6 Tips for Employee Motivation

Despite the preponderance of best-selling books on dieting, smoking cessation and breaking other addictions, the truth about all motivation is that it is not about techniques, but about personal will. True motivation comes from deciding you are ready to take responsibility for managing yourself and doing something about it.

Similarly, in the work environment, motivating employees cannot come from management techniques, but from the employees themselves.

So the question should not be how can you motivate your employees, but how can you create the conditions where employees will motivate themselves? The answer is to foster an environment that enables them to assume responsibility and provide them with choice.

But let’s back up a bit. The age-old rewards or ultimatums for obtaining desired behavior has limitations. No matter whether it is in trying to get your six-year-old to practice the piano or seeking to make an employee more productive, carrot and stick approaches have proven not to be effective over the long run.

Psychologist Harry Harlow, in his pioneering work with rhesus monkeys, used the term “intrinsic motivation” to explain why monkeys solved problems without a tangible reward at stake. In the same way, he theorized that all children are intrinsically motivated to learn. As human beings, we are curious creatures and pursue knowledge and problem-solving out of our own pleasure in doing so.

Somehow many of us lose our intrinsic motivation by choosing career paths that are not aligned with who we are. Following a line of work based on others’ expectations or based on high financial rewards can backfire in providing us with a satisfying life. Money has, in fact, been demonstrated to actually undermine intrinsic motivation.

All of us need to take responsibility for our intrinsic motivation—both in our personal lives as well as our work lives. The motivation we have for doing anything is ultimately linked to this personal responsibility.

Author Ken Blanchard, in the “The One Minute Manager” series of books, talks about the need for every employee to determine whether direction and/or support is necessary and then make this clearly known to his or her boss. Only in this way, can a boss fully understand what is required to help the employee succeed. This is the employee’s responsibility and a key component to motivation in the workplace.

Self-motivation is at the heart of all responsibility, creativity, healthy behavior, and lasting change, according to psychologist Edward L. Deci.

In his book, “Why We Do What We Do: The Dynamics of Personal Autonomy,” Deci suggests that for intrinsic motivation to succeed in the workplace, it comes down to providing autonomy in place of control. A controlling atmosphere means employees will feel stifled and lack motivation to produce optimally. On the other hand, by giving an employee the choice on how to do his or her job, intrinsic motivation is more likely to occur.

As a manager, this requires taking an autonomy supportive position, which is a personal orientation you can choose to take toward other people, especially those in a one-down position. An example of a one-down position could be between a manager and employee or between a parent and child.

An autonomy supportive position requires being able to take another person’s perspective. You need to be able to grasp what it is like to be your employee, in your company, this particular community and this industry. This is a skill to be learned and it can require not only time, but also self-discipline to master.

Here are six tips to keep in mind to foster a favorable environment for employee motivation:

1. Demand personal responsibility. Make each employee accountable in their respective roles and expect them to communicate what is necessary to succeed.
2. Provide choice. Set objectives and let the employee decide how and what to do in order to reach these objectives.
   
3. Set autonomy-supportive limits. Ensure each employee understands why something is important and the parameters around it.
4. Set goals and evaluate performance. This helps maintain motivation because people behave when they expect they can attain goals.
   
5. Recognize and award everyone. Rather than pit individuals and workgroups against each other in a competition, recognize each group or individual for their most important accomplishment or improvement.
6. Overcome obstacles. Controlling personalities and lack of skills can be obstacles to autonomy-supportive behavior. Managers may require skills training and need to also see autonomy-supportive behavior coming from above.

Research by Richard Ryan and Edward Deci found that autonomy supportive managers have workers who were more trusting of the corporation, less concerned about pay and benefits, and displayed higher level of satisfaction and morale.

Further research found that people who are autonomy-oriented have higher self-esteem and are more self-actualized. People high on the autonomy orientation have more positive mental health and report more satisfied with their interpersonal relationships. Ultimately, through their behavior and expectations, people can influence their environments to provide them with more of what they need.

Employees need to feel competent and autonomous for intrinsic motivation to be maintained. And it is important to remember that it is only their perception of competence and autonomy that matters for intrinsic motivation.

This combination of employee responsibility and employer choice enables a healthy environment where intrinsic motivation can foster. And intrinsic motivation is the key to employee motivation.

Mark Craemer            http://www.craemerconsulting.com

Effective Leadership: The Theory & Practice

Are leaders born or made? That appears to be an on-going question, but if you simply search for “leadership” on Amazon, you’ll find 124,676 titles currently available. There are, obviously, things to learn about leadership whether you are born a leader or are becoming one.

And becoming a more effective leader requires both knowing why and how. Leadership theory enables you to understand the why; leadership practice provides the how. Both theory and practice are essential.

Understanding the theory behind effective leadership provides a foundation for deeply knowing your self and your intrinsic motivation.

“Leadership is an uncommon composite of skill, experience, and ripened personal perspectives regarding the nuances and complexities of life,” write M. A. Soupious and Panos Mourdoukoutas in their new book The Ten Golden Rules of Leadership: Classical Wisdom for Modern Leaders. “Only those men and women who have cultivated a carefully conceived philosophy of life are capable of genuine leadership.”

This book provides ten rules such as “know thyself” and “do not waste energy on things you cannot change” to provide an overall theory for leaders to operate. Using inspiration and guidance from philosophers such as Aristotle, Hesiod, Sophocles, Heraclitus and Antisthenes, the authors contend this classical wisdom can be applied to the modern workplace.

The authors further posit that what distinguishes a real leader from a mere administrator, is “a unique series of perspectives and values.” This means employing methods and approaches reflecting clarity and insight that come from a well-examined life.

The practice of leadership requires a variety of methods and exercises to alter your mindset and behaviors to be more effective.

From the practice side of leadership learning is a book titled The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership by Joelle K. Jay. Here you’ll find helpful exercises for you to develop your inner life in service of improving your overall leadership capacity.

Jay outlines in practical terms how a leader’s inner life impacts his/her outer life:

“Your inner edge is the you behind the scenes: your thoughts and motivations, your aspirations, your plans, your decisions, your strengths and weaknesses, your values, and your way of becoming a success. Your outer edge is the you that you show the world: your words, your actions, and your interactions with the people around you. Your inner and outer edges are intimately related. The way you feel influences the way your act. Your actions affect your results. Your results determine the way you experience life. In order to be effective as a leader and in your life, you need to spend time on both your outer and inner edge.”

Using many examples from her executive coaching practice, Jay provides step-by-step exercises on how to make progress with each of the 10 practices. I think the practice called Find Fulfillment may be the most important, yet is rarely employed.

Finding fulfillment means ensuring your work and values are in synch. This requires deep introspection to be certain that what you do is aligned with who you are.

“When you find fulfillment, you don’t get burned out; you get fired up,” writes the author. “You put your talent to work, but you’re the one who feels rewarded. You experience those moments of greatness. You also get to lead a great life.”

Another practice she points to is All . . . All at Once, which involves putting the other nine practices to work together as one. The practice involves a state of mind where you can combine different ideas and think about them at the same time.

This integrative thinking is the mark of an exceptional leader, according to Roger Martin, dean of the Rotterman School of Management at the University of Toronto. “It is this discipline—not superior strategy or faultless execution—that is a defining characteristic of most exceptional businesses and the people who run them.”

Whether born or made, a leader can become more effective through a combination of theory and practice. Becoming a more effective leader requires knowing your inner self in order to best align with your outer self.

“In order to be a leader,” writes Jay. “. . . you’ve got to bring that learning and self-awareness out to the people you lead.”

Higher Engagement by Meeting Employee Needs

Employee engagement is a vital component of successful organizations. Nothing helps spur innovation and raise productivity like a highly engaged group of people who are passionately involved in what they are doing.

“Because they [employees] care more, they are more productive, give better service, and even stay in their jobs longer,” writes Kevin Kruse, author of Employee Engagement 2.0. “All of that leads to happier customers, who buy more and refer more often, which drives sales and profits higher, finally resulting in an increase in stock price.”

Kruse sites 28 research studies showing a correlation between employee engagement and sales, service, quality, safety, retention and total shareholder return.

Employee engagement is about a person’s emotional commitment to the organization and its goals. Raising this emotional commitment cannot be done through some generic training course or corporate mandate.

Instead, the organization must appeal to the employees’ needs and meet these needs with specific leadership skill development.

Every employee has basic human needs that must be met in order for them to feel passionate about the work they do. When this need is met with specific leadership skills, the organization will benefit from more engaged employees.

The Passion Pyramid identifies five human needs that help ignite passion and the accompanying leadership skills required to create conditions to satisfy each need. It also describes the outcome or payoff to the organization for satisfying each need.

These human needs are:

1. Be respected
2. Learn and grow
3. Be an “insider”
4. Do meaningful work
5. Be on a winning team

As I described in an earlier post, what employees say they want can vary a great deal from what managers think employees want. Many of these same human needs for increasing employee engagement were among the top ten things employees say they want. Specifically: 

1. Full appreciation for work done (Be respected)
2. Feeling “part” of things (Be an “insider”)
3. Interesting work (Do meaningful work)
4. Promotion/growth opportunities (Learn and grow)

Tying these human needs with specific leadership skill development can then help ignite the passion necessary to raise engagement. With intentional and orderly intervention, these leadership skills can meet the employees’ needs.

The leadership skills are also in a specific order as no team can be effective without building upon a foundation of trust. Coaching, counseling and mentoring can help with each individual’s specific growth opportunities and blind spots. And no organization can expect employees to be engaged without inclusiveness.

Aligning teams with the organization’s purpose, values and vision ties intrinsic motivation with extrinsic rewards. Finally, building a high performance team requires the foundation of all the preceding skills as well as a shared purpose and bond to succeed together.

These leadership skills help meet employees’ needs, which can help ignite the passion necessary to raise employee engagement in your organization. Isn’t it worth the investment to bring out the best in your employees so they can bring out the best in your organization?

Three Ways to Increase Employee Engagement

Raising employee engagement should be the goal of every organization because engaged employees are more productive than those who are not.

Despite the fact that many companies are lavishing their workers with extravagant perks, overall employee engagement is still very low. Seventy percent of the country’s 100 million full-time workers are either not engaged or are actively disengaged.

Three ways to increase employee engagement include the freedom on how to do the work, the option to work on things that interest the individual employee, and the flexibility to work remotely at least part of the time.

A few years ago Netflix created their employee slide deck in which one of the seven aspects of their culture is freedom and responsibility. This includes self-motivation, self-awareness, self-discipline, self-improving, acts like a leader and others.

They found that as companies grow they are typically forced to add more processes and procedures in order to manage the increasing complexity that comes with more employees. These processes and procedures, however, lead only to short-term benefits and often drive the highest performing employees out of the company.

Netflix instead attracted high value people with the freedom to have a big impact, demanded a high performance culture, and provided top of market compensation. So instead of a “culture of process adherence” they have a “culture of creativity and self-discipline, freedom and responsibility.”

As I wrote in a previous post, this freedom takes great courage and faith that your employees will be responsible and accountable for getting things done.  So far, this seems to have paid off for Netflix.

The second area that can help boost employee engagement is enabling workers to follow their interests and passions. This could be similar to what Google provides in “20% Time,” where employees can choose to work on a project or concept that intrigues them to stir innovation. Though not official, there are reports that Google has done away with 20% Time, even though it produced such profitable ventures as Gmail, Google News and Adsense.

The idea of giving employees this freedom is not new as 3M was exploring the use of 15% time for this purpose as far back as the conservative 1950s. Well-known and profitable products like Post-its and masking tape were invented out of this.

There is even a 20-Time in Education that allows students 20% of class time (one day each week) to work on and explore a topic of their choice. Since the world is becoming more interconnected and collaborative, it seems natural to enable learners to begin working in this way before they need to earn a paycheck for it. This means teaching students to be autonomous learners who can guide their own career and discover how to most effectively contribute to a team.

Finally, there is the notion of creating a culture of openness that enables employees to choose not only how they do the work, but also from where.

Nearly 30% of employers now offer telecommuting as a way to improve staff retention rates, and nearly three-quarter of employees say flexible work hours would cause them to choose one job over another.

But is the ability to work remotely really the complete answer?

Gallup recently found that employees who worked remotely ended up working longer hours and were slightly more engaged employees. They found that 32% of employees who worked remotely engaged, while only 28% of those employees working on-site were engaged.

However, it turns out that there was a point of diminishing returns for remote workers. Those spending 20% or less of their time working remotely were found to be the most engaged (35%) and had the lowest level of active disengagement (12%). Working remotely began to decrease engagement levels, however, with more time spent away from the workplace.

There should be a balance between face-time with other workers and flexibility for how the work gets accomplished.

Dave Coplin, chief envisioning officer at Microsoft, in an entertaining look in this RSA animated video, discusses how technology can be part of the problem as well as a potential solution.

Among other things, Coplin says that social networking has changed how we work in that we are now sharing just about everything versus previously when we were sharing only what we chose to share. This sharing inevitably requires a great deal more trust not only in our selves but in each other as well.

The idea of providing employee perks to encourage workers to stay at the office longer can initially attract employees, but giving benefits that stir innovation and lasting employee engagement needs to appeal more to people’s intrinsic motivation.

This means providing people with the freedom on what the work is, how it gets done and where to do it. Accompanying this freedom also requires a degree of trust, responsibility and accountability.  And that’s a formula for increasing employee engagement.

Increase Productivity Through Passion & Freedom

Greater productivity should be a goal of just about every organization. It is often challenged, however, by ever-tightening budgets and low employee morale.

Nevertheless, increasing productivity can be accomplished without a lot of money and ultimately result in raising employee engagement.

To do this, nothing works better than appealing to people’s intrinsic motivation and letting them decide how best to do the work. It is this combination of aligning people’s passion with the work they do and giving them the freedom on how to do it that results in greater productivity.

Passion leads to high performance. Find out what your employees are most passionate about by observing where they demonstrate the most energy. Ask them what they are challenged by and enjoy doing most—quite often these are one and the same. You’ll likely see the highest quality in these tasks as well.

See if you can optimize more of this by careful observation and checking with them on your perceptions. You could also provide them with opportunities where they may not yet have expertise, but want to develop in order to grow in their careers.

No one likes every part of their job and I’m not suggesting you do away with the parts that your workers don’t like. This is rarely possible, but it is important to rethink who does which task and evaluate whether that is the most efficient way to continue. Try transferring tasks to those who are most enthused about them if at all possible.

Liking tasks has a lot to do with the stimulation found in being challenged. It is not necessarily easy work that we find most appealing, but rather the things that are challenging yet where we ultimately have success. It’s about intrinsic motivation.

As I’ve written about previously, people with intrinsic motivation can do incredible things. Appealing to this internal motivator can be challenging, but ensures that your people are fully engaged in the work. And no amount of extrinsic motivators (e.g., increased salary, bigger job titles, enviable perks, greater benefits, etc.) can ever supplant the value of intrinsic motivation.

That’s because intrinsic motivation comes directly out of people’s passion. If they are doing what they are passionate about, they are likely intrinsically motived. And that means they are fully engaged in the work.

The second thing that can lead to greater productivity is giving people the freedom to determine how best to do the work. It’s important to tell your people what you want but not how you want it done. Nothing stifles motivation, creativity and productivity more than telling people exactly how to do something when there is the opportunity to enable them to do it in their own way. This is how you can you stir innovation and ultimately raise productivity.

Just because you’ve been building widgets the same way for years, doesn’t mean there isn’t a cheaper and perhaps more efficient way to do so now. Getting a new pair of eyes on an existing process regularly could very well lead to a better way of doing something.

If you want to build a ship,
don’t drum up people to collect wood
and don’t assign them to tasks and work,
but rather teach them to long for
the endless immensity of the sea.

                                     — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Amy Arnsten, a neuroscience professor at Yale University, studies the importance of feeling in control. She explains that when people lose their sense of control, such as when tasks are dictated to them, the brain’s emotional response center can actually cause a decrease in cognitive functioning. This perception of not being in control then leads to a drop in productivity.

When a manager describes the outcome she wants, rather than specifying the steps to take, an employee can then decide how to achieve the outcome and preserve his perceived sense of control, cognitive function, and ultimately improve his overall productivity.

There is so often a tendency to reject new ideas by upsetting the status quo. Instead, you should be open to new perspectives even if you find yourself at first rejecting them. Ask yourself why and be challenged. Let your entrenched ideas be up for debate. You may find you can no longer justify why you are doing things the way they are currently being done.

By enabling your employees to follow their passions and enabling them to accomplish tasks in their own way, you’ll get them more fully engaged and you will raise overall productivity.

Rethinking the Role of Manager

Does your boss often get in the way of helping you be more productive? This is not entirely his or her fault as many organizational structures are based on an outdated incentive mentality that can actually be detrimental in today’s workplace.

The workplace has changed dramatically over the past 50 years. Secretaries are scarce, the metallic sound of office machinery is replaced by electronic tones of pagers and cell phones, and—rather than conversing around the water cooler—we are more likely to be texting or using social networks as a way to interact with others.

How we manage other people, however, has remained the same.

The role of manager varies depending on the industry and nature of the work, but when it comes to supervising others, there is very often conflict and disharmony.

In a recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research titled “The Value of Bosses” by Edward P. Lazear, Kathryn L. Shaw and Christopher T. Stanton, supervisors were found to have an enormous impact—good or bad—on productivity.

Among their findings, nearly 75% of all employees say their boss is the worst and most stressful part of their job. And 65% of employees say they would take a new boss over a pay raise.

The same study determined it is not what these bosses do, but what they don’t do that makes them so bad. This includes 1) failing to inspire; 2) accepting mediocrity; 3) lacking clear vision and direction; 4) inability to be collaborate and be a team player; 5) failing to walk the talk.

It turns out that the best bosses are actually teachers, and the report stated that teaching accounts for 67% of a boss’s effect on employees’ productivity.

What if your manager was focused on teaching and encouraging your intrinsic motivation to enable you to be more productive and happier in the process?

Too often motivation throughout many companies is based on the carrot and stick approach. For all but a very few types of manufacturing jobs or those requiring mechanical skills, however, this approach has been scientifically proven not to work. In fact, it can actually be detrimental to productivity.

So why is there so much time and money spent on extrinsic incentives in order to get employees to work harder? Extrinsic incentives include things like a high salary, bonus, stock options, and generous benefits, which are often what attract employees in the first place. However, it is the intrinsic incentives such as interesting work, flexible time on when and where to do the work, ROWE or results only work ethic, 20% time to follow interests, etc. that keep employees motivated and highly productive.

According to author Daniel Pink, intrinsic motivation is absolutely required and his model includes three essential elements: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy is the urge to direct our own lives; mastery is the desire to get better and better at something that matters; and purpose is the yearning to do what we do in service of something larger than ourselves.

Workers today face challenges that require right-brained, creative, and/or conceptual thinking. This “outside the box” thinking cannot be incentivized through conventional external means, but instead requires internal motivation.

Intrinsic nature means the job’s core responsibilities and you’re being paid to do something you find satisfying, says Timothy Judge, Mendoza’s Franklin D. Schurz Professor of Management.

After conducting a hundred job-satisfaction studies, Judge says he’s never found one where the intrinsic nature of the work itself wasn’t the most important predictor of overall job satisfaction.

So what if a manager’s role was not to incentivize, scold, or threaten those he or she manages, but instead to teach, inspire, and support the employee’s need for autonomy, mastery and purpose? This new role for manager would look a lot more like a coach, mentor or teacher who is in service of raising the level of productivity of others.

In this way the workplace could be less hostile and more cooperative, less competitive and more collaborative. Managers could contribute to the workplace environment in a way that creates higher employee engagement and greater productivity. And that would be good for any organization.

Innovation through Trust and Accountability

There’s a great deal of discussion today about the need for innovation in business. Innovation is what fueled the enormous growth of American companies throughout the last century, leading to the proliferation of the telephone, television, and automobile, and made space flight possible.

Innovation is essential to revolutionizing the way we live and help maintain a competitive edge in the marketplace. But this innovation requires fostering a workplace environment that includes employer trust and employee accountability.

Apple, with a market capitalization of more than $500 billion, is arguably the most valued and innovative company in the world. Their continual innovation has propelled Apple’s astounding profitability.

In the same way the Macintosh revolutionized the personal computer back in 1984, the iPod, iPhone and iPad created huge markets. These other products may not have been the first to market, but they were designed, manufactured and marketed in such a way that everyone had to have one.

Much credit has been attributed to the late Steve Jobs, but more than likely it was the culture he and others created at Apple that enabled this kind of innovation.

This is because Apple, unlike any other company, embedded the encouragement of creativity and “thinking different” into their corporate culture. This was no small task as creativity is all too often now left to fewer and fewer individuals in school and business.

Sir Ken Robinson, a leader in the development of education, creativity and innovation, says that if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original. He contends that our educational system frightens us out of being wrong, and the willingness to be wrong is absolutely necessary in order to foster creativity.

In his book “Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World,” Tony Wagner writes about the common characteristics of learning cultures at many schools and programs he profiled that offer innovative learning. They are all organized around the values of:

• collaboration
• multidisciplinary learning
• thoughtful risk-taking, trial and error
• creating
• intrinsic motivation: play, passion, and purpose

David Liddle, co-founder of Interval Research, speaks of the fundamental characteristics of a creative organization. “It is first and foremost a place that gives people freedom to take risks; second it is a place that allows people to discover and develop their own natural intelligence; third, it is a place where there are no ‘stupid’ questions and no ‘right’ answers; and fourth it is a place that values irreverence, the lively, the dynamic, the surprising, the playful.”

The willingness of individuals to be wrong and management’s acceptance of them being wrong in service of innovation is critical to bring on real innovation.

Steve Jobs and the other Apple employees were able to see beyond where the technology and market was in the present in order to envision and deliver something entirely new. I’m sure there were plenty of false starts and jettisoned projects along the way, but this didn’t result in a reduced research and development budget. Instead, Apple embraced those setbacks as necessary in the natural order of innovation.

Google is another example of a company who provides engineers with space and time to play with ideas. Their 20 percent time program has so far resulted in Gmail, Orkut, Google News and Adsense as well as many internal projects.

All companies could encourage innovation not only in research and development, but in sales, marketing, operations, and even human resources. But this requires a great deal of trust for management and accountability for employees.

When management trusts employees enough to give them the freedom and opportunity to ask stupid questions, take risks, play with ideas, and not suffer from being wrong, then there is an environment that fosters true innovation. And when employees are held accountable for eventual results, they are no longer just doing a job but helping to make a difference in their company, themselves and quite possibly the world.

Bringing more trust and accountability to the workplace can provide an environment that enables innovation to occur. And that is a good thing for everyone.

Finding Flow in the Workplace

Nearly one-third of our waking lives are spent on the job, so it seems worthwhile to consider whether or not we can find happiness there. Some would argue work can never make us happy, otherwise it wouldn’t be called work.

Other people seem to enjoy their work immeasurably and not just professional athletes or celebrities. We can all think of people in our own workplace who seem to love what they do for a living. Why is that? And why don’t more of us find this sense of joy in our jobs?

The leading researcher on positive psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “chick-SENT-me-high”), says the key is first ensuring the relevant elements are in place in order to produce a sense of flow. Flow, according to Csikszentmihalyi, is “completely focused motivation.” In flow emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand.

Much of daily life is caught up with a lack of focus and attention. This inattention makes us constantly bounce between the anxiety and pressures of our obligations and, during leisure moments, we tend to live in passive boredom.

Flow is present when people describe a feeling of effortless action in moments that stand out as the best in their lives. Athletes report of “being in the zone.” Flow is when we immerse ourselves into something and lose all sense of time.

We can certainly find happiness without being in flow. In fact, happiness is typically not reported during flow states, but only after the task is completed. That’s because to experience happiness, you must focus on your inner state, and this takes attention away from the task at hand where flow is found.

Happiness in general is vulnerable because it is dependent on favorable external stimulus; for example, time spent with another person or relaxing in a comfortable setting. The happiness that follows flow, however, is of our own making and can lead to increasing complexity and growth in our consciousness.

The key to finding flow in the workplace is to challenge oneself with tasks that require a high degree of skill and commitment. Finding flow means learning the joy of complete engagement.

According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow in the workplace requires:

• clear goals
• immediate and unambiguous feedback
• challenges that match the worker’s skills
• a sense of control
• few distractions
• intrinsic motivation
• feeling a part of something larger than the self

Employee engagement requires many of these same elements to be present. Employers need to ensure goals are clear, provide regular feedback, match challenges and skills, and remove distractions. Employees have responsibility as well and need to help cultivate the intrinsic motivation and feel a part of something larger than them selves. The sense of control, I believe, is a shared element between employer and employee.

Optimal experiences typically involve a fine balance between one’s ability to act and the available opportunities for action. In the workplace, this requires clear communication and a great deal of trust between employers and employees.

Flow is found directly between arousal on the one side and control on the other. In order to reach flow from a state of arousal, a little more skill may be necessary. And reaching flow from a control state may require a bit more challenges.

If challenges are too high, however, you can get frustrated, worried and anxious. If challenges are too low relative to one’s skills, you can become relaxed and bored. When both challenges and skills are perceived low, you may feel apathetic. On the other hand, when both challenges and skills are high, flow is most likely to occur.

“When a person’s entire being is stretched in the full functioning of body and mind,” says Csikszentmihalyi, “whatever one does becomes worth doing for its own sake; living becomes its own justification. In the harmonious focusing of physical and psychic energy, life finally comes into its own.”

What about you? Do you feel moments of flow in your work? If not, what are the specific missing elements and what can you do to help bring them into your work so flow is possible?

The question of how to find happiness in our jobs perhaps should be revised: how can we help create full engagement in our jobs so that we can feel happier in our lives?

Mark Craemer         http://www.craemerconsulting.com

Motivating Employees in the 21st Century

Forget all the things you may currently believe about motivating employees. Cash incentives to stimulate productivity may work in the short term, but are ultimately not sustainable. Threats are also short lived because employee resentment brings about ill will and this is counterproductive in the long run.

Such carrot and stick approaches for improving performance simply are no longer effective and it’s time organizations move to a more radical approach.

In Daniel Pink’s insightful book “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” he explores the question of what motivates people to do innovative work. Based on more than thirty years of research in behavioral science, he provides compelling evidence showing that monetary rewards can actually hinder creativity.

And as Pink relates in his speech at the TED Conference, when it comes to motivation, there is a huge gap between what science knows and what companies do.

Today, many companies more closely track knowledge workers hours at their desks rather than results produced. And, as I wrote about in a previous post, Results Only Work Environment or ROWE is one way to change this mentality.

Author Pink convincingly argues that once our basic need for financial stability is taken care of, the desire for intrinsic motivation kicks in. Intrinsic motivation is founded upon personal rewards (individual interest or love) rather than extrinsic motivation (money). In fact, many scientific studies have demonstrated that people actually become less motivated when money is tied to doing something we are already drawn to doing. It actually devalues it for us!

Further, Pink suggests it is necessary for both employees and employers to break free of this old “if-then” paradigm and replace it with “now-that” instead. Rather than hold out some reward or punishment in order to accomplish a goal, there should be an opportunity to tap into an employee’s own individual interest in meeting the goal.

“If tangible rewards are given unexpectedly to people after they have finished a task, the rewards are less likely to be detrimental to intrinsic motivation,” said Edward L. Deci, the University of Rochester psychology professor and author of “Intrinsic Motivation.”

The key to tapping into these intrinsic interests, according to Pink, is via autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Autonomy is about the urge to direct our lives. It means enabling employees to determine specifically what is entailed (task), when the work is done (time), how it gets done (technique), and with whom it is done (team). Autonomy requires management to step aside and give employees the opportunity to fully apply their creative selves.

Mastery is about the desire to get better at something that matters. It enables each of us to fully engage who we are in what we do. Only in this way are we likely to embrace the work we do as it transcends merely making a living and extends into making a life.

Purpose has to do with the yearning to do what we do in service of something larger than ourselves. It is the desire to leave the planet better than we found it. Purpose has to do with contributing to the greater good.

Writer and management consulant Peter Drucker stated “. . . once each knowledge worker has defined his or her own task and once the work has been appropriately restructured, each worker should be expected to work out his or her own course and to take responsibility for it.”

Enabling employees to tap into autonomy, mastery and purpose requires management giving up some control over how, when and where people work. It means the boss needs to incentivise people in ways that stimulate their desire to do good work. It means trusting that employees will choose to do the right thing for them as well as the organization.

These motivation techniques may not make sense for every workplace, but at a time of economic recession, global competitive pressures, corporate distrust, and low employee engagement, it makes sense to at least consider them wherever possible.

Mark Craemer  www.craemerconsulting.com