Rules of motivation from the mouth of babes

The way we can motivate staff is one of those topics that seems to rear its head on a regular basis.  Psychologists frequently bemoan the poor performance of carrots in motivating staff and I was reading about a study from the seventies today that adds more fuel to that particular fire.  It was a study by psychologists Mark R. Lepper and David Greene from Stanford and the University of Michigan.

Extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation

It all revolves around self perception theory or over justification theory.  Self perception theory suggests that extrinsic motivations, such as financial rewards, will take precedent over intrinsic motivating factors.  Lepper and Greene believed otherwise and used an experiment involving children to prove their point.  The preamble was that because parents so often use extrinsic factors to motivate their children to behave well they would be an ideal test panel.  They were then randomly assigned to one of the following groups.

   1. Expected reward. In this condition children were told they would get a certificate with a gold seal and ribbon if they took part.
   2. Surprise reward. In this condition children would receive the same reward as above but, crucially, weren't told about it until after the drawing activity was finished.
   3. No reward. Children in this condition expected no reward, and didn't receive one.

Each child was then taken into a room to draw, a task that they already enjoyed, for six minutes, after which they would receive their award (or not). 

More money = more art?

Over the next few days the children were observed to see whether the children that were rewarded would draw more than those that were not, with interesting results.

Not only did the quantity of drawings reduce amongst the group that expected rewards but the quality also dropped.

Doing what you love

So it seems clear that the key to highly motivated staff is to hire people who naturally love what they do, are good at it and do it for its own sake.  Now it's perhaps not wise to suggest we should all work for free, but nevertheless it does raise some interesting questions.  Parents use rewards on their children to get them doing things like cleaning their room and they subsequently get associated with painful tasks.  Likewise as we age pay can align work with being a chore alongside the old idiom of "work to live or live to work".  It's the difference between our hobbies and our work.

So how should you motivate?

Consider Maslow and his hierachy of needs.  Financial security is included in the second layer - safety.  

So if you want to really motivate people start tapping into those higher layers.  Start offering a real sense of belonging in your company.  Start recognising their contributions and reward them with praise and status rather than financial bonuses.  Start rewarding them with greater freedom and creativity.  That is the key to energised staff.

How does your company tap into those higher motivational layers?