The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us By Daniel H. Pink

Employee motivation is, or at least must be, one of the key issues for directors, managers and personnel managers. The leader must be able to find the sensitive strings of his subordinates, which can be motivated by influencing them to achieve high performance. The correct use of motivation encourages staff to make more efficient use of their knowledge, skills, and talents. In today's turbulent, often chaotic environment, commercial success depends on the employee's talent and effort. Despite the many existing theories and practices, some of the motivation of leaders today remains a mystical term. This is partly due to the fact that people are motivated by different things and techniques.

In chapter one of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Author Daniel Pink introduces two types of motivators that he refers to as, “Human operating systems”. Times have changed, and business models are changing as well. Just like we need to upgrade our computer software when it begins to fail. We also need to upgrade our human operating systems, when our current method is not keeping up with the ever-changing business world. The concept of reward and punishment to encourage employees to be more productive is an outdated way of managing people. In order to create a better work environment and increase productivity, we need to upgrade our idea of motivation to include autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

According to researcher Lindner (1998), motivated employees are needed in our rapidly changing workplaces to aid in the survival of organizations. Not only is it important to meet the needs of the consumer, it is equally important that to make sure that associates are taken care of and remain motivated. For this reason, Gibson, Ivancevich, Donnelly and Konopaske (2012) “states much of management’s time is spent addressing the motivation of their employees” (p. 125). According to the Encyclopedia of Small Business (2007), employee motivation is the level of energy, commitment, and creativity employees bring to their jobs; the inner force that drives individuals to accomplish personal and organizational goals (Lindner, 1988). Despite its obvious importance, employee motivation can be an elusive quest for managers due to the multiplicity of incentives that can influence employees to do their best work. The reality is that every employee has different ways to become motivated and the knowledge of how to motivate them is key to organizational success. It is imperative that employers get to know the personal needs and wants of their employees in order to establish tactics in which to motivate each of them. Once achieved, “managers are in a better position to encourage and reward employees to behave in effective ways” (Gibson et al, 2012, p.

“Motivating Employees” is a book about how employee motivation is driven by companies that invest and grow their employees. One of the most important traits of highly effective and successful companies is that employees are happy and have fun at work. Leadership is not assaulting your employees, but to lead your employees you need to motivate by using caring,

As you may have heard, Mr. Swift has made a very modest proposal about what to do with the situation of starvation among adults. Mr. Swift has proposed that after a year of a child's birth, they be eaten if the family wishes. I, being a mother of a baby, currently, could not approve of this proposal more. Me and my husband together, concur, this will allow us to not go hungry, but also fulfill our wish to have another baby. We've always wanted more kids, but we only desire a baby. We don't want them after they have grown older. We already have an older son. Now, with this proposal, we won't go hungry and we can stay full for months on end and all I must do is push out a baby. No big deal.

Chapter 12 of our textbook is titled “Motivating Employees,” and it encompasses much of what was in Drive. An extrinsic reward is defined as the “payoff, such as money, a person receives from others for performing a particular task.” Extrinsic rewards are what drive the old economy and still influence management techniques within organizations today. These rewards have many benefits but are becoming more and more obsolete in the twenty-first century workforce. The textbook defines intrinsic rewards as the “satisfaction, such as a feeling of accomplishment, a person receives from performing the particular task itself.” Offering only extrinsic rewards is what Pink refers to as “carrots and sticks.” These rewards work well for routine tasks. However, these rewards often stifle creativity (as seen in the candlestick experiment). Modern jobs are increasingly relying on creativity and innovation. Managers can use this knowledge by acknowledging the importance of intrinsic rewards when dealing with employees engaged in more complex

While watching “The Puzzle of Motivation” by Dan Pink, I was very intrigued. Throughout the entire talk, there were several interesting points that were made. It really interested me when Pink talked about the group that was rewarded. Pink stated that if the contestants were in the top 25% of the fastest times, they would be rewarded five dollars. With this incentive, most would hope to do well, if not better than the person that would not be rewarded. Pink then goes on to point out the results. How much faster did the group that was offered a reward actually do? On average, it took them three and a half minutes longer. This really stood out to me because when offered a reward for a task, normally a person would be more motivated and thus do better. What amazed me even more was that this isn’t just a one time thing. This is has been replicated over and over for nearly 40 years. As Pink says around 04:33, “These contingent motivators -- if you do this, then you get that -- work in some circumstances. But for a lot of tasks, they actually either don 't work or, often, they do harm.” These rewards that are being offered are being used to attempt to sharpen thinking and accelerate creativity, but instead it’s proving to do the opposite. It’s proving to dull thinking and block creativity.

The work of Harlow and Deci, however, brought a different perspective to the table. The idea that people can be motivated internally by things that cannot be seen or touched was a startling new concept. Intrinsic motivation, or Motivation 3.0 as Pink calls it, was officially born. Motivation 3.0 suggests that “I want to do something” because the sheer act of doing so is personally satisfying and deeply meaningful on a much grander scale. Intrinsic motivation, as the name implies, comes from within an

The success of any business depends on the productivity and satisfaction of its employees. Employees need to be motivated to work. Motivation can be defined as the inner force that drives individuals to accomplish personal and organizational goals. Motivation can be either intrinsic or extrinsic. For an individual to be motivated in a work situation there must be a need, which the individual would have to perceive a possibility of satisfying through some reward. Intrinsic motivation stems from motivations that are inherent and arise from performing the task of the job itself, which the individual gets a feeling of either positive or negative motivation as a result of

“The Mystery of Motivation” appeared in the January-February 2017 article written by Gary Drevitch, who is a senior editor for Psychology Today. Drevitch a Yale graduate, currently resides in New York City with his wife and three kids. His previous work includes senior editor at PBS, Time Inc., Scholastic and Parade Publications, and is the former editor-in-chief of Grandparents.com and an AOL blogger on weight loss and nutrition.

In chapter one of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, author Daniel Pink introduces two types of motivators that he refers to as, “Human operating systems”. Times have changed, and business models are changing as well. Just like we need to upgrade our computer software when it begins to fail. We also need to upgrade our human operating systems, when our current method has not kept up with the ever-changing business world. The concept of reward and punishment to encourage employees to be more productive is an outdated way of managing people. In order to create a better work environment and increase productivity, we need to upgrade our idea of motivation to include autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

In the book “DRIVE - the surprising truth about what motivates us”, Daniel Pink says that people will not do a better job if they’re offered a reward. They will do a better job if given the opportunity to work on their own time, be creative and do good. He states, “The secret to high performance and satisfaction is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, learn and create new things and to do better by ourselves and our world”. He speaks about a whole new way that companies should look at human motivation. The book discusses three main components of motivation- autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy describes how people want to be

Motivation in the workplace is one of the major concerns that managers face when trying to encourage their employees to work harder and do what is expected of them on a day-to-day basis. According to Organizational Behavior by John R. Schermerhorn, James G. Hunt and Richard N. Osborn the definition of motivation is "the individual forces that account for the direction, level, and persistence of a person's effort expended at work." They go on to say that "motivation is a key concern in firms across the globe." Through the years there have been several theories as to what motivates employees to do their best at work. In order to better understand these theories we will apply them to a fictitious organization that has the following

Because staff at Initech do not obtain worthwhile benefits or even see the proceeds of their hard work, which would act as motivator, they fail to feel their achievement or recognition. Moreover, the employees at Initech do not have means for self-actualization; they are neither encouraged nor allowed to realize their full potential, which Spitzer (1995, p. 7) argued could be fatal to the future of an organization. He argued that providing the staff with an environment of encouragement will make them realize their full potential consequently increasing the organization’s production. Sincerity of motivation is very fundamental as far as

Motivation is one of the most discussed topics in the present era’s organisations, especially since renowned psychologists like Maslow and Herzberg are dedicating their efforts to understanding it. Companies are investing a significant amount of resources in improving productivity in order to maximise profits. One of these important resources is of human nature. In order to get the very best out of employees, some motivational approaches need to be used. But what is motivation and how do I successfully motivate? I will try to relate one of my personal experiences with a friend to some of the most influential motivational theories. After introducing my story and making a definition of motivation I will address the ideas of Taylor,