MONTHLY LETTER

The Mysteries of Motivation

There is a lot more to motivation than thefabled carrot and stick, especially at atime when workers have become more assertive.In thinking about how to motivate thepeople of today, a few concepts out of the pastmight not go amiss...

[] Motivation is a word that is commonly associat-ed with big business, mainly because the manage-ment scientists who deal in the subject are usuallyemployed or consulted by large corporations. Thisis regrettable in that it tends to blur recognition ofa force that has a profound influence on the inter-nal workings of organizations of all kinds from theUnited Nations to the corner store. Whether in abusiness big or small, a school, or an association,anyone who is responsible for other people’s effortsmust grapple with the intricacies of motivation.Therefore anyone who is, or aspires to be, respon-sible for other people’s work should seek a basicunderstanding of what it is all about.

On the surface, it could hardly be simpler. Tomotivate people, the dictionaries tell us, is to causethem to act in a certain way. This is done by fur-nishing them with a motive to do your bidding. Bythe strictest definition, the most elementary formof motivation would be if a hold-up man were tostick a pistol in your face and growl: "Your moneyor your life." He instantly arouses a motive in youfor doing what he wants you to- the motive ofstaying alive.

But motivation, in the popular understanding ofthe term, is usually a more long-lasting condition.You might, for example, train a puppy by motivat-ing it to avoid a smack. Children will learn that"being bad" in the eyes of their parents will pro-voke a spanking, while "being good" will get thema treat of some sort. The parents have instilled in

them the dual motive of avoiding punishment andearning rewards.

In the lexicon of management science, the sys-tem of reward and punishment is known as the"carrot-and-stick" approach, the carrot beingdangled in front of a donkey’s nose and the stickapplied smartly to his hindquarters. In this fash-ion he is alternately enticed and impelled towardshis master’s goal. Whether the donkey ever gets toeat the carrot in this analogy is not made clear inmanagement literature. We can be sure, however,that he gets to feel the stick.

The carrot and stick were traditionally cited asthe prime motivators of the "economic man", amythical creature much used and abused by clas-sical economists to further their theories of humandynamics. "The beauty of the economic man wasthat we knew exactly what he was after," thephilosopher Alfred North Whitehead once wistful-ly wrote. He was a timorous specimen, terrified oftaking a chance on being deprived of a living. Atthe same time he was instinctively greedy, forevergrasping for as much money and property as hecould possibly acquire.

In 1939 Peter Drucker, who has been hailed asthe father of modern management science, pub-lished a book called The End of Economic Man,stating that economic self-interest was never asmighty a force in human affairs as the classicaleconomists imagined. "We know nothing aboutmotivation. All we can do is write books about it,"

the same Dr. Drucker recently said. This may bestretching a point to the limit, but Drucker’s mes-sage is essentially valid. It emphasizes just howcomplex and inscrutable are the motives of the realflesh-and-blood man and woman working today.

The modern worker clearly is motivated by muchmore than the carrot of pay and advancement andthe stick of discipline and insecurity, although itwould be foolish to underestimate the continuingeffectiveness of these devices. Money might not beeverything b otherwise movie stars would be thehappiest people on earth- but there is no ev-idence that the mass of humanity has ceased tohave a strong desire for the comfort and posses-sions that money will buy. The ~stick", at the veryleast, is what makes us get up in the morning andgo to work even when we don’t much feel like it. Itis part of normal human nature to steer clear oftrouble and to want the assurance of a steady, well-paid job.

Low-level motivatorsequal low-level effort

Many management experts, however, classifyjob and financial security as "low-level" motivatorswhich guarantee no more than low-level effort. "Toget people to do mediocre work, one need only drivethem, using coercive and reward power in a manip-ulative way," writes James J. Cribben in his bookEffective Managerial Leadership, published by theAmerican Management Association in 1971. ~’Toelicit their top performance, one must get them todrive themselves..."

From this statement it is clear that the functionof motivation in modern management is to moveworkers to perform at the very peak of their abili-ties. Hence a conscientious manager should con-centrate on creating and maintaining a psycho-logical climate which enables people to do theirlevel best.

As the title of Dr. Cribben’s book implies, thiscan only be done through leadership. A leader isable to draw forth a willing effort from his follow-ers and make them want to do their utmost for

him. The antithesis of leadership is dictatorship, inwhich an unwilling effort is forced out of people bythe crude application of power. An involuntaryeffort is likely to be less effective than one givenvoluntarily. And it should be borne in mind thatdictatorships invariably produce rebels devoted totheir demise.

It’s not the satisfactionthat drives, but the desire

Theories abound about how leaders should goabout getting people to drive themselves, but noone disputes the fundamental notion that "high-level" motivation resulting in high-level perfor-mance must come from within an individual. It isthe sum of a person’s aspirations, values, self-esteem and sensibilities. So it is a person’s ownproperty, to be given or withheld depending on howhe or she feels about a job.

It can, however, be given unconsciously if work-ing conditions correspond with the needs thatdwell within a person’s psyche. In his classic workMotivation and Personality, A. H. Maslow dividedthe range of a normal person’s needs into five broadcategories which have to do with basic creaturecomfort, security, the social instinct, ego gratifi-cation, and living up to one’s image of oneself.Maslow pointed out that the satisfaction of theseneeds should not be mistaken for motivation;rather it is the drive to obtain or sustain the satis-faction. When you consider that some of the mostdedicated people in history have been motivated bystoring up rewards in heaven, you can see hispoint.

The first three categories are easy enough tounderstand. People naturally want the necessitiesof life; they want comfortable and secure workingconditions and fair compensation; they want to feelthat they belong to a group of supportive peopleand be part of something bigger than themselves.

The needs that come under the heading of egogratification are more difficult to fathom. Theyinvolve a desire for recognition, status, and oppor-tunities to demonstrate extraordinary competence.In practice these needs may not be readily appar-ent to the individual worker’s boss.

A person’s "self-actualization" needs may also beoverlooked: these call for challenges to one’s abil-ities, opportunities to exercise creativity, and adegree of personal autonomy. Obviously, neitherthese nor ego gratification needs can be met exclu-sively within the working environment. Still, theycan have a strong effect for good or ill on a person’sattitude towards a job.

No one has an entirely equal complement ofMaslow’s five varieties of needs. Whether a workercares more about money than ego gratification, ormore about self-expression than creature comforts,depends very largely on his or her temperamentand background. Also, the intensity of one need oranother within an individual will vary according tocircumstances. To take the plainest example, peo-ple become more preoccupied with security as theygrow older.

All of which means that any attempt to motivatea person to do his or her best work must be tailor-made to the needs of the individual personality.Because of this, the person most responsible for aperson’s motivation on the job is his or her imme-diate boss.

When people motivate each other,the working climate becomes ideal

The top management of an organization can gosome way towards meeting creature comfort andsecurity needs, and in offering incentives for goodperformance. But the more private and particularelements of motivation must be dealt with on apersonal level between the superior and subordi-nate day-by-day.

Some managers and supervisors will draw theline at this point, protesting that they are notpsychiatrists or wet nurses, and that they have farmore practical and pressing matters to worryabout. But the fact is that they cannot escape theinfluence of motivation, or of its opposite, demoti-vation. The motivation of each individual in a workteam is what goes to make up its morale -- and badmorale can spell grief to the leader of any team.

The results of surveys of workers’ attitudes inrecent years underline the importance of motiva-tion on the ground level. They show that present-

day employees place a strong emphasis on chal-lenge, opportunity, and recognition of perfor-mance; and that they are more willing than theircounterparts of a generation ago to quit a job thatdoes not offer these things. An old-line manager orsupervisor might write them off as spoiled brats orprima donnas. But by failing to take account oftheir personal priorities, he or she could very wellhave to live with the consequences of a high turn-over, which include having to function on a more orless permanent basis with a half-trained staff.

On the other hand, bosses who make a seriouseffort to understand their subordinates becomebetter-motivated themselves, because they comecloser to fulfilling their own ego and self-expres-sion needs in the process. Motivation must, in fact,work two ways, because superiors must be open totheir subordinates’ influence if they expect thesubordinates to be open to theirs. The cross-moti-vation that comes from healthy superior-subor-dinate relationships gives rise to an ideal workingclimate, not only for the people directly concerned,but for the organization as a whole.

In other words, cross-motivation keeps every-body happy. And when we get right down to thecore of the matter, that is what motivation is allabout. The philosopher William James identifiedits nucleus long before the term ever entered thevocabulary. He wrote: ’~If we were to ask thequestion, ’What is life’s chief concern?’ one of theanswers we should receive would be: ’It is happi-ness.’ How to gain, how to keep, how to recoverhappiness is in fact the secret motive of all we do,and all we are willing to endure."

The boss’s own happiness maydepend on how his people feel

A line manager or foreman may consider itridiculously beyond his purview to have to worryabout whether the people working under him arehappy or not. But in the long run- unless he issadistic or masochistic or both- his own happi-ness in his job is bound to be affected by how theyfeel.

Only a positive effort to make them contented intheir work will bring the kind of motivation thatensures he exceeds his objectives and boosts hisorganization’s productivity. The most successfulleaders are always those who pay most attention tothe people who follow them. If a leader cares aboutwhat happens to his followers, his followers willcare about what happens to him.

The shop floor or the office may not seem like theappropriate place to spread happiness, but work iscertainly an element in the state of a person’semotions. Some people hate their jobs, and are tobe pitied for it; most, however, are relativelysatisfied with their work if only for the money itbrings. Even people who regard work as a neces-sary evil will admit on close questioning that theirwork and all that is associated with it affords thema measure of happiness that they might not other-wise experience. Psychologists stress that work is amajor source of self-esteem.

The principles can be statedin simple, old-fashioned terms

If a person’s work per se adds to his or her happi-ness, then the job in itself becomes the ultimatemotivator. But for this to be so, the work must bevalued, and recognized as such. For the manager orsupervisor, this implies a continuing effort toaccentuate the importance of what the subordinateis doing in the overall context of the organization.It is noteworthy in this regard that the mostfiendish punishments the military mind can deviseentail having a prisoner do something entirelyuseless, like scrubbing his cell floor with a tooth-brush or painting a pile of rocks.

There are various ways to build motivation intoa job which may be found in the voluminous litera-ture on the subject. Anyone seriously interested inmotivation should, of course, refer to the books that

have been written about it, which are too numer-ous to mention here. Writings on motivation tendto suffer from the professional jargon which psy-chologists and management experts employ intheir attempts to be explicit. The principles can,however, be stated in quite ordinary old-fashionedterms.

First of all, motivation is a matter of humanunderstanding--of the superior understanding

the subordinate. If and when that state is achieved,it becomes a process of encouraging people to go asfar as possible towards meeting their aspirations--in plainer language, their hopes and dreams.This requires giving them an opportunity to showwhat they can do. Their efforts must then berecognized and rewarded to the extent that this ispossible within the system. They must be made tofeel wanted within that system. This is done bymaking them aware of how their efforts contributeto the whole.

It comes down to treating people with respect fortheir individuality and consideration for theirfeelings. It means caring about others- abouttheir personal well-being. It means giving them achance to show what they can do even if that issometimes inconvenient. It means encouragingand helping them to meet their full potential intheir careers.

When you think about it, motivation is not muchdifferent from friendship. A friend attempts tounderstand you, and to help you as far as possibleto achieve your aims. A friend is concerned aboutyour happiness, and tries within the limits of his orher ability to make you happy. A friend is someonewho supports you and knows that he or she cancount on your support in return.

Above all, a friend is someone who will go out ofhis or her way to do things for you. The motive forthis is nothing more than the knowledge that youwould do the same for him or her. And so it is withmutual motivation in the plant or office. The bosseswho are most concerned about their subordinatesget the most out of them in the form of high-qualitywork.