Motivation - Towards or Away? Internal or External?

For most of us who are in a managerial position (or even as a parent), there is a common question on our minds. How do we motivate our staff (or children)? Of course there are some individuals who are self motivated. They will do the work to the best of their abilities, whether with or without supervision. However, this group is small. And because of them being self motivated, this group will rise above the crowd and usually become very influential in their field.

Hence, the question begs, how do we get the vast majority of people in your organization to be like this small group? I believe before we go out and start putting in place checks and measures or change our compensation and benefits systems, we need to first understand how it works, motivation that is, on people.

If we were to categorize motivation, I suggest looking at it from four-quadrants. If you take a piece of paper and draw a big box and further divide that big box into four smaller boxes, you would name quadrant one (top left hand corner box): (external - away); quadrant two (top right hand corner box): (external - towards); quadrant three (lower left hand corner box): (internal - away); and quadrant four (lower right hand corner box): (internal - towards).

Now, let us examine each quadrant. For quadrant one - externally motivated away, it would be situations where one is afraid of external forces from happening and hence wants to avoid it. It could be, one is afraid that he might be fired if he fails to perform at work and hence does his best to avoid that from happening.

Quadrant two - externally motivated towards, it could be situations such as one is motivated by that promotion and hence does his best to gain that promotion.

Quadrant three - internally motivated away, could be when one believes that he should perform to the best of his ability or otherwise they may see themselves as irresponsible people and because they do not want to be associated with being such, hence they will do their work to the best of their abilities.

Quadrant four - internally motivated towards is where one believes that he is a responsible person and hence wants to live up to their identity so, they will do their work to the best of their abilities.

Now, the time is some people believe that being motivated away is not good, whether internally or externally, because once they found out that, for instance, as long as they do their best (whatever their best may be and that in itself is subjective) they will never call themselves irresponsible (internally) or that they know that they cannot be fired no matter what they do (externally), they will continue into their current state. While that is true in itself, as an organization we will have to organise our resources in such a way that it will deliver the desired results.

That is why, in any organization (good ones that is), there will be rules and regulations (external - motivated away) and rewards and recognition schemes (external - motivated towards). Hence, the organization is creating an environment that either supports, encourages, or acknowledges these desired behaviors or it will have policies that govern how individuals should behave or suffer the consequences.

However, while these systems and processes are good, there cannot be too many rules and regulations or it will be too stifling an environment nor can it be too relaxed where everyone gets away with anything. Alternatively, there cannot be an ever increasing numbers of reward schemes or recognition platforms as it is not sustainable.

Hence, designing such systems and processes is not only an art, not a science; it should also be formulated in such a way that people find it too stifling or too relaxed.

Therefore the solution is to really identify the internally motivational sources of each individual and work with them accordingly. This will be the topic for our next discussion.