15 February 2010
Successful Intentions Newsletter
Hi ,
What motivates you at work?
After "reward" and "incentives" you probably think "recognition for good work" is number one.
But you'd be wrong!
Teresa Amabile, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and research writer Steven Kramer tracked the day-to-day activities, emotions and motivation levels of hundreds of knowledge workers in a range of settings. And they discovered the top motivator of performance was progress.
It turns out that making progress in your work - even incrementally - is more frequently associated with positive emotions and high motivation than any other event in the working day.
When you have a sense that you're making headway at work, or when you get support that assists you in overcoming obstacles, you are at your most positive and your drive to succeed is at its peak.
OK, so what does this mean if you're a manager of people? The good news is that the key to motivating others is largely in your control. Here's what you can do:
- Provide meaningful goals. Don't impede progress by changing goals autocratically, being indecisive, or holding up resources.
- Provide support. Take great care to clarify overall goals and ensure that everyone's efforts are properly supported. Avoid exerting time pressure so intense that minor glitches are seen as crises rather than learning opportunities.
- Cultivate a culture of helpfulness. Demonstrate if necessary by rolling up your sleeves and helping out.
- Celebrate progress. Recognition can't happen every day, but you can celebrate progress, even the incremental kind.
, if you want a team of people who are not only working with gusto but are also getting the job done faster, focus on what you can do to provide the resources and encouragement to facilitate progress, and protect your people from irrelevant demands.
Find out how to use The Wizard of Oz to make wise decisions on my "Wisdom Circle" blog for musings, research, and applications of practical wisdom!
Keep your intentions clear,
Peter Webb
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