David Town's Blog

Having Authentic Conversations

I am reading Daniel Pink’s latest book entitled “Drive”.  In his book he reveals some very interesting studies on motivation that challenge the current paradigms on the effectiveness of “carrot & stick” reward systems.  One of the points I believe he is making is that individual motivation comes more from intrinsic drivers than from extrinsic drivers, meaning that people are driven by what they find meaning in (internal drive) vs. the demands or rewards that are placed upon them by others to motivate them (external drivers).  Intuitively this makes a lot of sense but it goes against our common beliefs of motivation.  Much of the work in developing reward systems focuses on developing a “one-size fits all” system for motivating people that, by its very structure, presumes that the same thing motivates each individual.  Pink’s book makes the case for intrinsic motivation being a much stronger force, which means that we must understand each person’s individual motivation because that is what maximizes their drive and intensity of action.  Said a different way, if we want to influence an individual’s behaviour, we must understand them individually.

So, in order to understand a person’s inner drive and intrinsic motivators, we must be able to have authentic conversations that may at times feel vulnerable because they explore questions of meaning and purpose and may ask someone to reveal their innermost thoughts and passions.  These are not the kinds of conversations that we easily embrace.  However, in order to more effectively to deal with performance issues in the workplace, we need to get beyond simple approaches that use – as Pink calls it – a “carrot and stick” approach and begin to focus on ways to explore the intrinsic motivators of employees.

The implications of making these changes are significant.  We need to ask different questions when we are recruiting.  We need to have different conversations when we are not getting the results we expected from people who seemingly have the skills to achieve the expected results.  We need to know how to have these conversations.  We need to take the time to have these conversations with each other, in a world where the drive for efficiency has made time a very precious commodity.  Susan Scott in her book “Fierce Conversations” reveals how we can be so much more successful if we learn how to have these truly meaningful and authentic conversations.

So, where does this leave us?   Have you recently been in a situation where you were surprised by someone’s reaction to an interaction that you thought would motivate them in a positive way?  Do you explore questions of meaning and intrinsic motivation with the people who work for you?  Are you comfortable with the idea of having such a conversation?

The question for this blog is:  “Do the rewards you provide for people influence them to achieve what you want them to achieve?”  “Do we need to re-think some of the ways we reward and provide motivating environments?”

Send me your feedback on your views on motivations and conversations involving “intrinsic meaning”. Here on my blog, I offer commentluv. For you bloggers out there, if you leave a comment, you can link back to your own blog.  But you don’t have to be a blogger to leave a comment, I’d like to hear from everyone!

Dave

Tags: authentic conversation, David Town, dialogue, extrinsic drivers, HR, human resource management, Human Resources, intrinsic drivers, motivation, motivators, understanding others