by Jared Goralnick
I’ve had a lot of debates in the last few weeks about motivation and incentives. From money to benefits to praise to penalty and everything in between I’ve been asking people what they do to make their employees (or partners, peers, and friends?) motivated. But before I delve into some of these conversations, I want to make sure I’m clear what we’re talking about.
When looking for a definition of motivation, it immediately brings up the controversies surrounding the topic–i.e., the difference between personality and motivation. From wikipedia:
Motivation is having the desire and willingness to do something. A motivated person can be reaching for a long-term goal such as becoming a professional writer or a more short-term goal like learning how to spell a particular word. Personality invariably refers to more or less permanent characteristics of an individual’s state of being (e.g., shy, extrovert, conscientious). As opposed to motivation, emotion refers to temporal states that do not immediately link to behavior (e.g., anger, grief, happiness).
In the business context, things get more muddied. At its most basic level, motivation is about a desire to get work done without having to push too hard. But invariably it gets into questions of quality of work, responsiveness, and helpfulness/proactive-ness. In other words, much as we want people to get things done, we want them to do things sooner than later, perform the work well, and genuinely seek out ways to stay occupied or improve things for the business. I know I’ve clearly just mired motivation with personality-traits like discipline, interest in quality, and loyalty…but how can they be separate? What would be the point of just getting things done if someone’s job is more than just cranking a widget? If it’s a high level task that has things at stake and many possible definitions of “completed”…?
And this again goes back to the wikipedia definition–there are issues of personality (which might arguably be considered nature) and issues of raw performance/throughput (which can sometimes be addressed through nurture aka incentives).
In conversations with peers about this, some brought up the point that it’s all about personality and that you can incentivize more work or new skills…but not a desire to do better or for the company to grow. Other issues were raised, such as how certain personalities may fit the skills or conditions of some jobs, and that those personality types actually go against some of the motivational aims. That is, people with a strong desire to please others aren’t necessarily the ones who can spend 12 hours straight on a single and at times monotonous project. There’s a big difference between the stereotypical techie/geek/engineer persona and the stereotypical salesperson or consultant. And there’s some basis to that.
So what is the answer to all of this? Can employees be motivated? Well, they can be given goals and incentives. That much is obvious. As for what kind of an effect monetary and psychological benefits can produce–well, I don’t know the answer to that.
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