One day a
manager walks into work with a heavy heart.
Yesterday ownership had come to him with a problem: one key employee was not performing up to the
standards set by ownership. The owners
want that employee either to improve their performance or they want them
fired. The manager likes the employee
personally but agrees with ownership: the performance has been lacking in
recent weeks.
This manager
is faced with a dilemma: how to motivate a struggling employee. How do you motivate someone who either does
not care for or want to be at work? How
do you get someone to perform their very best while at work? How do you sometimes get another person to
perform a simple task?
This
situation and other similar ones are encountered by people all around the world. You may not be a business manager, but you
have tried today to get someone else to do something for you. You may have asked a child to clean their
room or do the dishes. You may have
asked a co-worker to assist you in some way.
How do we successfulyl motivate others to help us?
To be
successful in motivating others it is helpful to understand motivation. Most experts agree that there are two kinds
of motivation: internal (intrinsic) and external
(extrinsic). That means that you can
either offer someone a reward, such as paying a child to do chores, or somehow
make them want to do them. If there were an easy way to motivate
children to do chores many parents would love to find out how.
People have been trying to figure
out the best way to motivate others since the beginning of time. Many ancient people had slaves, using
physical punishment (extrinsic motivation) to force the slaves to obey
them. They would often whip slaves for
disobedience. That is one way to
motivate others. That was the only way
that some knew how to get others to do anything.
The other way of motivating someone
(intrinsic) has also practiced for a long time.
Some people used oratory to make people believe that they should do
something. Many preachers have built huge
followings by their passionate speeches.
Many ancient people worshipped gods because they were led to believe in
them.
It wasn’t the late 19th
century that many scholars began to identify the types of motivation. Humans are driven by needs, and we take
action to fill those needs. We all have
5 basic needs as humans: self-actualization, self-esteem, love, safety and
biological needs. (Maslow, 1959)
So how does knowing about motivation
apply to me? Why is motivating someone such a big
deal? You may be wondering. It applies to everybody, in that every day
you will attempt to get someone else to do something for you. While sitting at dinner, do you ever ask
someone to pass the salt or pepper? Have
you ever asked someone to please turn down the TV so that you can sleep?
If you are a teacher or a business
manager you should know a lot about motivation because you try to motivate
students or employees to show up on time and do good work. If a struggling student does not understand
how to add or subtract, you as a teacher should want to make the student
understand and like math.
Recently many scholars have
undertaken to study how
business and educational leaders can better motivate students and employees to
perform better. One such study was
performed by Abd. Rahman Ahmad, who studied the
relationship between workers having flexible working hours and motivation. (Abd. Rahman Ahmad) He concluded that
having flexible working hours contributed to worker motivation while at
work. This is one way for employers and
managers to get employees motivated.
Most
businesses offer their employees wages to get them to do the work assigned to
them. This is how the majority of the
people today make a living. They go to
work, do what they are supposed to, and come home. They view work as boring, not challenging,
and they often hate their job. One way
employers try to motivate employees is by paying them more. But this is often counterproductive, says
Daniel Pink. He says: “Goals that people
set for themselves and that are devoted to attaining mastery are usually
healthy. But goals imposed by others – sales targets, quarterly returns,
standardized test scores, etc. – can sometimes have dangerous side
effects. The problem with making an
extrinsic reward the only destination that matters is that some people will
choose the quickest route there” (Pink)
So what are
some ways for employers to motivate their employees? Chris Musselwhite has worked in human
resource departments for various corporations since 1973.
He gives suggestions in the article called Creating a Culture of Motivation.
Those suggestions
are that managers should get to know their employees, establish clear
expectations of workers, they need take employee suggestions seriously, and
praise employees for their hard work. (Mussewhite)
How does
motivation apply to education? In the
school system in America students are assessed different grades depending on
how well they perform on assignments and tests.
An A means that you are doing well in the course and an F means that you
are failing. This is a form of extrinsic
motivation. You are giving them an
external motivation to do their homework and complete assignments on time. Many think by assigning kids assignments they
will become used to doing things by a deadline once they enter the work force. School is an excellent training ground for
the work place.
How do
teachers and parents motivate their students and children to do well in school?
Does a motivated student do better in school?
In a study done in 2011 Suki Goodman tried to find if there was a
relationship between student’s motivation and their academic performance.
(Goodman) She found that those who were
intrinsically motivated did better than those students who only have extrinsic
motivation to motivate them to do the school work.
So how do we
get students to be intrinsically motivated to do school work? One way is to improve the quality of
teaching. Make it more engaging to the
students, make it more hands on. One
thing that it is important to remember with education is that not all students
are the same. Not everyone learns the
same or has the same interests.
With
motivation it is important to remember that there is not one sure trick or
technique that will work with everyone.
We are all different and we all have the right to choose whether we want
to be motivated or not. Learning the
ways people are motivated can help us learn how to motivate others as well as
ourselves.
Works cited
Thielke, Stephen “Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs and the Adoption of Health-Related
Technologies for Older Adults.” Academic Journal Premier Dec.
2013 Article
Ahmad, Abd. Rahman. "A Study of Flexible Working
Hours and Motivation." Canadian Center of Science and Education (2013):
1-9. Web. <http://web.ebscohost.com.dbprox.slcc.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=4b729415-b391-40fc-8b5e-a9939f19b376%40sessionmgr114&vid=5&hid=127>.
Daniel H. Pink “Drive: the surprising truth about what
motivates us” Riverhead books, New York, NY 2009 Print
Musselwhite, Chris. "CREATING A CULTURE OF
MOTIVATION." Academic Search
Premier (2011) Web
Goodman, Suki. "An
Investigation of the Relationship between Students’ Motivation and Academic
Performance as Mediated by Effort." South African Journal of
Psychology (2011): 1-14. Web. http://web.ebscohost.com.dbprox.slcc.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=4b729415-b391-40fc-8b5e-a9939f19b376%40sessionmgr114&vid=5&hid=127 .
