How to Motivate

Here’s a wonderful paragraph from Alfie Kohn, author of Punished by Rewards. I think she’s at the heart of the motivational “problem” here.

Once you start thinking about people rather than behaviors, you begin to ask questions like "What do people need -- and what can we do to help meet those needs?" Psychologists tell us that people have a basic need for autonomy, so the challenge is to create a workplace that is democratic, where everyone has the opportunity to participate in making important decisions. Psychologists tell us that people have a basic need to feel related and to belong, so the challenge is to create a workplace that is collaborative and feels like a community. Psychologists tell us that people have a basic need to feel competent, so the challenge is not to induce people to do a fixed series of tasks but to re-examine the tasks themselves. (Frederick Herzberg put it best: "If you want people motivated to do a good job, give them a good job to do.") From Challenging Behaviorist Dogma: Myths About Money and Motivation By Alfie Kohn