Surprising truth about what motivates us

I have always thought that the biggest motivator was money, how wrong was i. Well i come from a sales background where for over 3 years i managed a sales team of 25, i was one of the best motivator with the best sales team in Nairobi, not to tut my own horn. 

For long people kept on asking me, how do you motivate your people, how do you ensure they are always selling and how do you have them report to work on Saturday all day without supervision. Well i would say the usual treat them well,  ensure they earn and assist them to achieve their goal. 

Well after today i tend to think i did something different, i made them masters of their own game, i gave them guidance when needed, i cultivated a need to master the art of selling and they got some purpose from being the best. Every Monday we won the best team prize, this made them greatly satisfied. 

Let me stop braging, lol, 

Today i have listen and read research by Daniel H. Pink from his book  Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, he talks about 3 key motivators in life Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose

He goes on to elaborate that human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another.

Autonomy : Setting some one free, it leads to engagement, brings higher productivity, less burnout, and greater level of psychological well-being. He goes ahead to state a case whereby a group of software makers were given 24 hour of freedom to do any thing they wanted all they had to do was give results after 24 hrs. The owner thought that they would party, but was very shocked at the productivity and initiative taken by his people, they fixed software glitches, invented new software. Amazing what people can do if left to direct themselves.

Mastery: the urge to be good at something thus improving productivity.Every one wants to self develop and learn new skills, the challenge and the thrill is more of a motivator than money. That is why on Saturday in your own free time you can be found trying to master the guitar, why and you don't get paid and you have not decided to change your career to music, just for the fun. To be able to master a skill.

Purpose : Every human being's  deep desire to direct his or her own life, to extend and expand our abilities, and to live a life of purpose. People need to feel that their work has purpose, without the feeling that you are working towards a higher purpose, something  greater than yourself -- eventually you start asking "what's it all for?" and lose motivation.

Why money does not work  in most cases is that once you're called to do more  than simple  cognitive skills, the larger reward led to poorer performance. The problem is that threats and rewards do work, but only for repetitive mechanical tasks like in manufacturing companies. When people work in a carrot and stick environment, they just learn how to work for the carrot, they don't learn anything else and this in turn means that people learn to cheat their way to the carrot.

Money motivated system is a flawed system. The guy at the top gets all the rewards, the guy at the bottom gets punished and the guy in the middle gets nothing. Basically this is the world of sales, where effort is not rewarded only result is. Unfortunate but true. 

For your to get better results from your staff you need to remove the need for them to think of money thus you need to pay them well so all they are thinking of is how to apply themselves more.

Case in Point

 

matatumania

It all makes sense, my brother max spend days and nights building this cool website matatumania.co.ke, he would spend countless days visiting matatu (vans see picture). Well he perfected the website all night, had all creativity rights since no one could dictate how it should look like and  mastered the art of making a website and hosting it, and eventually felt very great about it. For him it was never about the money it was the satisfaction of a Job well done. Thanks Max for pointing me towards Daniel H. Pink.