Blog

So we should be talking about New Year’s resolutions - but they mostly don’t work and when there’s freezing weather and uncertainty is a central theme in the zeitgeist, the last imprecation most of us need is to self-improve. Maybe this is a better time for analysis and reflection first, then resolution.

So to a return to the theme of a previous blog then: motivation without the money. In his last blog Gary referenced a UKCES report full of ideas about High Performance Working at an organizational level, essential reading for managers and HR professionals. As a practitioner though, I often get called in to run ‘something motivational’ when individuals are exhausted and demoralized from what seems like endless fire-fighting. Feedback from these events shows that people find the following ideas, based on the book ‘Intrinsic Motivation at Work’ by Kenneth Thomas, very useful.

We get demoralized at work when our work loses meaning for us. Meaning at work is about why we perform a role and the tasks in it - and how this sits with our own values and what gives us a buzz. When a role involves frequent episodes of what gives us a buzz, for instance: controlling chaos effectively, creating progress through people, demonstrating recognized competence or originating improvement, then we are likely to feel motivated and perform well.

We get demoralized at work when our choices about how to achieve outcomes are over-controlled or are unclear. Bosses who are happy delegators or even hand-off task completion totally, make the best motivators. Organizational climate matters here, in that if mistakes are regarded as taboo and to be concealed at all cost, then true delegation will be strangled. It will be much too risky…

And finally we get demoralized at work when we have no sense of performance and progress, when coaching, developing and recognizing people’s efforts disappears. In tough times these aspects are arguably more important than when times are good. By reminding ourselves that change and learning are very close in meaning, exercises that seem like endless cost-cutting can become lessons that give us useful feedback for the future.

Here’s hoping for a motivated 2010 to you all.
 

Pippa Davies

www.philippadavies.co.uk