329: What does it really take to motivate people?

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:10]:

What does it take to really motivate people at work? And can you actually motivate other people? So I delivered a masterclass earlier today, and this is a topic that we kind of were noodling on for a bit. It’s something that I I’m hugely interested in and something I could probably talk about for a long time. And I thought I have touched on parts of this idea before, but maybe not in, in the way we were talking about it today. So I kind of wanted to relay that information to you, my podcast listeners. This is the Happier at Work podcast. I’m your host, Aoife O’Brien, and today we’re going to talk about motivation, and I love talking about this, and I’m really interested when other people are interested in this as well. And you can think about this from a few different ways. You can think about it from the, how do I motivate myself, or, or what motivates me, but you can also think about it from the perspective of other people.

Aoife O’Brien [00:01:16]:

Now, when I talk about motivation, I use the term drivers. But when I talk about it, it’s in the context of creating the conditions for other people to do their best work, to perform. But that’s not to say that they will necessarily be motivated just because you’ve created the conditions. And it also is not to say that you don’t hold them accountable when they don’t step up to the plate, when they don’t actually perform. But now, I want to really get into the juicy bits of motivation because it’s, it’s like I say, something that I’m really interested in. I did my master’s research all about this concept of self-determination theory. I’m going to slightly change the language, which is slightly different from what I have in the Thriving Talent book as well, but I’m going to slightly change the language in today’s episode to be more in line with what I talked about on the masterclass today, which was, it was really great because it, you know, people were getting involved, they were asking questions and we were able to explore this concept in a little bit more detail. So the first thing I wanna say is the focus of this is intrinsic motivation.

Aoife O’Brien [00:02:32]:

So you have broadly speaking extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic are things like rewards and pay And not saying that those things are not important, but today’s episode focuses on that more intrinsic type of motivation. And I want to share about— this is what I’ve learned, and it is in the Thriving Talent book. So if you’ve, if you’ve read it, it will be familiar. It will be like a refresher for you. So broadly speaking, I want to talk about self-determination theory. I, I’m going to use slightly different language, like I said, to be more in line with the masterclass today, because I think Maybe it’s a little bit more relatable for people. People understand the language in a little bit more detail.

Aoife O’Brien [00:03:19]:

So what I talked about today were, was the fact that we have universal needs, which I’ll come onto in a minute. So we have these universal psychological needs that need to be met. And fundamentally, that’s what motivates us. So you might be familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And you might’ve seen memes as well, where during the pandemic, I think one of the basic needs was the need for toilet paper. You might see another meme as well, where it’s the basic need underlying everything else is Wi-Fi. So even if you’re not familiar with the hierarchy of needs, that’s more or less what it’s about. And it’s also It supposes that the lower order needs need to be satisfied in order for the higher level needs to be satisfied.

Aoife O’Brien [00:04:12]:

So the self-actualization, which is the highest of all, which is what we’re all striving for, apparently all of the other needs have to be satisfied before we can satisfy that higher need. Now, subsequently, I read in a book— don’t get me started on what they said about the hierarchy of needs and the masters. They basically said, Don’t use it as part of your research. And it, you know, it’s flawed essentially. But I did since read a book by Scott Barry Kaufman called Transcend, which is all about the fact that it was never meant to be a hierarchy. It was never meant to be positioned as this pyramid. And you don’t have to satisfy an underlying need in order to have the higher level needs satisfied. So I want to put all of that to rest.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:00]:

And like, that’s not what I’m talking about today. I’m talking about different theory today. But in terms of motivation, that might be something that you’re familiar with. And this idea of the carrots and the sticks, and there’s Theory X and Theory Y. So basically saying that we need to use carrots and sticks with people, that we need to have threat, you know, essentially a stick is like a threat, you know, so it’s, it’s Something bad that’s going to happen if they don’t perform, and then a carrot is a reward that they’re going to get if they perform in a certain way. I’m coming back to this idea now of self-determination theory, and as I said, I’m using slightly different language, so just to make it feel a little bit more familiar. Um, but the, the 3 universal needs, self-determination theory calls it Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence. I’m going to talk about autonomy, connection, and mastery.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:57]:

So this idea of autonomy, it’s not just about giving people a whole load of autonomy. If you cast your mind back to the start of the pandemic, when overnight, all of a sudden, we all had this autonomy, and some people really flourished in that environment, and some people really floundered. But why, like, why would that be different? It’s because different people need different levels of autonomy. And some people need that sense of freedom and that they get to choose what they do and how they do it. But other people need a lot more guidance and direction and guardrails and boundaries around what they do. And so autonomy is not so straightforward as I’m going to give you a whole load of autonomy and then your need for autonomy will be satisfied. The difficulty is that different people have different levels of needs. Those needs also change depending on the context.

Aoife O’Brien [00:07:01]:

So I would imagine if you’re later in your career, your need for autonomy is much higher than when you started your career. And also if you’ve recently been promoted to a new role, maybe you need a little bit more guidance and direction about what the expectations are. Or if you’ve started in a new company, you’re not necessarily just expected to hit the ground running and then you have it all figured out. You need some sort of explanation, some sort of guidance, some sort of direction to explain what the expectation in the role actually is. And so It’s not just about, like I say, giving people a whole load of autonomy. It’s about understanding and understanding at that individual level what someone’s need for autonomy actually is. And so thinking about it like that, it makes sense, but it also makes it much more difficult because you could have the same manager treating people in the same way, But they’re responding in 2 different, 2 very different ways. So one of them might be thinking that person is micromanaging me.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:12]:

They’re telling me what to do. They’re telling me how I should do it. They’re telling me when I should do it, where I should do it. And that doesn’t work for me. That person is a, my boss is a micromanager. And you could have someone else who’s saying, they’re telling me what to do, but I need more details. I still need, I’m still not clear on exactly what needs to be done. that person hasn’t satisfied my need for, you know, providing clear guidance.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:39]:

I have too much autonomy in trying to figure out what it is I’m supposed to be doing here. And so the difficulty is trying to get it right for each individual person. Now multiply that by however many people you have in your team, and it makes it even more difficult. And this is the question that has come up, and I think it’s a really interesting question, like, how do you actually do that at scale? And for me, I think the best way to do that at scale is to give people a shared language to talk about their frustrations at work, because you’re not going to be talking about needs or my needs are not being satisfied because it’s just not how we speak at work. But what you might be able to talk about is where are you feeling really frustrated? What’s getting in the way of you being able to do your best work or feel motivated or You know, creating that environment, and people can more easily articulate what’s missing and where their frustrations are than they can say, “Well, what what my needs are.” I think the other interesting thing with motivation is that when we have it, we kind of take it for granted. So if we have enough autonomy, we don’t really notice the autonomy that we have until it’s taken away. So you might be cruising along, and then maybe there’s a change. in the team or you have a new manager and suddenly the autonomy that you took for granted is not there anymore and you feel like you’re being micromanaged a little bit.

Aoife O’Brien [00:10:14]:

When we feel motivated, we don’t necessarily notice the things that we have, but when we’re not feeling motivated, we definitely notice the things that we don’t have. So I think that’s an important distinction as well. Now, I’ve talked an awful lot about autonomy, but there are 2 other needs as well. So one of those needs is this need for connection. And so in self-determination theory, they talk about relatedness. And I know in other books and things that have been written, like in Dan Pink’s book Drive, he talks about self-determination theory, but he gives them different words, but his word is purpose. And for me, this connection piece is really important. So again, I’m veering beyond just self-determination theory here, but one of the most important things I think in this is making a link between what someone spends their time doing and the outcome that you’re trying to achieve.

Aoife O’Brien [00:11:17]:

So we are spending all of this time day in, day out, we’re at work. What is it all for? And making that direct link for someone, making it explicitly and saying because of the work you did. And I think it’s probably easier in some organizations or some types of roles than it is in others. But if you have very clear outcomes that you’re trying to achieve, or objectives, or whatever it is that you want to call it, if you’re directly working with a customer, it can be the impact that someone has had on customers. It can be if you have an influence on revenue, it can be your contribution to that revenue number. But making that explicit for someone, not leaving them to guess their contribution or not leaving them to figure it out for themselves, that is one of the best ways that you can motivate someone is by making that link explicitly clear. Because I think, let’s say, as individual contributors, we spend so much of our time doing the work, we don’t take that time to reflect and understand the impact of the work That we’re doing. So for me, that’s the most important part of the connection piece.

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:31]:

Another part of the connection piece, and this is more closely tied with the self-determination theory, is this idea that we feel connected to the people that we work with. So we foster a sense of connection with other people in the team. We feel like we are similar to them, that we have something in common, that we can go to them if we, if we’re having any problems, things like that. The third aspect I want to talk about is, I’m calling it mastery, and I think that’s what Dan Pink calls it as well in Drive. But this idea of mastery, and again, really important part of motivation and making this explicit to people, is a sense of progress towards something, towards a goal. So someone feels like So today I worked on something and maybe I worked a long time and I’m not necessarily seeing the final, final impact, but I know that I’m making progress towards a goal because I’ve ticked off 3 things out of 5, you know, major things that I was supposed to do today, for example. So making progress towards something is really, really important. On the mastery piece as well, so in self-determination theory, they call it competence.

Aoife O’Brien [00:13:48]:

And similar to autonomy, it’s about getting that balance right. So you don’t want too much and you don’t want too little. So if we think of autonomy, when there’s too much autonomy, we lack a sense of direction, but when there’s too little, we feel frustrated because we feel like we’re being micromanaged. When it comes to competence, we can have too much competence. So we are feeling like I could do this with my eyes closed, or this isn’t really challenging me at all. And we get bored and we get complacent and we don’t feel challenged. We don’t feel sufficiently challenged. And then at the other end of the extreme is we feel too challenged and we don’t feel like we have that capability and we’re feeling— In over our heads, we’re feeling like I’m a total imposter, what am I doing here? And this was where there was a bit of interesting conversation during the masterclass, is this idea that when we have that sufficient challenge, it’s really good.

Aoife O’Brien [00:14:55]:

Like challenge is something that we really need at work to be able to grow. And I did this, you know, it’s not a very scientific poll, but I did a poll on LinkedIn a number of years ago, there were about 200 respondents, and 86 said that they didn’t feel like they were realizing their full potential at work. So to me, that means they didn’t feel like they were being sufficiently challenged and they were capable of so much more than what they were being allowed to do. Now, one of the things that came up in conversation today was sometimes we’re so focused on challenging people, challenge, challenge, challenge, without any consideration for how they feel being the recipients of challenge. And maybe they feel like they’re swamped, that they’re not capable, that they’re in over their heads. Their heads. And Adam Grant has a really great way of saying this. I’m gonna butcher slightly his exact phrasing, but it’s something along the lines of, I believe in you, and that’s why I hold these high expectations.

Aoife O’Brien [00:15:56]:

So I believe that you’re capable of doing this, which is why I’ve set these high expectations for you. It’s something along that. So how often do we actually let people know that we think they’re capable of living up to those expectations that we’ve set for them. And again, this is something I talk about in the book. I talk about the Pygmalion effect. So when we have low expectations of someone, they tend to live up to those low expectations that we have of them. But when we set high expectations for someone and when we provide that sense of support that, you know, I’ve set this high challenge for you, but I believe in you because you delivered X, Y, and Z already, and I’m I’m here to support you for whatever you need. And let me know if, again, going back to this idea of autonomy, let me know if you need additional guidance and don’t be afraid because I think sometimes we’re afraid to ask for additional guidance or support because we feel like it makes us look incompetent, that we’re not capable of doing our jobs.

Aoife O’Brien [00:16:58]:

But don’t be afraid to do that. I think one of the best things we can do is get really clear on what outcome we’re trying to achieve. But back to this idea of mastery and feeling capable and getting that balance right where we’ve given someone sufficient challenge that they feel challenged, but that we’re providing that support, but we’re also letting them know why. It’s because I believe you’re capable of doing this thing that you’ve never done before because I’ve seen how you operate in this, this, and this. So as I mentioned, this is something I could talk about all day. I hope you feel the passion that I feel as I’m recording this episode. It’s something I’m hugely interested in, and it’s something I think I’ll be diving a little bit deeper into in the future. But I really hope you took something from the episode today, and do let me know if it changed your mind on something, if it made you think of something a little bit differently, and what’s One action, just one, that you’re going to do differently as a result.

Aoife O’Brien [00:18:04]:

This has been the Happier at Work podcast. I’m your host Aoife O’Brien, and don’t forget to share this with someone who needs to hear it today.