show identification and then move on to adaptation. But in order to offer that, you and I must also believe in it. We have to be in that same place. Which raises another question: are you in that place?
Mark Dowd, writing in The Guardian, puts an interesting spin on this. He says: “Lobbyists and activists have been grappling for years with this question. ‘What is the best way to engage the human imagination on the issues of our time?’ Guilt and fear are very limited in their appeal, and in most cases just induce more fear to walk away and carry on as before It’s easy enough to scare people about climate change, but there are other ways to capture imagination and create momentum.”
Today I propose to you that the root of identification and adaptation is to be able to see ourselves as good stewards, people who have been given different skills, different experiences, different education, and then to be able to plow them. to our society, and our motivation must be to exemplify good stewardship of all our resources.
I believe that if we are able to see through the eyes of a butler, we would be well on the way to being identifiers and adapters, well on the way to having joy in the midst of what we do.
Roy Robbins, the great climber who pioneered Yosemite’s Great Wall ascents, said, “The point is not to avoid death. If you want to do that, just stay on the ground. The point is to get to the top and then go ahead”. climbing.” To do that, fear and compulsion can never be motivating. It can only come through an intrinsic innate desire to continue to do well.
God has invested in us. Maybe we just need to say, “This is what I’m doing for Him. What He’s given me, I’m making sure is perfected. Every skill I have, I’m going to make sure I use to the fullest.” to the best of my ability.” And if that happens, I believe our workplaces will be places of joy and not fear.
God bless us all.