What Motivates You?
The Blackmill team recently attended an online demo night for an accelerator program in Melbourne and came across a startup platform that aims to motivate team members by setting up a process for managers to purchase vouchers from selected partners. This could be a drink, coffee, lunch or similar. This made me think about extrinsic and intrinsic motivators and how they can help motivate individuals as well as teams.
Extrinsic motivations are drivers that arise from outside of the individual and often include rewards such as trophies, money, social recognition, or praise. It can help motivate people get through a task that they’re not passionate about. Some may say that you need to offer extrinsic motivators to keep people focused and willing. However, extrinsic motivators do not ignite passion or purpose. If someone doesn’t love what they do, they will only do the bare minimum to get their reward. Without passion or purpose, extrinsic motivators are not sustainable. The boredom of the work eventually leads to the extrinsic motivator not offering enough. Another disadvantage of extrinsic motivation is that it loses its effect over time unless the reward is increased constantly. This becomes problematic if people expect the reward for every task that they complete. It can lead to people actively avoiding tasks that may help them develop professionally because they can’t see an immediate reward. This is how you lose talented people to other organisations.
Intrinsic motivations are those that emerge from within the individual, when the individual has a passion for the work that they do. For example, learning a new language because you like experiencing new things, not because your job requires it. This means that they actually enjoy their work and feel motivated to keep pushing, even when faced with challenges. They have a greater understanding of where their work fits into the grand scheme. As a result, they get a reward just by knowing that they are contributing to something purposeful. With intrinsic motivation, people generally wish to continuously improve and are more likely to accept feedback because they want to improve and develop professionally.
Sometimes businesses and organisations may find extrinsic motivation produces more results in the short run but intrinsic motivation is the way forward. If you want your team to be successful in the long term, intrinsic motivation must be infused into every aspect of group dynamics. When aligned with the organisation’s purpose and values, intrinsic motivation will empower and drive individuals to achieve short term goals as well as seeking continuous improvements for themselves and the company.